State of the Union
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Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have delivered 214 State of the Union addresses, some delivered orally and many more only written. This website makes the full text of all addresses available and fully searchable, and has done some innovative work text-mining these speeches to examine "changes in the language of the State of the Union address over the past 200 years."
A good place to begin is the website's Essay section, which gives a brief history of the State of the Union address, and describes some of the project's most interesting findings. The website's most prominent feature is a series of graphical representations of the most frequently used words in each address, which allows users to compare those words to those of any other speech.
Another tool allows users to compare the usage of two words in all addresses delivered. Comparing "war" and "peace," for example, reveals that these words have been used in 206 of the addresses, and that the word "war" alone has been used more than 2,600 times, compared to 1,821 usages for "peace."
Indiana Historical Society Digital Image Collections
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This website boasts a growing collection of more than 38,000 photographs, lithographs, letters, cards, poems and other texts centering around Indiana history from the early 19th century to the present. The collection is especially strong in African American history in Indiana, with browseable collections on Madam C.J. Walker (18671919), a nationally renowned businesswoman and philanthropist, Flanner House, the first agency in Indianapolis devoted to meeting the social service needs of African Americans, and the Indianapolis Recorder, the longest continually operated African American newspaper in Indiana.
In addition to that of Madam C.J. Walker, there are collections of roughly 100 images each related to other notable Hoosiers. The website also contains a collection of more than 1,000 items related to President Lincoln, including portraits and busts of the president, as well as documents surrounding the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. Other notable collections include one devoted to military history, several collections of images and portraits of Native Americans from the mid-19th century, and close to 200 historical maps of Indiana. All content is keyword searchable.
Feminist Art
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Question
What kind of visual art was there during the time of the feminist movement?
Answer
I will suppose that by "the time of the feminist movement," you mean essentially during the 1960s–1980s, even though feminism of one kind or another has made itself felt in the arts for at least a century–in the choreographic innovations of dancer Isadora Duncan, for example–and continues through today. Feminist art was the subject of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, an exhibit that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2007 and traveled around the country, including to the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, DC. The exhibit featured 300 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art from 1965–1980 created by 118 well-known artists, including Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, and Cindy Sherman. Feminist art was a "philosophy of art informed by gender," according to Susan Fisher Sterling, the curator of the exhibit at the NMWA. The artists "were throwing off many of the sanitized conceptions of women and expressing overt independence and sexuality in a way that had never been acceptable before." As a gesture toward that, the exhibit curators placed warnings in some portions of the exhibition, advising museum visitors of "potentially disturbing subject matter."
Feminist art was a "philosophy of art informed by gender..."
Curators described the exhibit as, "An edgy account filled with history, passion and scandal, Wack! … addressed such issues as male biases, body image, sexuality and media interpretation of feminism from the perspective of many traditional and controversial artists over several decades." One prominent axiom of feminist art was the notion that the body—especially the female body—was a kind of blank stage or canvas upon which "narratives" or images of various selves were arbitrarily "mapped" or described, often through violence. Like most Modern (and then Postmodern) art of the period, feminist art was immersed in political revolution, in gender, race, and class. The political and cultural agenda of feminist artists was to take control of their destinies and redefine their social roles by a combined assault on—or inversion of—the "patriarchal structures" of culture and politics.
Like most Modern (and then Postmodern) art of the period, feminist art was immersed in political revolution...
Also like most art of the period, feminist art tended to be explicitly self-referential, making the artists the subjects of the works they created, "declarations of self," as performance artist Cheri Gaulke put it. Photographer Cindy Sherman's self-portraits in different personae are examples of this, as are the performance art film events created by Carolee Schneemann, such as her Autobiographical Trilogy, which featured sexually explicit films of herself, or, as evidence that themes of feminist art have continued, Eve Ensler's 1996 play, The Vagina Monologues, or Yale art student Aliza Shvarts' 2008 "creative fiction" about self-inseminations and abortions. Typical of feminist art was a related emphasis on a supposed "woman’s way" of working—meaning, in particular, the forming of collectives or cells of women artists who sought to produce art jointly, and as part of a process of "consciousness raising" among the members of the collectives.
Yet another way to "rescue" women was to honor typically feminine arts and crafts...
Another goal of feminist art was to "rescue" women of a previous day—notably, women artists who had not garnered the critical acclaim they had deserved because they were women, or because the subjects of their art were derived from the domestic realm, such as child-rearing or food preparation, or because the works evinced a particularly "feminine" sensibility. Yet another way to "rescue" women was to honor typically feminine arts and crafts, including, particularly, sewing, weaving, costuming, embroidery, and quilting, and place these in the forefront of the artistic endeavor, rather than in the "lesser" margins, as they had been traditionally. Judy Chicago's 1974 installation piece, The Dinner Party, was influential in stimulating many of these issues within feminist art.
For more information
Cornelia H. Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007.
University of Washington Libraries: Moving Image Collection
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This website presents 65 moving images from 1915 through the 21st century. These include home movies, industrial films, news coverage, and documentaries, and cover a wide variety of topics, with a special focus on life in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Several home videos capture the experience of attending the 1962 Seattle World's Fair—riding the monorail or looking at the Space Needle.
Visitors can also watch as U.S. Presidents made history in this region, including John F. Kennedy's groundbreaking of the N-reactor at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and President Truman awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Bud Hawk.
A four-minute video captures a traditional Eskimo dance in Point Barrow, AK, in the early 1940s.
All movies can be browsed by year or by subject (e.g. trash, wildlife, workers, football, hiking, poverty, fisheries, laboratories, Rainier), and are keyword searchable.
Wisconsin State Historical Society Online Collections
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Founded in 1846 and chartered in 1853, the Wisconsin State Historical Society is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. This website provides a host of online collections containing thousands of documents and images addressing Wisconsin's social, political, and cultural history, drawn from the Historical Society's collections.
Highlights include full-text access to 80 histories of Wisconsin counties, and 1,000 more articles, memoirs, interviews, and essays on Wisconsin history and archaeology first published between 1850 and 1920; thousands of articles from the Wisconsin Magazine of History; and hundreds of objects form the Society's Museum, including moccasins, dolls, quilts, ceramics, paintings, and children's clothing.
Other objects can be viewed at the website's Online Exhibits section, which includes objects from exhibits on Presidential elections, Wisconsin's Olympic speed skaters, the Milwaukee Braves, Jewish women, and family labor in Milwaukee after World War II.
The website also provides a vast collection of images available through Wisconsin Historical Images, including photographs, drawings, and prints relating to both regional history, as well as more national histories of 19th-century exploration, mass communications, and social action movements.
Washington State Digital Archives
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This massive archive contains more than 84.5 million documents, more than 26 million of which are fully keyword searchable, from Washington State and local agencies. These documents include contracts, birth, marriage, military, naturalization, death, cemetery, and census records, land records and surveys, oaths of office, maps, photographs, power of attorney records, and date from the late 19th century to the present.
A detailed list of collections is available through the Collections section. Here, users will find detailed information on all record collections, including dates and counties available, and options to search by county or within sub-collections.
The casual user may want to begin with several browsable featured collections, which contain photographs from the Spokane city planning department, audio recordings of the Washington House of Representatives Committee Meetings, and 200 photographs of daily life in the Big Bend region of the Columbia Basin.
Useful for teachers and historical researchers interested in many aspects of life in the West, and those interested in genealogy with connections to Washington State.
Watergate and the Constitution
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Description
Students analyze a primary source document which sets forth points both for and against the indictment of Richard Nixon, before considering Constitutional interpretations of Watergate.
Article Body
The strength of this lesson is that it is centered around a document which presents compelling arguments both for and against the indictment of former President Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. The featured document, a memo to the Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, was written by Jaworski's staff as he was considering whether or not to indict Nixon.
The memorandum’s language should be accessible to most high school students. Both a copy of the original document and a transcribed version are available.
The question at the center of the lesson is, "Should the Watergate Special Prosecutor seek an indictment of the former President?" If teachers want to make this lesson more of an historical inquiry, we recommend modifying that question to read: "What were the main arguments for and against the indictment of former President Richard Nixon?"
An additional strength of this lesson is two activities that use the Constitution as a lens to understand the Watergate affair. One of the suggested activities asks students to identify the specific role each branch of government played in the Watergate affair. Another activity asks students to apply specific sections of the Constitution and determine the role particular constitutional powers and rights played in the Watergate affair.
This lesson would likely work best after an introductory lesson on Watergate. While there is no formal assessment included in this lesson, the questions presented by the document easily lend themselves to an essay or a discussion.
Topic
Watergate, the Constitution
Time Estimate
1 day
flexibility_scale
3
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship
Yes
Historical background is detailed and accurate. The document is from The National Archives.
Rubric_Content_Historical_Background
Yes
Th lesson includes background information for teachers and students, as well as a chronology of the Watergate affair.
Rubric_Content_Read_Write
Yes
The lesson is centered around a primary document from the Watergate scandal, and requires students to read the Constitution.
Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations
Yes
Students are asked to weigh the reasons for and against indicting Nixon.
Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing
Yes
Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate
Yes
The main document is appropriate and accessible for most high school students, as are the teaching activities.
Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking
Yes
The lesson includes the Archives' worksheet for analyzing primary source documents, asking students to consider source and contextual information when interpreting the document.
Rubric_Structure_Assessment
No
Rubric_Structure_Realistic
Yes
The lesson is clearly presented and is easily adapted to emphasize either History or Civic standards.
Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals
Yes
Appropriate for one class period.