Monumental designs : infrastructure and the culture of the Tennessee Valley Authority / Ted Atkinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Atkinson, Ted, 1967- Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Water resources development--United States.

Water resources development.

Regional planning--Tennessee River Valley.

Regional planning.

Corporate culture.

Organizational change.

Tennessee Valley Authority--History.

Tennessee Valley Authority.

Tennessee Valley Authority--Social life and customs.

Tennessee River Valley--Economic conditions.

Tennessee River Valley.

Physical Description:

viii, 230 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2025]

Summary:

"Established by Congress as part of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) designated parts of seven southern states for economic rehabilitation through various means, including flood control, rural electrification, and social programs. The goal was to deploy federal resources to reshape the region through infrastructure-mainly a network of hydroelectric dams. To garner political and public support, TVA officials mobilized artists. Soon state-sponsored cultural productions emerged, resulting in a body of work comprising an array of mediums. The TVA swayed public opinion and generated positive reviews at the outset because of the vital role that culture played in making public meaning, particularly regarding the near-total transformation of the Tennessee Valley through infrastructural development as part of a larger ideological and economic investment in public works. While the content was geared toward promoting the TVA agenda, aesthetic innovations had a lasting impact, influencing subsequent generations of artists who portrayed the TVA enterprise with complexity, nuance, and depth. At a time when the country is grappling with issues surrounding climate change, fossil fuels consumption, and strip mining, the TVA now struggles to balance its reputation for prosperity and development with public suspicion and skepticism. In Monumental Designs: Infrastructure and the Culture of the Tennessee Valley Authority, author Ted Atkinson presents a cultural history of the TVA that examines representations of the agency in selected works from the New Deal era to the present. With chapters organized according to medium-photography and photobooks, documentary films, New Deal theater, fiction film, and novels-Monumental Designs seeks to illuminate the entwined forms of infrastructural development and cultural production that have made the TVA a source of multivalent power and influence. This examination of cultural history intends to foster critical thinking about how public works can come to be regarded as monumental expressions of national purpose and modern engines of progress defined in terms of perpetual growth and development"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. A dam site more modern: developing TVA monumentality in visual culture

Chapter 2. Documentary forms: infrastructural inevitability in "The River" and The Valley of the Tennessee"

Chapter 3. "Power" to the people: the spectacular drama of rural electrification

Chapter 4. Back to the future: crosscurrents of development in Elia Kazan's "Wild River"

Chapter 5. From "Flood" to "Long Man": the rise of the TVA novel

Coda

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Atkinson, Ted. Monumental designs.

ISBN:

9781496859242

1496859243

9781496859259

1496859251

OCLC:

1492567735

Publisher Number:

90102619468