Assignment #1 : analyze the following Youtube videos heralding the opening of Disneyland in 1954. What did Disneyland project about American culture in the 1950s? What parts of 1950s American culture does it still project? Do you find Disneyland’s projection false and nefarious? Or comforting and optimistic? Feel free to examine other videos you find online, and feel free to post links to them here. (You can embed videos from YouTube by taking the embed code on the page and then putting hypertext tags before and after it.
Below are the youtube videos.
https://youtu.be/2rHjoimz5XI
https://youtu.be/eMS2iC402ao
https://youtu.be/p-4-xSIyq7A
Assignment #2 : Ever since the war in Vietnam ended, American politicians — and the people they serve — have been trying to learn from the lessons of the war. Conflicts as varied as the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s, to the first Gulf War in 1991-1992, to today’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently, Libya, have provoked comparisons to Vietnam. What comparisons do YOU see between Vietnam and the wars the U.S. is involved in today? Has the United States learned from the mistakes of the past in the waging of these new 21st century conflicts?
