Rennes - Licence 3

Cours Magistral de Sandrine ORIEZ

Anglais
L3 Psychologie
Groupe 2
Lundi 10h45-12h45

Civilisation des États-Unis - The 1920s – Licence 3 –

The 1920s, often called the Roaring Twenties, was a decade of change and tension. It was an age of mass production and mass consumption, which meant progress but also social anxiety. The rapid industrialization and urbanization of the country led to economic prosperity but the decade ended with a major economic crash in 1929. Social progress was genuine but reactionary forces fueled the Prohibition as well as the nativist movement and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to that, the fear that Communism and Socialism might spread in the United States led the government to take drastic measures, curtailing freedom of expression. The 1920s was a contrasted era, a decade of reform and reaction.

Frederick Lewis ALLEN, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, New York, HarperCollins, Perennial Classics, [1931] 2000.
André KASPI, Les États-Unis au temps de la prospérité, 1919-1929, Paris, Hachette, 1994.
Sylvia LE BARS, The American Twenties, PUR, 1993