For Thursday and Friday: You will be working with copies of pro Suffrage propaganda posters/postcards and anti-Suffrage propaganda posters/postcards. Work in pairs to examine the first set of posters/postcards (the one of the top – which means binder holes are on the left- is anti; the other side is pro-). Each person start by describing what you see (write it down in your blue books – do this for 5 minutes without talking for each poster). Make sure to write down the title (use the slogan if I haven’t written a title on the poster), describe “plot,” characters, relationship, setting, design, etc., make note of the slogan and where it is positioned, other words in the poster, then describe colors used and where they are, objects in plain sight, etc.
After you have written, talk. Share what you see and together, analyze the poster/postcard as we did in class on Wednesday. Talk first about what you saw and why it might matter. THINK about the target audience and the overall message and the way in which it tries to convey that message (through symbol, color, words, etc.). Write your best ideas down in your blue books. Finally, for each poster, identify use of stereotypes and/or evidence of the women’s issues we have identified as still important in our class (issues of voice, of sexual harassment, of equality, violence, unrealistic expectations, idealized beauty standards, “the ugly hag” idea represented in folk and fairy tales, the limited sphere, etc.) and take a look at how each poster is using any of these and why. Write down your best ideas.
After you’ve finished one set, trade with another pair and repeat the process. Everyone needs to complete at least two by the end of Thursday’s class. If you do not finish two, for homework, go to the website, click on the “Women’s Suffrage Propaganda” (it’s under “Women’s Voices”) and choose two that you haven’t looked at to complete.
On Friday: Go back over your work from Thursday and pull together the evidence you need to write me a draft proof paragraph that shows that these posters use issues /stereotypes that are still part of our culture today in order to argue either for or against the right for women’s suffrage. To do this successfully, you’ll need to identify an issue (like- standards of beauty) that you see at work in at least two of the posters that you examined, and a technique that both posters use (in common) to address that issue. Write the paragraph in your blue books. Here’s a possible topic sentence for the demo posters we examined on Wednesday: Each poster uses slogan as a way to promote its side’s view of women’s equality in the debate for suffrage. The pro-suffrage poster uses the slogan “Women’s Suffrage Is Coming” to appeal to its audience’s sense of American ideals and inevitability. The emphasis on the word is in the poster leaves no room for doubt – suffrage is inevitable, because it has to be. America is a country founded on the principle that all people are created equal, so equal rights in voting is a requirement. The anti-suffrage “The Suffragette Bar” poster uses its slogan in the same way, but to make a very different argument. Its slogan “Nothing but ice cream and pretzels. Oh! Joy!” imagines a world where women’s “equality” does the opposite – it makes women more than equal and puts them in charge. The slogan suggests that when women have access to the vote, they will force out what men want (like a bar where they can get a well-deserved drink after work), and instead replace it with what is more acceptable to women, ice cream and pretzels. The slogan plays on both the Anti-Temperance movement, which is largely driven by women and imagines a world where women exert their power to change everything without regard to what men might want. Ice cream and pretzels are also frivolous, “empty” calories that serve to underscore the anti-suffrage idea that women do not have serious thoughts or desires and cannot be trusted to make decisions in the world. Turn in your blue books at the end of the period.
HOMEWORK: This weekend, go to https://storycorps.me/interviews/ (or to the “Oral History Project” page on the website, where these is a link) and listen to at least two of the interviews. The purpose here is to familiarize yourself with StoryCorps, to hear a variety of American Voices, and to listen for interview techniques. On a piece of paper, for each interview, write down the title, make notes of what interests you. and of particularly good questions asked. Then, react to each interview – tell me what pulled you in and why, what you gained in terms of seeing the world through another’s eyes, what you picked up about interviewing techniques, etc. (a meaty paragraph for each). Finally, identify your interview subject and draft some questions that might help get you started in the process (write these on a different sheet of paper).