Discussion of the political, economic, academic, artistic, religious, psychological and scientific experience of the 1920s, and the destabilization of 19th century certitudes.

1. "Age of Anxiety"
Instability and Destabilization

2. Politics
• Post-war:
– New Nations
– Russian Revolution
• Age of Mass Democracy
– Women's Rights
– National Liberation Movements
• Ireland
• India
• Korea
• Chaos: China

3. Economics
• Boom and Bust cycles
– US
• 1920-21 recession, Commodity Price collapse, Stock
Market bubble
– Japan
• Rice Riots, Kanto Earthquake, Bank Failures, Great
Depression
– Europe
• Reparations and Hyperinflation
• Competition from US, NIEs

4. Society and Social Science
• Social Darwinism
• Social Science:
– Crowd Psychology
– Anthropology
– Sociology
• Psychology: Sigmund Freud
– Ego, Id, Superego
– Unconscious
– Sexuality

5. Religion and Art
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Deconstruction
• Evolution v. Revelation
• Textual Criticism
• Religious Revival
– Papal Infallibility
– Dispensationalism: Revelations
– Literalism
– Urban Missionaries
• Photography, Impressionism, Modernism and
Surrealism

6. Physics
• Science as Metaphor:
– Ernst Mach & Henri Poincare
• Wilhelm Roentgen: X-Rays
• Becquerel and Curie: Uranium and Radium
• JJ Thomson: Electrons
• Ernst Rutherford: Atomic Disintegration
• Max Planck: Quanta
• Albert Einstein: E=mc2, Relativity
• Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty

7. • Background: Giacomo Balla, "Plastic
Construction of Noise and Speed" 1914-1968,
Hirschorn Museum
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/