{"id":66403,"date":"2013-06-27T10:48:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T14:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=66403"},"modified":"2025-07-28T09:36:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T13:36:28","slug":"researcher-allison-mann-08-keeps-mad-men-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2013\/06\/27\/researcher-allison-mann-08-keeps-mad-men-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher Allison Mann ’08 keeps ‘Mad Men’ real"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Mad-men-title-card\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Just as you wouldn’t reference an Eighties Party in a story set at Bates in the ’70s, Kathryn Allison Mann ’08 doesn’t let Mad Men<\/em> make anachronistic or other historical flubs in her job as head researcher for the AMC series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its recent profile of Mann, the Los Angeles Times<\/em> notes that she’s responsible for “upholding the period drama’s well-earned reputation for authenticity and for mining the tumultuous history of the 1960s for potential fodder for series creator Matthew Weiner and his writing team.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mann tells writer Meredith Blake that her work is “relentlessly interesting.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Allison
Allison Mann ’08<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Mann has been research head for three seasons of the show, which concluded its sixth year on June 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mann, whose major contribution to the creative team is a timeline of noteworthy events in news, politics and culture, goes about her work this ways, says Blake:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Assisted by a handful of interns, Mann begins by methodically combing the front page of The New York Times<\/em> each day of the year being depicted. Back issues of Life<\/em>, The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em>, New York Magazine<\/em> and smaller regional newspapers are other rich fonts of material.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The books that Mann consults have included Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America<\/em>; The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York<\/em>; and The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mann, who earned honors in English and philosophy, wrote her Bates honors thesis on film theory, specifically disputing the notion that a single and unified theory of film is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, she argued (looking at the films of Ingmar Bergman), each and every film is capable of answering philosophical questions about film in different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n