Sightseeing in the School: Visual Technology and Virtual Experience in American Education, 1900-1929

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Communication History Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This paper argues that the influx of visual media technologies into schools between 1900-1929 was facilitated by an emergent techno-utopian rhetoric in American culture that placed new social value on the acquisition of virtual and worldly experience. Against a backdrop of rising immigration, global visual culture, and American intervention in foreign affairs, the burgeoning educational technology industry—including manufacturers of stereographs, slides, and magazines—made inroads into schools by endowing technology with the capacity to “bring the world into the classroom” and serve as an economical substitute for travel. Aligning themselves with the rhetoric of progressive reformers, media manufacturers highlighted their products as tools for teaching “world citizenship,” an ambiguous ideal that emphasized both the promotion of intercultural tolerance and the performance of American nationalism and exceptionalism. This paper thus provides a critical historical touchpoint for contemporary discussions about the importance of global and mediated learning in American education.

Author

• Katie Day Good, Miami U