Cult of Creativity - A Surprisingly Recent History

"Samuel Weil Franklin shows that in postwar America, the newfangled term "creativity" was the product of campaigns to harness the power of the individual to the demands of capitalist production and global hegemony. Franklin reveals that the champions of creativity were psychologists, educators, and management consultants who benefited from postwar technological progress yet worried that the resulting society might promote conformity and stifle ingenuity. Against increasingly reified institutions and systems, the "creative individual" took on a wealth of romantic, generative, and democratic associations. Creativity was the motive force behind the postwar individual, the literal spark-and cannon fodder-of progress"--

About the author

Samuel W. Franklin is a cultural historian and a postdoctoral researcher in human-centered design at the Delft University of Technology. He has earned awards and fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, the Hagley Library and Museum, the Hathi Trust Research Center, the Stanford Arts Institute, and Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship. He has developed exhibitions for the American Museum of Natural History, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and others.

Product details

• Authors: Samuel W. Franklin, Samuel Weil Franklin
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.05.2023
• EAN: 9780226657851
• ISBN: 978-0-226-65785-1
• No. of pages: 264
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; USA, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Corporate & Business History, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, Economic history, Social and cultural history, United States of America, USA, History of the Americas