LATER LIFE LEARNING
SERIES E: New York, Paris, Berlin: The Roaring Twenties
Tuesdays, 10.00 – Noon, September 20 to November 22, 2016
Bloor Cinema
Lecturer: Peter Harris. Peter is former Assistant Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science, U of T.
He is the Speaker Coordinator for LLL. Some LLL members will know Peter from his lecture
series last year on America in the Postwar Era.
When WWI ended, these three cities experienced astonishing cultural, political and
social revolutions, often closely connected. This series explores some of the prominent
areas where these revolutions took place, including art, design, politics, architecture,
cinema - even fashion.
Recommended Reading: Fracture: life & culture in the West, 1918-1938, by Phillip
Blom (McClelland & Stewart, 2015).
Week 1 (Sept. 20): New York City
The Flapper, icon of the Roaring Twenties: what produced this daring new image of
women? We look at two shocking Amendments in 1920: Women’s Suffrage, and
Prohibition. The Harlem Renaissance. The vexing question of Immigration.
Week 2 (Sept. 27): Berlin in the 1920s
Berlin was in chaos when WWI ended: the Kaiser abdicated; Putsches from Left and
Right on the political spectrum failed; spectacular inflation set in. The USA stepped in to
salvage the shaky young Weimar Republic. Art of the times reflected the chaos of the
times: Expressionism, dada, satire – especially of the emerging Nazi threat.
Week 3 (Oct. 4): The rise of jazz in 1920s New York. Guest Lecturer: Mike Daley.
As the centre of the recording business, New York brought the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band to wider attention, sparking the jazz craze. Bandleader Paul Whiteman
commissioned George Gershwin to compose "Rhapsody In Blue" for his Experiment In
Modern Music concert in 1924. In Harlem, the Cotton Club provided a platform for the
innovative music of Duke Ellington.
Week 4 (Oct. 11): Tin Pan Alley & Broadway. Guest Lecturer: Linda Beck
Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter - all these songwriters and
many more built their careers as Broadway’s theatre district developed during the 1920s.
Most started out on Tin Pan Alley, the song publishers’ marketplace. And all of them
contributed to building the unique identity of American musical theatre.
Innis College  University of Toronto  2 Sussex Avenue  Toronto, ON  M5S 1J5 
Website: http://sites.utoronto.ca/innis/lll/
Email: [email protected]
LATER LIFE LEARNING
Week 5 (Oct. 18) “How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm…”: F. Scott
Fitzgerald et al. Guest Lecturer: Dennis Duffy
The rich cultural and social life of Paris proved irresistibly alluring to many Americans
after WWI –particularly African-Americans, like Josephine Baker. Many American artists
and writers settled there, or published important books there – W C Williams, Pound,
Hemingway, Faulkner, Henry Miller, and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Week 6 (Oct. 25) Art, Design, Architecture (Part 1)
The thriving art scene in Paris produced dada, Surrealism and, above all, Art Deco,
which rapidly spread internationally. In New York it became a favourite style in the
burgeoning development of skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire
State Building. Harlem Renaissance painters make their mark.
Week 7 (Nov. 1) Art, Design, Architecture (Part 2)
The Bauhaus school near Berlin pioneered Modernist design and architecture, under
Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe: everything from typeface to doorknobs to
skyscrapers was re-imagined. Berlin also developed innovative urban social housing, led
by the architect Bruno Taut.
Week 8 (Nov. 8) New/better technologies. New science vs. old beliefs.
New and rapidly improving technologies revolutionized society: electricity, radio, gramophone
records, cinema, airplanes – and especially the automobile. A barrage of new scientific
theories in the 1920s challenged old ideas: relativity; quantum mechanics; the uncertainty
principle; atomic fission; the expanding universe; continental drift. Creationism locks horns
with Evolution. The pseudoscience of Eugenics.
Week 9 (Nov. 15) Cinema & Theatre
Berlin’s UFA studios became the European centre of cinematic innovation. A steady stream
of German cinema talent was lured to the USA, bringing profound changes to Hollywood.
In 1928 Bert Brecht and Kurt Weill staged The Three Penny Opera, featuring sharp political
comment framed in a radical new theatrical form.
Week 10 (Nov. 22) The Roaring Stops.
In New York the Stock Market Crash of October 1929 brought the decade-long party to an
abrupt halt – not just in the USA but also in Germany, where the resultant depression
ushered in the 3rd Reich, leading to a massive exodus of Weimar artistic & intellectual elite.
In France the shock was less intense, but the heady life of “les années folles” gradually died
out by the mid-thirties.
Innis College  University of Toronto  2 Sussex Avenue  Toronto, ON  M5S 1J5 
Website: http://sites.utoronto.ca/innis/lll/
Email: [email protected]