Souped-Up Style

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Spring 2008

:: research survey ::

Souped-Up Style

You never know what the day's mail might bring.

For Carma Gorman, associate professor of art history and head of the academic area of the School of Art and Design, it was notification that the Organization of American Historians named her essay from American Quarterly one of the 10 best American history essays of the year.

The book, The Best American History Essays 2008, includes history articles published between the summers of 2006 and 2007 and provides an overview of the top work and important trends in the study of American history.

Gorman's essay—“Educating the Eye: Body Mechanics and Streamlining in the United States, 1925-1950"—seeks to explain why, after 1925, the products of "formerly artless industries," such as eyeglasses, typewriters, and automobiles, shifted from purely utilitarian to more streamlined and attractive models.

Gorman argues that consumers were not as passive in this process as most historical explanations suggest. She points to then-new trends in education, which, while they did not specifically address the appearance of utilitarian objects, emphasized "the personal and social importance of good form" and taught students to know it when they saw it.

One of these educational trends was, of all things, posture-training in gym class. Gorman points out that "body mechanics," a new component of the physical education curriculum beginning in the mid-1920s, trained students to appreciate a more streamlined form. She argues that middle- and upper-middle-class consumers were "primed by their schooling to expect bodies and products to conform to similar standards of beauty and efficiency."

—by Andrea Hahn