thomas nast cartoons

[clay dube]

Many are already familiar with the influential 19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast. Nast gives us the elephant and donkey as symbols of our two main political parties. Nast documents the machine politics evident in many cities (e.g., Tammany Hall). But Nast was also prominent in the debates over Chinese immigration. This website devoted to Nast cartoons includes a section with his work related to the adoption of the Chinese exclusion act in 1882.

Please take a moment to look at these cartoons and to discuss how you might use them in your courses. What content are you helping students acquire? What skills are you helping them develop?

https://thomasnastcartoons.com/

[Flor Contreras]

Analytical and humorous Cartoons  are tools I regularly use in my advanced classes to draw reactions from my students. Mr. Thomas Nast is a name I never heard before but I am glad to to know it now. His work seems to be highly critical, open minded, caring details and expert artist. This website besides offering a timeline of his work on China it provides a background explanation of what each cartoon represents and also has excerpts of history that helps clarify the context.

I could definitely use Nast’s cartoons in my class: to entice reactions and discussions of our history and how the Chinese were treated back then, how people like Nast tried to be eye opener about the political implications and how the white folks were unfair towards Chinese immigrants.

 

[Valerie Doby]

I think this is a great website for teachers to use with their students.  It has so many cartoons that you could have students compare and contrast them.  They could make timelines to see how the cartoons change as events are changing in the country.  They can use it to study that thoughts and feelings of people at that time.  I wish there were cartoons for my area of history but I might be able to use them when we read a book in English that is about Chinese history.

 

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