SU's Adventures in Ideas: Humanities Seminar Series Continues November 21

SALISBURY, MD---Tailfins. Poodle skirts. Googie architecture. These and more invoke the unique designs of the mid-20th-century U.S.

Dr. Victoria Pass of Salisbury University’s Art Department examines the zeitgeist that contributed to these elements as the next presenter in this academic year’s Adventures in Ideas: Humanities Seminar Series.

Her presentation, “The Look of Victory: Design and Visual Culture in the ‘Long’ Fifties,” is 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, November 21, in Teacher Education and Technology Center Room 179.

The allied victory in World War II marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. Growing corporations such as IBM believed that good design was good business and commissioned designers to create visual branding strategies.

Hollywood films and the newest form of mass media, television, brought images of flawlessly decorated suburban homes, fashionable Detroit cars and impeccably dressed women into American homes. Meanwhile, designers such as Charles James, Paul Rand, Claire McCardell, Eva Zeisel, and Charles and Ray Eames combined the look of European Modernism with a unique American optimism, rejecting the privations of the Depression and war years.

Sponsored by the Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts and the Whaley Family Foundation, admission is $30, and advance registration is required. Breakfast and lunch are provided. To register call 410-543-6450 or e-mail dmcarey@salisbury.edu.

The final topic in this academic year’s series is “Songs of Social Significance: Broadway During the Great Depression and Second World War” with Drs. Leanne Wood of the Bellavance Honors Program, and William Folger and John Wesley Wright of the Music, Theatre and Dance Department, on Saturday, February 20.

For more information visit the SU website at www.salisbury.edu.