Developing Assignments in the Etta Hulme Political Cartoon Archive

Etta Hulme was the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's editorial cartoonist from 1972 to 2008. Among her many achievements, Hulme was the first woman editorial cartoonist to be syndicated, the first woman to win the National Cartoonists Society's Best Editorial Cartoonist Award, and the first woman to become president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. 

The collection of over 11,000 cartoons spans a wide variety of topics across historical eras - all of which can be useful to study in a variety of ways.

A History class studying the Gulf War might find Hulme's biting commentary of chemical warfare and critical view of President George H.W. Bush interesting to compare to prevailing narratives about the conflict. A Medical Humanities class might study the development of healthcare policy through the lens of political cartoons. A Criminal Justice class might examine feelings towards the criminality of marijuana. A Sociology class might (and has) use the cartoons to study the trajectory of popular opinion toward immigrants and immigration policy through time.

The bottom line is that if a class is studying elements of history from the 1970s through 2000s, chances are good that the Etta Hulme Cartoons might benefit them.

Etta Hulme's nearly four-decade long body of work has been digitized and made available under CC-BY-NC 4.0 licensing - and is entirely free to access, search, download, and use for educational purposes.

TeachingHistory.org:

Political cartoons are vivid primary sources that offer intriguing and entertaining insights into the public mood, the underlying cultural assumptions of an age, and attitudes toward key events or trends of the times. Since the 18th century, political cartoons have offered a highly useful window into the past. Just about every school history textbook now has its quota of political cartoons. Yet some studies reveal that substantial percentages of adults fail to understand the political cartoons in their daily newspaper. How much harder then must it be for young people to make sense of cartoons from the distant past? The stark, simple imagery of many cartoons can be highly deceptive. The best cartoons express real conceptual complexity in a single drawing and a few words. Cartoons from the 1700s and 1800s often employ archaic language, elaborate dialogue, and obscure visual references. It takes a good deal of knowledge of the precise historical context to grasp such cartoons. In short, political cartoons employ complex visual strategies to make a point quickly in a confined space. Teachers must help students master the language of cartoons if they are to benefit from these fascinating sources of insight into our past.

UTA Sociology Professor Dr. Alma Garza:

Because I teach sociological courses, I initially did not consider incorporating political cartoon assignments in my classes. After my students performed a research activity with the Etta Hulme collection in UTA Special Collections, I knew I needed to prioritize projects involving political cartoons. These illustrations demand an understanding of institutional processes, relations among key actors and contextualization. This type of rigorous analysis challenges students to consider the socio-historical and political contexts of power relations. Most important, students are genuinely engaged in these learning objectives because they find the cartoons so revealing.