Lecklider, Aaron S. (Author)
Boston University
Schulman, Bruce J.
Edition Details: Advisor: Schulman, Bruce J.
Physical Details: 348 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation investigates the cultural politics of intelligence in the United States between 1919 and 1960. Represented alternately--and sometimes congruently--as a threat to democracy, a working class weapon, an imperialist tool, and a signifier of gender transgression, intelligence precipitated tremendous political controversy in these decades. The study begins with Einstein's appearance in American popular culture following the scientific confirmation of relativity, a development that signaled an opportunity for ordinary Americans to access the cultural capital necessary for negotiating the modern world. The dissertation concludes with the origination of the egghead in the 1950s, a caricature of intellectuals that embodied elitist and un-American ideals in the guise of liberalism. The emergence of representations that envisaged intelligent citizens as dangerously elite and subverting gender norms shifted the language of populism away from discussions of class and power and towards a suspicion of rogue intellect--while also enjoining Americans to conform to conservative models of identity. Yet in spite of these imperatives, marginalized Americans continued to deploy counter-representations of intelligence that supplemented and shaped their demands for equality. Although twentieth-century Americans conceived many pivotal historical actors-- scientists and radicals, Brain Trusters and eggheads--as "too smart," many others appeared equally dangerous--or advantageous--because they were just smart enough. This project employs an interdisciplinary method to argue that debates over the hyper-intelligent were part of a broader cultural dialogue about the intelligence of average Americans. During the first half of the twentieth century, ordinary intelligence was represented as useful for expanding the political tools of the working class, promoting democracy, and asserting the global hegemony of American culture. By interpreting cultural artifacts such as Tin Pan Alley songs, WPA posters, Cold War science fiction, popular magazine articles, World War II government photographs, and workers education pamphlets, this thesis contends that the contest over intelligence in American culture has comprised a battle over who defines intelligence and who benefits from it rather than a mere contest over who has the most brains. This dissertation challenges scholarship that limits intelligence to the study of intellectuals and uncovers the political stakes in twentieth-century representations.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/04 (2007). Pub. no. AAT 3259846.
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