Write a 5-7 page paper (no shorter and no longer) in response to one of the following questions. Use specific examples from Sister Carrie and Babbitt as historical evidence. In addition, you may draw on discussions, lectures, and supplemental readings on reserve. Chapters 19 and 23 in Out of Many may be particularly useful in providing additional historical details. Make sure to have a clear argument and provide specific examples. Please consult the "Quick and Dirty" writing guide.

1. Both Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis offer largely negative portrayals of the rise of a new consumer culture. But many observers regard the decades from roughly 1880-1930 as an era of progress with improved standards of living. Did America's new consumer culture bring progress in this period?
   
   
2. In many societies and historical periods, technological development and cultural change are often intertwined. How did technology reshape American culture from roughly 1880-1930?

Sample Final Exam

Write a 5-7 page paper (no shorter and no longer) in response to one of the following questions. Use specific examples from Status Seekers and Bobos as historical evidence. In addition, you may draw on discussions, lectures, and supplemental readings on reserve. Chapters on postwar America in Out of Many may be particularly useful in providing additional historical details. Make sure to have a clear argument and provide specific examples. Please consult the "Quick and Dirty" writing guide.

1. When Vance Packard was writing in the 1950s, intellectuals derided the consumerism of American society for its tendencies toward conformity and homogeneity. Dwight Macdonald argued that mass consumption had the same impact on and affected everyone in the same way. "It is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying." In the postwar period, was this tendency toward homogenization true or false, and how so? Be sure to explain and to consider material from both Packard and Brooks.
   
   
2. In Thorstein Veblen's, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen maintained that in affluent societies, people establish their social position through spending, hence the phrase "conspicuous consumption." Over the last century, critics from Dreiser to Brooks have criticized consumption, but not always in the same ways. As consumer culture evolved so too did the critiques. What were the critiques of postwar consumption? To what extent and how have they changed?