Web Explorations

In each section, the internet links will take you to Websites where you can find information and resources that will help you with the exploration questions.

1

Martin Luther King and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

This site serves a permanent exhibit, The Gandhi Room, at the King Center of the Martin Luther King National Historical Site in Atlanta, Georgia. The room serves to draw attention to Martin Luther King’s interest in Gandhi’s life and work, which is also represented by a statue of Gandhi at the King Center.

http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/gandhi_room.htm

Questions for further exploration:

View the Gandhi Room at the King Center. Then read the text discussing King and Gandhi. King drew on Gandhi’s ability to give strength to a beaten-down oppressed people through non-violent civil disobedience. Both, however, were influenced by a common source. What was it? Can you think of another common source for the ideas of both Gandhi and King?

2

Malcolm X

This site offers the text of a letter written by Malcolm X while on pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon his return from Mecca, Malcolm X increasingly sought the liberation of all men from hatred as well as oppression, a step towards the philosophy of Martin Luther King and away from the more militant wing of the movement for Black liberation. Shortly thereafter, he, like King, was assassinated.

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/malcomx.html

Questions for further exploration:

Malcolm X was deeply moved by the warm reception he received in Mecca. He was, however, more impressed with what he saw there. How did his experience there lead him to new ways of seeing the place of Islam and of true religion in healing the world’s ills? How did this experience open his heart to White Americans and ask Black Americans to change what was in their hearts as well?

3

What is Fascism?

This site offers a copy of Benito Mussolini’s classic statement of Fascism written in 1932.

Http:www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html

Questions for further exploration:

According to Mussolini, what is Fascism? What role does race or the idea of a superior people play in it?

4

Nazi and Soviet Art

This site offers an exhibit that explores the nature of the totalitarian state and the relationship between politics and art as addressed through close analysis of individual Nazi and Soviet artists and their work.

http://www.primenet.com/~byoder/artofnz.htm

Questions for further exploration:

What values through what symbols does the work of Arno Breker, Adolf Wissel and Valdamir Mayakofsky suggest? Choose one work by each artist and illustrate your answer by references to the content of the images you have chosen.

5

The Resident Youth Centers of the New Deal’s National Youth Administration

This site offers a first-person account of the National Youth Administration’s Resident Youth Centers, which embodied the New Deal ideal that, with the government’s help, any social evil could be remedied. These centers were built with the presumption that even criminal youths could be rehabilitated by a caring federal government.

http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/s378.htm

Questions for further exploration:

What were the assumptions of the Resident Youth Centers (RYC)? Did they achieve their goals? Why and under what conditions were the centers closed? How can the RYC’s approach to teenage misbehavior be compared with the treatment of youthful offenders today? What is the popular view of such programs as the RYC today?

6

Skyscraper Museum

This site offers a virtual visit to a museum devoted to skyscraper architecture.

http:www.skyscraper.org/bes/bes_00.htm

Questions for further exploration:

Read the texts offered at this site and visit its exhibition rooms. From the wording of the descriptions and the images provided, discuss how the skyscraper form is a type of cultural icon, a symbol of the twentieth century, with its faith in science and technology. Does this site explore the disadvantages as well as the advantages of the skyscraper? Are skyscrapers still described as triumphant works of culture today? Cities around the world compete to build the highest structures. Why do you think that they do so?


© 2000-2001 by Addison Wesley Longman
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