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Sample Subject Areas (to be narrowed down)
Economics
- Impact of Great Depression or both on particular sectors of the economy (like agriculture, industry, universities, specific business, entertainment, journalism, sports)
- Impact of Great Depression in a particular place (Kentucky, the South, etc)
- Impact of Great Depression on particular social group (women, African Americans, Latinos, textile workers, tobacco farmers, etc)
- Impact of War on different sectors of the economy
- Wartime economic policies and planning
- Impact of defense industry on a particular place
Politics
- Elections: what were key candidates, issues, factors in outcome, changes in voting patterns
- Individual political leaders’ ideas, actions, participation in major debates
- Opposition movements and their ideas, goals, actions, impact
- Changes in political parties and their fortunes
- Political rhetoric and advertising as indication of changing values/perspectives
New Deal Policy
- History of a particular New Deal program (ideas behind it, political debate over it, what it did etc)
- Impact of a New Deal program on a particular group or sector of the economy
- FDR’s ideas, approaches, rhetoric about different policies
Popular Culture
- Changes over time in film, music, theater, dance, poetry, etc.
- Trace the work of a particular artist/writer/performer over time
- Trace a particular theme or idea in cultural expression over time
Social Histor/Experience of Marginalized Groups During the War/Social Movements
- Trace experience and activities of a particular movement (civil rights, labor, women’s, peace)
- American reaction to the rise of Nazism and the holocaust
- Internment: calls for it; debates over it; reaction to it; experience of Japanese Americans
- Impact of the War on women, minorities, etc
Foreign Policy/Diplomacy/World Role
- Development of isolationism in policy
- American attitudes about interwar crises
- Anti-War sentiment and activities and how it changes over time
- US reaction to Spanish Civil War
- Trace how a particular war aim was pursued (decolonization, free trade, United Nations, etc)
- Allied relations
- Individual leaders’ ideas, actions
- Military decision making or strategy
- Development of the Atomic Bomb and IMMEDIATE reaction (don’t go much past late 1945)
- Explore a particular theme in the soldiers’ experience
- Be wary: papers trying to demonstrate importance of a particular battle often fall flat
