Introduction

Industrialisation fundamentally changed not only the ways in which people in Europe and the United States worked and lived, but also the ways in which they shopped. The advent of mass production in the early twentieth-century extended these changes: with more manufactured products available to more people than ever before, new methods needed to be developed to persuade consumers what to buy and new markets needed to be identified. At the same time, technological developments and changes in working patterns led to the emergence of new forms of consumption: mass entertainment (such as cinema) and mass spectator sport. This seminar will focus on the development of mass consumer culture in twentieth-century Europe and the United States, with a particular emphasis on advertising, gender and mass media.

Seminar Questions:

1. How did the advent of mass production impact on the consumer experience?
2. What role did advertising play in the formation of mass consumer society?
3. In what ways was the emergence of mass consumer society linked to changes in gender roles following the First World War?
4. What place does mass entertainment have in our understanding of the history of consumption?

Readings:

• Julia Sneeringer, 'The Shopper as Voter: Women, Advertising and Politics in Post-Inflation Germany', German Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2004), pp. 476-501
• David George Surdam, Century of the Leisured Masses: Entertainment and the Transformation of Twentieth-century America (New York, 2015), Chapter 11

Primary Sources:

• Joseph Roth, 'The Very Large Department Store'Link opens in a new window and 'The Berlin Pleasure Industry'Link opens in a new window in What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-33 (Granta, 2022)
• 'Fashion' in Franz Hessel, Walking Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital (Scribe, 2018)Link opens in a new window
• The Advertising ArchivesLink opens in a new window

Further Reading:

• Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (London, 1991)
• Rachel Alexander, Imagining Gender, Nation and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s (Cambridge, 2022)
• Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in Walter Benjamin (J. A. Underwood, trans.), One-Way Street and Other Writings (London, 2008)
• Rachel Bowlby, Carried Away: A History of Modern Shopping (New York, 2002)
• Stephen Constantine, Buy and Build: the Advertising Posters of the Empire Marketing Board (HMSO, 1986)
• Michael Cowan, 'Taking it to the street: screening the advertising film in the Weimar Republic', Screen, Volume 54, Issue 4, Winter 2013, Pages 463-479Link opens in a new window
• Michael Cowan. "Absolute Advertising: Walter Ruttmann and the Weimar Advertising Film", Cinema Journal, vol. 52, no. 4, 2013, pp. 49-73Link opens in a new window.
• Richard Hornsey, '"The Modern Way to Loveliness": Middle-Class Cosmetics and Chain-Store Beauty Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain', Women's History Review. Vol. 28, No. 1 (2019), pp. 111-138
• Richard Hornsey, '"The Penguins are Coming": Brand Mascots and Utopian Mass Consumption in Interwar Britain', Journal of British Studies, Vol. 57, No. 4 (2018), pp. 812-839
• Jochen Hung, 'Mass Culture' in Nadine Rossol and Benjamin Zeimann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic (Oxford, 2022)
• Siegfried Kracauer. 'Popular Advertisements' [1949] in Siegfried Kracauer, Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication (John Abromeit, Jaeho Kang and Graeme Gilloch eds.) (New York, 2022)
• Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses (London, 1998)
• Paul Lerner, The consuming temple: Jews, department stores, and the consumer revolution in Germany, 1880-1940 (Ithaca, 2015)
• Erica D. Rappaport, '"A New Era of Shopping": the Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909-1914' in L. Charney and V. R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkley, 1995)
• Stefan Schwarzkopf, 'Turning Trade Marks into Brands: how Advertising Agencies Created Brands in the Global Market Place, 1900-1930', CGR Working Paper 18 (August 2008)Link opens in a new window
• Pamela E. Swett, Selling under the Swastika: Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany (Stanford Uni Press, 2014)Link opens in a new window
• Peter B. Thomson, 'This is not a pipe: Cigarette advertising and Masculinity in Weimar Berlin', Media History, 26:4 (2020), 437-456Link opens in a new window
• Janet Ward Lungstum, 'The Display Window: Designs and Desires of Weimar Consumerism', New German Critique, No. 76 (1999), pp. 115-160
• J. Winship, 'Culture of Restraint: The British Chain Store, 1920-1939' in Peter Jackson, Michelle Lowe, Daniel Miller and Frank Mort (eds.), Commercial cultures : economies, practices, spaces (Oxford, 2000)