Spartan Profiles: Cynthia Lee Henthorn
FROM SUBMARINES TO SUBURBS
What led to our current way of life in suburban America? According to one writer, it was partly due to the marketing strategies used by U.S. businesses during World War II to convince Americans that war-related industries could deliver better homes, more hi-tech kitchens and other miracle products that will establish a better and more hygienic America. So argues Cynthia Lee Henthorn, M.A. ’89, an art and design historian in Greenwich, CT, who just published From Submarines To Suburbs: Selling A Better America, 1939-1959 (2006, Ohio University Press).
“In those years, every industry was war-related,” explains Henthorn. “Business leaders were skeptical of the New Deal administration. The National Association of Manufacturers basically put together a plan and a message to make sure the public knew it was private business and not the government that were the movers and shakers in the war effort, and that it was private business that would lead the way for a better America after the war.”
Cynthia notes that advertisements emphasized cleanliness and hygiene as ways to access the middle class, and that business and the free enterprise system would usher in higher standards of living for a better America. “A lot of this still carries to the post-9/11 world,” she notes. Cynthia currently works for an online software company based in New York City.
A native of Peoria, IL, she received her master’s degree from MSU. “I liked my experience there but it was a lot of work,” she recalls. “Our department (art history) was small and so we all got a lot of attention.” S
he cites professors like Linda Stanford (now MSU registrar), Phyllis Floyd, Paul Deussen, Eldon Van Leer and Webster Smith for inspiring her to later pursue a doctoral degree at the City University of New York. “My brother Thomas is a doctoral student in history at MSU,” she adds. “All my professors were tremendously supportive. They were fantastic.”