Teaching Guide: A Systematic/Interactive Approach to Teaching Content and Critical Thinking Skills with Cartoons

A. Ground Rules: The very first tool that an analyst needs is a solid grounding in the historical context of the topic or period under study.
     1. The importance of background knowledge and context. Here, you may do a number of things, depending on student needs. I usually assign the reading of a short monograph or relevant portions of a text that provide some depth and breadth of political coverage of the period or topic for which you will use political cartoons. In my GAPE courses, for example, I have used Robert Cherney's American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900, (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1997), and Lewis Gould, America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914, (New York: Longman, 2001), for overviews of the national political scene. For New York politics (the urban focus of most political cartoons during the GAPE), one of the best sources is Oliver Allen, The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall, (Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley Publishing, 1993). Finally, Roger Fisher's wonderful Them Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Cartoon Art (see select bibliography in appendix B) is a valuable companion for any course in United States history that utilizes cartoons as primary sources, no matter the time frame.
     2. Keep key secondary sources on reserve. Both general and specific works on the period or periods that the class is studying should be available to students so that they may research the contextual background, precipitating events, arguments and the evidence (details) in the cartoons they are trying to understand and analyze. For my seminars on the GAPE, I have placed as many as fifty books on reserve that I believe would give the students a ready-made library of secondary sources to consult.
     3. Include in the first class reading assignments one or more scholarly articles that use political cartoons as their focal point. These readings will give students concrete examples of cartoon analyses by professional scholars and demonstrate various means of analyzing several cartoons on the same topic—e.g., the presidential campaign of 1884 or of 1968. (See the Select Bibliography for several such articles).
     4. Provide students with ways to easily acquire or make copies of cartoons. This may include teacher-supplied photocopies of select cartoons, placing photo transparencies on reserve, or transferring color slides or on-line cartoons to a CD for each student. A classroom that has internet connections makes it possible to simply download and project a preselected cartoon. For courses on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, try to ensure that the class has access to library microfilm copies of Puck (Independent/Mugwump weekly), Harper's (a Republican/Mugwump weekly) or Judge (an avowed Republican weekly). Students will then be able to better understand the context of each cartoon, and read accompanying articles and editorials that may comment on them. The most likely repositories for these microfilms as well as for hard copies or microfilms of more recent newspapers and news magazines are the major state, college, and university libraries.
     5. Provide, as well, a select group of informative and reliable websites. These are additional downloadable bases of cartoons and information about the period under study. See the Select Bibliography for examples. Most sites do not stipulate against downloading and using their images for class use, but appropriate attribution, of course, is a necessary prerequisite.

B. An Incremental Approach to Analysis
     1. This approach necessitates one or more in-class workshops. Before and between sessions, students prepare for subsequent steps in the process. In class, a single color cartoon, projected either as a transparency on an overhead projector or from a PC works best to keep the class engaged and working in unison. Before and during the session or sessions, emphasize and reiterate at various points the similarities and the differences between cartoon and print-document analysis. Remind students that each cartoon, like every document, has a main point or thesis and includes evidence which may or may not be reliable, accurate, persuasive, or corroborated. Note too that printed sources may or may not have more emotional and ethical than intellectual appeal, while cartoons nearly always appeal to the emotions first, ethics second, and intellect last if at all. Finally, students should be aware that authors of printed sources might be able to hide their biases or at least make them more difficult to pinpoint, while cartoonists virtually always are expressing biased opinions, albeit often with great persuasiveness.
     2. The analogy of an arch and pillars can help show the most important similarities between a printed document and a cartoon At the top of the blackboard or overhead, draw a large arch to represent the thesis of a document. Below the arch, space a number of "pillars" to stress that the durability of a thesis depends on the nature and quality of its evidence (which, in a cartoon, generally means its caption and details). At the bottom of each pillar, construct a simple base to signify that the reliability of every major piece of evidence depends on the strength of its "source or sources." In a cartoon, a source is the information that the artist draws on to portray an individual or object. Such information may be accurate or may deviate to varying degrees from what was known or accepted at the time. As is true with many printed documents, determining the reliability or accuracy of a source requires scrutiny and research. The Arch and Pillars analogy can give students a way to visualize what to look for in a document or text and encourages them to keep this architectural metaphor in mind as they begin to analyze a cartoon or series of cartoons on the same topic.
     3. The sample cartoon, "The Tammany Fagin and His Pupils" (see page 431), by Puck magazine artist, Frederick Opper, is relatively straightforward (as GAPE cartoons go), yet provides enough detail and nuance to afford teachers and students the opportunity to apply in a clear and understandable manner all of the analytical steps outlined below. Space constraints make it necessary to offer only snippets of actual analysis to demonstrate how the incremental steps apply to a real cartoon. Those snippets are in italics under each step. Since virtually all of the analytical steps require a degree of advance preparation on the part of teacher and student, the exercise should ideally take place in segments of two or more class sessions. Between sessions, ask students to prepare one or more of the steps for the next class. Such a procedure produces the richest results. How far an actual analysis goes and how sophisticated it is depend on the teacher, students' abilities, and the time available.
     Whatever the approach, an introduction to cartoon analysis should skim through all of the steps before going through them more deliberately. The "how to" part of analyzing cartoons is of course central to their successful use as a learning tool, so it is important to do whatever will make the students comfortable with the process. Once they can "take possession" of it, their enthusiasm and sense of ownership will usually sustain them the rest of the way.

     a) Analytical Steps—from simple to complex: A good way to model the steps is to direct the whole class's attention to one cartoon; another way is to divide students into groups of three (see "Supplementary Exercise" under step 8) . In both settings, the teacher projects a cartoon as a transparency on an overhead, as a slide, or as a downloaded or CD image from a PC. Each student should also have a black and white photocopy of the cartoon for reference outside of class. It is very important not to take for granted students' understanding of any of the steps. A little selective spoon-feeding at the outset will go a long way toward increasing student confidence and enthusiasm. Here are the steps:

     i) Describe, without analysis, what seems to be going on in the cartoon. Here it is very helpful to alert students to the importance of reading editorials for the issue in which the cartoon appears. Editorials and sometimes articles, especially in GAPE magazines and papers, often give the student a good beginning explanation of the cartoonist's intent.

     Some select reading about NYC's infamous political machine, Tammany Hall, will give students the background necessary to begin deciphering this cartoon, one of literally hundreds of Puck magazine's attempts to expose, discredit, and eliminate the machine. To begin the process of understanding, students will simply describe what they see—a shadowy and run down room in which several public officials seem to be robbing an apparently helpless scarecrow-like citizen, the "NY Tax Payer," who hangs from what might be a meat hook. His hands, nailed to his body, make it impossible to fend off his muggers. To his left, a sign guarantees "graduates of this school" a salary that far exceeds the norm for that day. The man in the background, dressed and groomed to look like an Orthodox Jew, rubs his hands in satisfaction at what he sees. In his pocket, there is a bag of money marked, "Tammany Fund." On the ceiling, between him and the others, hangs a red (in the colored original) cloth; to its left, a large piece of plaster in the shape of a bell exposes the inner wall of the room. Finally, some of the students will quickly see the relationship between the cartoon and the caption, "The Tammany Fagin and His Pupils." Since the caption often contains a prime clue as to the message that the artist is trying to convey, the knowledge that the cartoon is a version of a scene from Dickens' Oliver Twist provides an insight that can be further explored in subsequent steps.

     ii) Identify the event or topic that generated or precipitated the cartoon. Here, again, remind students that their success in this step may be greater and quicker if they look for and read related editorials and articles in the magazine or newspaper where the cartoon appeared. It may also help to examine a few previous issues of the same publication in order to trace the coverage that led to the cartoon they are analyzing.

     To better understand the cartoon used here, for example, teachers should ask students to read the editorials in the February 6, 1884 issue of Puck. Here, or by examining some of the previous weeks' cartoons and editorials, they will discover whether their cartoon is simply part of the magazine's continuing crusade against corrupt Tammany Hall or if a particular action by the machine prompted the artist's work.

     iii) Identify the details or evidence in the cartoon.

     Here is where more challenging work begins. Students will need to look at appropriate secondary and primary sources to gather information on the identity of the figures in the cartoon. In GAPE cartoons, like those of the more recent past, artists repeatedly lampooned many public figures, making identification easy. In this instance, the most readily identifiable figure is Tammany boss "Honest" John Kelly. The others are individuals whose identities the editorials may or may not reveal. In the latter case, students will have to examine printed or on-line sites that include biographical details of NYC politicians.

     iv) Identify the message or thesis that the artist is trying to convey. Begin by developing a hypothesis of what the cartoonist seems to be asserting or suggesting.

     In the cartoon being analyzed the hypothesis (supposition or theory that will require more investigation) might be stated as follows: Under Tammany control, public service jobs in NYC offer opportunities for office holders to become rich at taxpayer expense.

     v) Identify the cultural referent (folklore, popular culture, mythology, the Bible or another work of literature, etc.) and explain how appropriate it is to the main point the artist is trying to make?

     The cultural reference, alluded to earlier, is a widely acclaimed work of mid-nineteenth century literature, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. Most Gilded Age readers, especially the middle and upper classes, would have been able to understand the reasons why the cartoonist chose such a setting to convey his message. Many, perhaps most of your students may have to dig a bit, first by doing a "google" search of the name "Fagin," and then moving on to a synopsis of the novel and its main characters. Once they have done this, they will better be able to evaluate how the cultural referent supports the artist's message, and why the artist selected it as a means of appealing to his readers.

     vi) Identify and Explain Symbols and Stereotypes: Teachers and students invariably find this part of cartoon analysis exciting but often offensive. Roger Fisher's Them Damn Pictures has incisive chapters that will help students understand the origin, meaning, and intent of many of the most popular symbols and stereotypes. Racial, ethnic, gender, and class bashing and satire was a widespread and popular facet of political cartoon art, especially but by no means exclusively, during the GAPE. Cartoonists unabashedly drew on popular perceptions, and most of their targets did not bother to fight back. Among their images were Irish men and women as simians or monkey-like, Italians as genetically dirty and criminal, independent women as manly, workers as radicals, and Jews as conniving and greedy. Various individuals, usually public figures, often appear with the attributes of animals such as the cunning wolf, meek and gentle lamb, fearsome bulldog, or the ferocious tiger.

     A few observations will suffice: the difference in size between John Kelly and his dwarfish office holders suggests the nature of his political stature. But the single most important and obvious stereotype is Kelly's portrayal as a greedy, conniving Orthodox Jew (he was a staunch Catholic who was able to rationalize his political life). The point here, of course, is why the artist chose this stereotype. How justified is it in light of the immigrant Jew that Dickens depicts in his novel of the 1830s London underclass? Equally important is what the figure signifies to the readers, how it reinforces the artist's message, and what its particular use indicates about the artist and his times. Among other symbols are the small bells, one inscribed with "The Press," hanging from the elbows of the "Tax Payer." Do they suggest, perhaps, that the artist believes that the press is not paying enough attention to the issue of political corruption, do they symbolize Puck as a voice crying in the wilderness, or is there another meaning? And what are the meanings of the bell-shaped crack in the wall and the rag (colored red in the original) hanging from the ceiling?

     vii) Turn the hypothesis into a working thesis.

     By now, students will have gathered enough information to be more specific about the message or thesis of the cartoon. One formulation: Tammany Hall, under the domination of John Kelly, is a school for crooks that corrupts public officials and uses them chiefly to perpetuate its power and profits rather than to advance the public welfare.

     viii) Identify bias, (political, social, religious, economic, class, race, gender) and evaluate the strength, historical accuracy, and popular acceptance of the thesis. By examining how historians, writing well after the event described in the cartoon, have interpreted the past, students will become more familiar with the particular bias or biases, not only of the particular historian, but also of those historical figures (i.e., the cartoonists and their subjects) who reflected and helped shape public opinion in the period under study.

     This step will require work in the secondary sources on reserve for students' use. Encourage them to look at more than one historian's take—in this case, on whether Tammany Hall merited the criticism leveled against it in the cartoon. Now is also the time to examine Puck, the magazine that published the cartoon, including its reputation, political orientation, information about its founder and editor, and its raison d'être.
     Next, ask students to compare the cartoonist's message with the coverage provided in other contemporary print media (e.g., The New York Times is the single best source because it has an index for most of its long run. Other contemporary sources, especially for cartoons of the period since the GAPE, could include any number of major news magazines and newspapers). By asking, "How does the cartoon's message stack up against other expressions of public opinion?" students can determine the popularity of the cartoon's point of view, and whether its biases (especially those of race, ethnicity, class, and gender) were peculiar or normative at the time.
     How, for instance, does the New York Times portray Tammany boss John Kelly and his lieutenants? The phrases "witting testimony" and "unwitting testimony" come into play here and shed valuable light on an important criteria that must be applied to any primary source. In other words, in addition to what the cartoon intentionally reveals about the topic of the cartoon, the cartoonist, and the newspaper or magazine that published the cartoons, it is important to ask what values and attitudes toward life the cartoon unintentionally alludes to or comments on in the course of making its main point. How does it reflect popular assumptions or perceptions of fashion, pastimes, class consciousness, or the infrastructure of urban life?
     The research possibilities are nearly endless at this point, and depend largely on your time and the students' abilities. Students may research, for example, the nature of the social class structure in the Gilded Age and the popular prejudices related to class, ethnicity or race (the Gilded Age used the two latter terms interchangeably). And discovering how much real power machine bosses exercised over their subordinates will illuminate another common characteristic of virtually all cartoons, no matter what the period—the importance of exaggeration and hyperbole to drive home the point.
     A supplementary exercise. What follows is an in-class exercise, which can take place during a modeling session, but only after students have done some preparatory homework. Its purpose is to help them learn together how to identify and begin to evaluate bias in cartoons. Like other aspects of the methodology, this one is most conducive to a small class setting, but may be abbreviated in larger classes or offered as an extra class hour:

     a) Break the class up into groups of three. Pass out to each group a color photocopy of a cartoon that one person in each of the group has already worked on in a homework assignment or presented orally to the class.
     b) Each group discusses the cartoon, formulates questions about possible biases, and suggests the types of sources, both contemporary and scholarly, that it will need to consult in order to learn more about the biases and prejudices of the period they are studying, and to determine how their cartoon reflects the outlook of the age.
     c) In the same or in a subsequent class, place a transparency of each group's cartoon on the overhead, ask the group or one representative from each to present its findings, and invite the rest of the class to add its suggestions and criticisms.

     ix) Reiterate to Students: Cartoons, as mirrors of the past, are very valuable tools for enhancing understanding, not only of what was going on at a particular period of time, but also (and ultimately more important) why events occurred and how popular attitudes, emotions, factions, values, and biases both reflected and helped influence the course of events. For more ideas on the importance of cartoons in the study of history, see "Political Cartoons as Historical Sources" in the Select Bibliography.
     x) In seminars where cartoons play prominent or exclusive roles as documents and texts, assigning oral reports (during which there is feedback and constructive criticism from the instructor and other members of the class), and brief, one to two page written analyses are effective means of orienting students to the process. They also give teachers an opportunity to provide some guidance, both oral and written, without being too labor intensive.

     It is especially important to take time in class to reiterate the parallels between cartoon analysis and the analysis of other types of primary sources, such as a printed document on the same topic. Each source will have been precipitated by some event, contain a thesis, and provide evidence that comes from various sources. Repeatedly drawing students' attention to such parallels (remind them of the "Arch and Pillars" analogy) keeps them focused on the cartoons as historical documents from an earlier era that require scrutiny and methodical analysis.

     xi) Rewrites: Time permitting, you may want to require or give students the choice of submitting a revision of one or more of the short weekly written or oral cartoon analyses on which you and/or the class have given them some initial feedback. To evaluate these assignments, I award a check, check plus, or check minus and incorporate those evaluations into the participation portion of their final grade (which in seminars is twenty to twenty-five percent). I reserve letter or number grades for their longer papers which, again ideally, should include a rough draft on which the teacher comments. A brief description of some possible longer papers follows.

Longer Papers

     1. First Paper (3–5 pages): Assign each student a cartoon with instructions to complete analytical steps one through four (see above). When using cartoons as one means of studying the attitudes and values of a particular period, the GAPE, the Great Depression, or the New Deal, it is important to assign or ask students to find cartoons that will follow a chronological order. Cartoons for the Second New Deal, for example, should not be indiscriminately mixed with those commenting on the First New Deal. For courses on the GAPE, a most complicated period for many students, chronology is particularly important to the learning process.
     2. More Advanced Paper (7–8 pages): Assign students two cartoons on the same topic and ask them to apply analytical steps one through eight (see above). Here, students will also have to show how the cartoons relate. This step should lead them to try to formulate an "over arching thesis" that takes into consideration the relationship between the thesis or message of each cartoon. Model this step in class before assigning it.
     3. Major Research Paper (13–15 pages or longer): This culminating exercise generally works best during the last four to five weeks of a sixteen-week term and includes some built in reading days (i.e. independent research—no formal class) and individual conference days. This format works very well in a dedicated seminar. For larger classes, expanded office hours are an effective although time intensive means of keeping students on track and ensuring steady progress.
     In this research paper assignment, students must analyze five to six challenging cartoons on the same topic. However, cartoons from the 1920s on tend to be simpler in form and much less nuanced in meaning than those of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In that case, more than five or six cartoons may be required in order to be sufficiently challenging and substantive. For classes on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, a twelve to fifteen-page paper can include cartoons on such topics as the Populist Party, the presidential campaign and election of 1888 or another presidential campaign and election, the Spanish-American War, or some narrower topic that might focus on some aspect of machine politics or political corruption. For papers on the GAPE, some students may want to do a comparative study with, say, Judge and Harper's Weekly. Such comparative studies should also be encouraged for topics in later historical periods and can yield rich insights that give students a chance to see how a particular partisan or even bi-partisan issue, event, ruling, or law can be examined and interpreted in more than one way.
     Other manageable topics may examine the treatment of women, children, capital and labor relations, or concentrate on a well-known individual such as William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, a "robber baron" like Jay Gould, or more recent public figures and presidents like Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, or Richard Nixon. For papers on the period since 1920, students should focus on topics that had sustained cartoon coverage (over a period of weeks or even months), and which might include any number of significant issues, ideas, people or events up to and including the war on terrorism. Here, various important newspapers and news magazines, both on line and in print, will provide the cartoons.
     There are a number of guidance techniques that help students succeed. In-class modeling, as described in much of the foregoing, is the first. Another is to ensure that students choose manageable topics by drawing up a list of possibilities for them, and letting the more able students modify them or otherwise devise their own. In addition, it is strongly advisable to pre-approve all topics and cartoon choices, and ask for a tentative outline or précis. This step will minimize the possibility that your students will be working on what may turn out to be unmanageable topics or with cartoons that are too shallow or, for that matter, too difficult. Judging the latter is something that teachers will have to determine based on an estimate of the individual student. Next, give students opportunities for feedback. This will require at least one interim progress meeting at which students will present a given phase of their work to date, or a rough draft handed in several days before an individual conference (30 or more minutes) with each student (practical for seminars or small classes only). In seminars or small classes during the last week or so of the term, ask students to briefly report to the class on their research, their most significant findings, their frustrations and their sources of satisfaction. Finally, in the end of semester class evaluations of the course provide an opportunity for students to give you their honest reactions to their experience with political cartoons. Amidst the usual carping about the workload, I always receive some gems of criticism upon which to build my next version of the course.

Conclusion

Select Annotated Bibliography

     Following is a variety of sources, arranged in categories, both print and on-line, that includes and/or is about cartoons from many periods of United States history, including some before 1870–1920, and several after it. One reader of an earlier version of this essay also suggested a Google search of "Gilded Age Political Cartoons." One could do the same to find cartoons of the Progressive Era and later. The result can be overwhelming but rewarding for the discriminating teacher/researcher, and several of the sites listed in my Select Bibliography were among those whose addresses appeared on the screen. The remainder of the "Google" listings included a treasure trove of additional possibilities, but each, of course, require scrutiny before recommending any of them to your students. Finally, too numerous and not among the sources cited, are the daily cartoons that appear in many of the nation's major newspapers such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the three major news magazines including Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

A Sampling of Essays That Use Cartoons and Drawings from the GAPE as Primary Sources

Helpful Secondary Sources on the History, Use, and Significance of Political Cartoons

Practical Classroom Aids

Select On-Line Resources for Political Cartoons, Past and Present

Appendix: Other Gilded Age Cartoons

Notes

^1.Ê The author is a professor of American history at Michigan State University. He presented an earlier and more informal version of this essay at the 2003 conference of the Organization of American Historians in Chicago. The illustrations used in the essay are photos of original Puck cartoons and are reprinted here courtesy of the University of Michigan, Hatcher Graduate Library, Ann Arbor Michigan. The author extends his thanks to the editor of The History Teacher and to the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments in the preparation of this essay for publication.

^2.Ê The syllabus for my seminar is available on request.

^3.Ê See the author's articles cited in the "Select Bibliography" and the similarly located work of Charles Press, Roger Fischer, Richard Samuel West, Steven Hess and Sandy Northrup.

^4.Ê Hess and Northrup, Drawn and Quartered, 24.

^5.Ê As the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s intensified, Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad drew President Richard Nixon as Hamlet. Hess and Northrup, Drawn and Quartered, 122. Other cartoons in this same source demonstrate the overwhelming use of more popular and easily identifiable imagery in the cartoons of the later twentieth century.

^6.Ê In the Bibliography, see the taxonomy described in the work of Wm. Ray Heitzmann and the steps outlined in the NARA site as alternative models to use in cartoon analysis.

^7.Ê For information on the Teaching American History Grant Program, see < http://www.ed.gov/offices/OII/portfolio/historyresources/abouttah.html >.