Modernist Success in a Postmodern Failure: Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, the Avant-Garde and the Ascension of Late Capitalism, Art after 1945

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the events at the end of World War II. The thought produced in the face of a myriad of deaths is almost unfeasible sixty years after the fact, but the energy was integral to the changing social landscape. Because of the country's prominence in and fortitude after the war, the U.S. was left responsible for reshaping and rejuvenating the international landscape that was destroyed by the years of brutal fighting and vile contestation. The American establishment was granted a major opportunity to establish itself amongst the global leaders. Such a grand responsibility must account for the multiplicity of thought that arises in such a decisive moment. In order to align the Abstract Expressionist art movement with the intersection of the intense, multifaceted thought developed during the postwar period, the following will discuss the political, philosophical, economic, and art historical overlap that occurred in the mid to late 1940s in the hopes of illustrating the fertility yet lingering problems associated with the restructuring of the world with America at the helm. In this way, the duration of the Abstract Expressionist moment will be better understood for both its triumphs and downfalls.

Wolves in sheeps' clothing: Creationist manipulation of Kansas science standards

So the question that animates this paper is this: what happens when a state's education policy seeks to make popular social and religious values a central part of its education standards in direct confrontation with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? I will try to answer that question in three ways. First, I will examine the tactics used in the manipulation of curricula to reflect social and religious values, with special focus on the Kansas case. Second, I will try to ascertain the determinants of success in these efforts; under what conditions are movements to impose creation science on public school curricula likely to succeed, and when to fail? Third, I will try to place these struggles over educational curricula, and between religion and science, in broader context, focusing on what they tell us about the nature of public policy making in the contemporary United States.