Introduction | Social Sciences of the Jazz Age

The Roaring Twenties existed in the context of two massive events, sandwiched in between World War I and the Great Depression, marking itself as a spectacle in the nation’s history and imagination.

Art and Pop Culture

  • Developments in literature, music, and film help us identify the Roaring Twenties as an era of prosperity and vitality

  • Hollywood and Jazz began to present a glamorous and aspirational image of the United States and assured influence of American Pop Culture

  • Babe Ruth, slugger for the New York Yankees, epitomized the dawn of the celebrity athlete in the 1920s, and remains synonymous with greatness in sports

History and Culture

  • The 1920s were a historical hinge—separated an image of America with horse drawn carriages and small family farms from a modern world of automobiles, flappers, and sprawling cities

  • Period of innovation—revolutionary shifts in mass communication, mass consumption, and mass entertainment

  • Collective American obsession with speed and efficiency, anxiety concerning technology supplanting human connection, and consumer-driven materialism can all be traced to the 1920s

  • Flowering of cultural expression by African-Americans and Jewish-American creatives

    • Grew alongside resurgence of Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigration nativism, and pseudoscientific racism of the American Eugenics Movement

  • Growing secularism, religious diversity, and urbanization

    • Took place alongside burgeoning Christian fundamentalism, soft and hard bigotry, and the mission to protect “traditional” American values

  • Newfound freedom for women

    • The right to Vote

    • Butting against stubborn gender norms and social mores

  • The amendment barring the sale of alcohol marked the 1920s as the decade of Prohibition

  • Extreme wealth for a few and growing standards of living for most

  • The United States cements itself as a world power

    • US Government sought comfort in traditional isolationism

  • Premature end of poverty

  • International push to outlaw war