Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Here in these halls of science
Here in these towers of art
We have built the true defiance
And girded the nation's heart.
Not with enduring stone
Or muscles that twist with pain
But with fires that burn
A vision in the brain
A tri-colored flag was cut
For us with subtle sheers.
No doors we open can shut
In a hundred thousand years.

We witness a retreat from the romantic ideal of public life. The Depression and impending war has shaken American notions of community to their core. Arcadian promises of open vistas and peaceful concord between self and society are bypassed as corporate and government planners focus the nation's attention to the "world of tomorrow." Doubts about our ability to construct a better world are silenced; they must be, if the nation can face the adversaries of self-doubt within and totalitarianism abroad.

Readings: Kihlstedt, Gelernter, Exposition Publications, and General Motors

Suggested Reading: Wood's New York's 1939-1940 World's Fair.

Viewing: The World of Tomorrow

Notes: Gelernter - Fair Theme Center and Futurama

Supplemental Website: Wood's Images from the 1939-40 New York World's Fair

Supplemental Website: Images from the 1933-34 Century of Progress Fair

Off-campus webpages

The American Studies Group at UVA, Iconography of Hope: The 1939-40 New York World's Fair

National Public Radio Morning Edition, Our Vision of the Future including an interview with Dr. Andrew Wood

St. Petersburg Times, Tomorrowland - "The future, like just about everything else, is owned and operated by the world's corporate and government power brokers. It's a future filled with products -- a better this, a smaller that, a quicker whatever."

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