Jefferson LECTURE SERIES

Visual Democracy: Dorothea Lange and the Political Culture of the New Deal

Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, New York University

August 16, 2004

Dorothea Lange was the country's most influential documentary photographer in the period 1930-1950. She worked for several state and federal government agencies documenting the social issues of this period: the Great Depression, FDR and his New Deal's war against the depression crisis, California's World War II defense industries, the Japanese internment, and the 1945 inaugural meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. Professor Linda Gordon lectures on Lange's vision of American democracy, and she suggests how visual images helped shape our political ethics.

About Linda Gordon

A nationally acclaimed professor of history, Linda Gordon has specialized in exploring the historical roots of contemporary social policy debates, particularly as they concern gender and family issues. Considered one of the most important American history scholars, she has been invited to deliver numerous lectures at universities and professional organizations around the country. Gordon has also won a variety of awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983 and the prestigious Wilbur Lucius Cross medal from Yale University's Graduate School. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. Gordon received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 1970. Before joining NYU in 1999, she taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for seventeen years and the University of Massachusetts, Boston for sixteen years. A prolific author, Gordon has written many books, from her first- Woman's Body, Woman's Right: The History of Birth Control in America (1976; new editions, 1990 and 2002), generally considered to be the definitive history --to her most recent, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (1999), winner of the Bancroft prize for best book in U.S. history and the Beveridge prize for best book on the history of the Americas. Gordon also served on the Departments of Justice/Health and Human Services Council on Violence Against Women for the Clinton administration. She is currently writing a book about Dorothea Lange and strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal vision of American democracy.