Jeremy B. Landa
This will be an approximately four-week unit that will focus itself on three major case studies plus the final project. The final project will be to create a political propaganda advertisement, which demonstrates a synthesis of the students demonstrating a consumer politics perspective, with polling, and producer politics perspective, one that is without polling.
The case studies that will drive student's explorations into the history of the election process are as follows:
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Case Study 1: Students will explore 1936 Presidential Election, the "Second New Deal", polling Literary Digest and Gallup polls, and radio technology
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Case Study 2: Students will explore the 1960 election, The New Frontier, political marketing, and television technology.
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Case Study 3: Students will explore the 2008 election, the election of the first black president, political marketing, and new social media technologies
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While the case studies have some variation within them, the students; primary goal should be to connect the changing political culture of elections to the visible and invisible consumer cultures of the times, e.g. to see FDR's use of fireside chats as well as the polling techniques that predicted his loss (and win in Gallup polls). By the conclusion of the three case studies, students will be able to reflect upon the disconnect between voting as an obligation and voting as a right on the federal level; holding that knowledge is an opportunity to organize and influence the relationship between political consumption and political obligations. This is, in effect, an attempt to broaden political consumption to include not just the negatives of manipulated candidates, but also the positives of consumer protection and a consumer culture that encourages the consumer that spends money is helping everyone gain wealth and rights.
