The following is a list of approaches to the 1993 National History
Day theme and possible topics for study. The list is not meant, of
course, to be inclusive. It is merely a start to help students begin
thinking about this year’s theme. Whether students choose to write
a paper or create a performance, project or media presentation, they should
be sure to place the chosen topic into historical perspective and focus
on the topic’s significance and impact in history. National History
Day judges will examine not only the students’ research skills and creative
presentations, but their understanding of their topics’ historical significance
as well.
I. INFORMATIONAL MEDIA
Information about events and ideas are important to all societies.
Informational media focuses on organizations, people and methods that transmit
news and information to a mass audience. This information may be
transmitted by a town crier or a news anchor, but both have the goal of
informing their communities about issues of the day. Topics include
the growth of newspapers and magazines, electronic media such as radio
and television, and ways of advertising and marketing products. This
area of the theme encourages students to examine ways different types of
media and media organizations have influenced history by disseminating
news, ideas, and information to a popular audience.
The early development of newspaper and magazines:
The invention and improvement of the printing press made it possible
for information to be collected, printed, and distributed on a regular
basis.
The press and the shaping of revolutionary America:
Papers, pamphlets, and broadsides were vehicles for communicating ideas
in the years immediately preceding the American Revolution. Students
may analyze and discuss issues related to the writing, printing, and distribution
of these publications, and the impact of the ideas that the authors sought
to communicate.
Historical Roots of the Free Press in America: The English Influence
The Licensing Act (late 17th century) and the development of a free
English press.
Key writers in the history of the English press:
Joseph Addison
Richard Steele
Jonathan Swift
Daniel DeFoe
English Common Law and seditious libel
Newspapers and colonial protest in America:
Newspapers in colonial America helped create the protest over taxation
which led to the Revolutionary War. Discuss the role of the press
in shaping public opinion surrounding the enactment of the following laws:
The Stamp Act (1765)
The Townshend Acts (1767-68)
The Intolerable Acts (1774)
Loyalist (Tory) Newspapers in pre-Revolutionary America
Key Writers in the Colonial American press:
John Adams
Samuel Adams
John Gill
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
The History of the Free Press in France
The Literary Underground Before the French Revolution — students may
want to examine the handwritten newsletter (nouvelles a la main) and their
newsbooks (libelles)
The Free Press in France Following the Adoption of the Declaration of
the Rights of Man (Article Eleven, 1789)
The American Free Press in Action
Populism and Propaganda
The Language of White Supremacy:
The Rise of the KKK in the Post-Reconstruction South
The Abolitionist Press in Nineteenth Century America
The Role of Foreign Language Newspapers in U.S. History
The African-American Press in the Anti-Lynching Movement
Workers’ Publications and the American Labor Movement
Feminist Writers and the Suffrage Movement
Muckrakers in the Reform Era
Key Individuals in the History of American Journalism:
Benjamin Franklin (mid 18th century)
Benjamin Day
Horace Greeley
Joseph Pulitzer
William Randolph Hearst
E. W. Scripps
Newspapers in Totalitarian States
Students may investigate restrictions on the free flow of information
in nations such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist Rumania, etc.
Other areas for study and investigation related to informational
media:
Radio Journalism
Newsreels
Advertising and Marketing
Printed Ads and Billboards
Broadcast Advertisements
United States Postal Service
Pony Express
Carrier Pigeon Service
II. RHETORIC AND THE
POWER OF SOCIAL CHANGE
This area focuses on the oratory, and actions of groups communicating a
need for societal, or global, change. It includes movements for civil
rights, human rights, national independence, labor rights, and gender and
racial equality. Students choosing such topics should emphasize how
groups define their goals and tactics in order to communicate the message
of their cause.
Students may want to analyze the historical significance and impact
of speeches and written works by local and national figures, including:
Thomas Paine
Patrick Henry
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln
Sojourner Truth
Henry Ward Beecher
Adolph Hitler
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Ida B. Wells
Winston Churchill
Booker T. Washington
Jane Addams
Max Eastman
“Big Bill” Haywood
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mahatma Gandhi
Betty Friedan
Eugene V. Debs
John F. Kennedy
Malcolm X
Fidel Castro
Karl Marx
Marcus Garvey
Jerry Rubin
Shirley Chisholm
William Jennings Bryan
“The First Americans”: Statements from the American Indian Task Force
Russell Means
Students may wish to investigate the impact of social movements and
demonstrations as a means of communication:
Labor: Flint Sit-Down Strike, 1936-1937
Civil Rights: Lunch Counter Sit-In, Greensboro, North Carolina
Vietnam War Protests, 1960s
III. TRANSMITTING CULTURAL VALUES
Focuses on the wide ranging systems of beliefs, values, structures, rituals,
and artifacts that define a society. Includes national or tribal
identity, religious traditions, education, family relationships, customs,
economic activity, etc.
Propagating the Faith: Traditions of Oral and Written Communication
in the History of World Religion and Law
Historical Interpretations of Creation Myths
The Great Awakening and Its Impact on American Social Policy
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
The Influence of Major Religious/Cultural Works in World History:
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Mishnah
The Koran
The Bible
The Book of Morman
The Covenant Tradition of Protestant New
England
Message From the Vatican: Official Catholic Social Policy and
Its Impact on World History
School Prayer and Individual Liberty
The Scopes Trial and Its Impact on Education: Communicating Evolutionary
Ideas
Communication Through the Arts
The arts have served as expressions of political ideas, social protest,
and human emotions. Students my want to test the truth of this
statement by examining the works of artists such as:
Carl Van Vechten
Louise Bryant
Upton Sinclair
Theodore Dreiser
James Baldwin
Visual Artists in “The Ash Can School” including the realists George
Luks, Robert Henri, John Sloan, and William Glackens
Literary and Visual Artists from the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston
Hughes, Jessie Fauset, and Zora Neale Hurston, Richmond Barthe
Music and Counterculture in the 1960s
From Journalist to Author: The Life of Ernest Hemingway
The Fine Art of Censorship: Banned Books in American History
Art or Obscenity: A History of Arts Endowment
Policy on Funding Controversial Works
Education
How have societies used formal education to communicate ideas and values
such as nationalism, cultures, traditions, policies, laws?
IV. COMMUNICATION THROUGH SYMBOLS
Focuses on graphic means of communication. Includes any type of written
language, sign language, hieroglyphics, codes, signs, or international
symbols, etc.
Communication in the Ancient World
What Do the Hieroglyphs Tell Us About Life in Ancient Egypt?
(invented approx. 3000 B.C.)
The Invention of Alphabetic Writing in Syria (1500 B.C.)
Communicating Through Symbols
Sign Language
Braille
V. ORAL AND FOLK TRADITIONS
This area focuses on informal systems of communication and the oral transmission
of cultural skills and traditions. It includes non-written languages,
oral history, folk music, crafts, and stories.
How were/are ideas communicated in the absence of written language?
(town criers, messengers, drums, smoke signals, etc. Examples of
oral and other non-literate news systems are evident in the histories of
the following cultures:
Zulus of South Africa
Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia
Hopi Indians of North America
Ibo of Nigeria, West Africa
The Griot Tradition of West Africa
How did slaves on southern plantations use field songs to communicate
with one another?
VI. USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN COMMUNICATION
Focuses on the development of means for improved communication. Of
primary importance here are advancements in telecommunication which include
the telegraph, telephone, long-distance cables, radio, television, and
satellites. Communication systems employing technology may also be
explored. These include postal systems, intelligence organizations,
road building, or other networks designed to facilitate communication.
The history of science and technology includes the names of numerous
inventors, inventions, and corporations which made lasting impressions
in the field of mass communications. These include:
Radio
19th Century:
Pioneering work with electromagnetic waves
James Clerk Maxwell, Scotland
Heinrich Hertz, Germany
Guglielmo Marconi, Italy
Thomas A. Edision, U.S.
General Electric Company (1892)
20th Century:
Lee DeForest, U.S.
Reginald Fessenden, U.S.
Radio Corporation of America (RCA, 1919)
Westinghouse, role in early broadcasting (1920s)
Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell, U.S., 1876
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (est. 1887)
Telegraph (Samuel Morse, U.S. 1844)
The History of Western Union in the Telegraph Field
Discuss the Role of Cyrus W. Field and the Anglo-American Telegraph
Company in the history of trans-Atlantic Telecommunications
Television
Paul Nipkow, Germany, 1884
What role did radio networks, such as CBS and NBC, play in the development
of television technology?
Video Technology
Motion Pictures Industry (1890s)
Movable type
Printing Press
Cameras and Photography
Phonograph
The development of optical fibers and the improvement of Telecommunications.
Identify and analyze examples of the impact of technology on political
communication, such the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960 or the
significance of computerized public opinion polls.
Media Coverage of the Viet Nam War and the Shaping of Public Opinion
Media Coverage of and Government Reaction to Anti-War Protests During
the Viet Nam Era
Satellite Communications
Military Communications and National Security
VII. CONTROL OF COMMUNICATION
This field focuses on attempts by groups or governments to control the
content, form, and dissemination of communication in social, political,
and religious life. This could include government ownership of media,
regulation of media, censorship, libel law, sedition, blasphemy or heresy,
and propaganda.
Radio Act of 1927
Federal Radio Commission
Communications Act of 1934
Federal Communications Commission
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (1978)
International Telecommunication Union
Spying, Privacy Rights, and Public Security
Students may want to examine publicity surrounding phone taps and surveillance
of high profile individuals such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or cases
of domestic spying such as the Watergate.
Censorship and National Security
The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
The Espionage Act (1917)
The Publication of the Pentagon Papers and the related case New York
Times v. United States (1971)
Freedom of Expression Under Siege: Historical Challenges
Schenck v. United States (1919)
Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)
The Scopes Trial (1925)
Near v. Minnesota (1931)
New York Times. v. Sullivan (1964)
National Symbols and the language of Patriotism. Cases challenging
laws on saluting the American Flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
include:
Minersville District v. Gobitis (1940)
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
Earth to Heaven: The Supreme Court and the Issue of School Prayer (first
case 1962)
Book Burning - Community Control
VIII. POLITICS AND FOREIGN RELATIONS
Focuses on the political culture (the relationship between people and their
government) within a society and the interrrelationships between nations.
Politics could include political parties, public oratory, political advertising,
and propoaganda. Foreign relations defines the broad range of diplomatic,
economic, and cultural exchanges between nations.
How did politicians communicate their ideas before the advent of mass
communication techniques such as the television or radio?
What was the “Front Porch Campaign” and how was it used as a campaign
strategy?
IX. MISCOMMUNICATION
This area focuses on the consequences of failing to communicate effectively.
This could include delays in communication, failure to understand language
and culture.
The failure to communicate has affected individuals and nationas and
has had local and global consequences.
How did the Zimmerman Telegram impact on World War I?
X. COMMUNICATIONS ACROSS
CULTURES AND TIME
This field focuses on the reciprocal relationships of cultural encounters.
This may include the immigration, migration, assimilation, or oppression
of cultural groups. Topics may also explore means of understanding
cultures through archeology and anthropology.
How has communication affected immigration?
Example: The Irish
The portrayal of the Irish community and Irish issues and activities
in the poplular press
The role of Irish-American newspapers in promoting Irish and Irish-American
issues
The role of Irish and Irish-American authors in promoting Irish causes
The effect of anti-Irish propaganda in the news media
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