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1950s
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What is 1950s?

The 1950s represent a pivotal decade in modern history, drawing sustained attention across disciplines including American history, cultural studies, sociology, and political science. The period sits at the intersection of postwar optimism, Cold War anxiety, and deep social contradiction, making it a rich subject for academic inquiry. Its tensions — between conformity and rebellion, prosperity and inequality, tradition and change — give students a framework for examining how societies construct identity, distribute power, and imagine the future. Works like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and texts engaging social institutions provide theoretical grounding for understanding how community life in this era shaped patterns that persist today.

The papers archived on this topic approach the 1950s from a wide range of angles. Some examine gender discrimination in the workforce, analyzing how postwar ideologies confined and constrained social roles. Others use cultural texts — such as the semiotics of American popular music or auteur filmmaking — to read the decade's values and anxieties through creative production. Literary analysis appears in engagements with works like Albert Memmi's The Pillar of Salt, while sociological and policy-oriented papers trace shifts in institutions like marriage, community, and the legal system through case studies and comparative frameworks.

A strong essay on the 1950s requires a focused, arguable thesis rather than a broad survey of the decade. Evidence drawn from primary sources, period texts, or well-grounded theoretical frameworks carries the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating the era as uniformly prosperous or stable — effective essays acknowledge the decade's internal contradictions and connect historical patterns to present-day consequences.

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Paper Doctorate

Geoffrey Canada's memoir of violence and survival in Harlem

The book, Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, is a memoir told by the American activist Geoffrey Canada who gives his own personal account of what is was like to grow up on the streets of Harlem in the 1950s or 1960s. His account details his perspective of what it was like growing up in this environment where parents, peers, and sometimes even teachers preached the value of being tough. These kids were taught that the ideal response to violence is with more violence. Kids in this neighborhood were taught that they had to be strong and “take it like a man” if they were even confronted on any occasion. This culture of violence can be studied from many different perspectives.

Paper Undergraduate

Lincoln Electric's management philosophy and international expansion challenges

If the employees’ in a different establishment have a certain willingness to learn embodied in the organizational culture, then it is possible to alter the culture. However, these aspects of the organizations culture are commonly overlooked. The ability of employees is somewhat easier to control than organizational culture as employees can be replaced or trained if they do not possess the needed skills. However, even with a highly trained group, organizational culture can often take on develop independently of management’s efforts. Therefore, especially in foreign expansions, the culture is one of the most important things to consider before operating international. If the employees receptive to learning new practices then the expansion may be successful. However, if there is a mature culture that doesn’t mesh with the parent company then the chances of a successful merger are far less likely.

Paper Doctorate

Psycho and the 1950s discourse of sexual deviance and gender confusion

The purpose of this five page paper is to analyze Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho in relation to the style, history, movement, and genre using FILM TERMINOLOGY and conventions of standard English. The essay uses a theme in the movie and explain how the director portrays that theme, using these elements: Mise en scène, Lighting, cinematography, Genre, Composition, Point of View, Suspense, Setting (Geographical, Historical, Social Milieu) and Atmosphere (Mood) to support ideas…

Paper Undergraduate

Rhetorical analysis of economic explanations for American obesity

Americans are getting fatter--but the reasons for this trend remain opaque to scientists. This essay does not come to a final conclusion about why obesity rates in the United States have been climbing so high: rather it examines three recent articles on the subject and examines how the authors come to complementary, but slightly different conclusions as to why this is the case.

Paper Doctorate

Jazz musicians and drug use in the 1960s Playboy panel

Many people think of rock and roll or rap music when they think of music and drug culture. However, during the 1960s there was a strong correlation between jazz music and drugs. That is not to say that there were no drugs used by jazz musicians before that time, but only that it became much more prevalent in the '60s. Today, there are still drug problems throughout the jazz music community.

Essay Doctorate

Young Ruby Bridges and school desegregation in New Orleans

Young Civil Rights Advocates at the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum

Paper High School

Human consciousness and artificial intelligence: replicating the mind's unique abilities

the systems that produce consciousness in humans is extraordinarily complex, these systems are still guided by natural processes and our understanding of these processes are likely to grow at an exponential rate. To argue that these systems are somehow "special" and "unique" is an argument out of ignorance. Before we understood how the planetary systems worked, we thought we were "special". Before we understood how evolution through the process of natural selection worked, we thought we were "special". Now that we stubble upon a new realm of ignorance, we claim that we are "special" once again. Hunt argued that we are inherently intellectually curious, restless, and maybe even playful. Could it not be the case that we are also inherently biased and should think twice about arguing that we are somehow special in the face of ignorance?

Essay Doctorate

Eric Gill and Adrian Frutiger: Pioneering typographers in graphic design

Gill began his career in Ditchling, Sussex where he used to live with his wife by producing sculptures. Among his successful works, the first public success was "Mother and Child" which was produced in 1912. During his early career, Gill was influenced by the sculptures he saw in Indian temples. This profound fascination led him to plan an imitation large-scale construction of Jain sculptures, as shown in the picture below, with the help of his friend and collaborator Jacob Epstein (Arrowsmith, 2010)

Essay Doctorate

Allan Shivers and the transformation of Texas politics

This five page paper is about a book called Yellow Dogs and Republicans. The author, Ricky Dobbs, views Allan Shivers as a transitional figure in the 1950s who paved the way for two-party politics in Texas when he (the governor) rejected the political ideology of the national Democratic Party in favor of Eisenhower and the Republican Party. This essay explains how the author goes about proving this argument by answering the following questions. What historical circumstances during the 1930s and 1940s set the stage for ideological splits within the Democratic Party? What in Allan Shivers's family background predisposed him ideologically to lead the conservative wing of the Democratic Party in Texas What ideological stands did he take as lieutenant governor that displayed his conservative tendencies? During his terms as governor, what positions did he take against the national Democratic Party and the loyalists in Texas who supported the national Democrats? Why did he "defect" to Eisenhower during the presidential races of 1952 and 1956 and what was the effect that his defection had on the Democratic Party in Texas? How did Shivers's political ideology and Shivercratsthat of the "" reflect Southern conservatism - the kind that clashed with the ideology of the national Democratic Party? If Shivers made Republicanism respectable in the Democratic South during the 1950's, how does the ideology of the Republican Party in Texas today resemble the conservative Democratic Party philosophy that Shivers espoused? How effective was Dobbs in showing that Shivers did in fact prepare the way for two-party politics in Texas?

Research Paper Doctorate

Women's activism and reform movements in nineteenth-century Texas

Prior to the Civil Rights Movement and the legalization of the 19th Amendment during the 1950s-1960s, the women sector have been an active proponent for the liberalization and equality of their rights with that of male…

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