History Commons^™

Review: 'Motoring West: Automobile Pioneers, 1900-1909', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Motoring West is the first in a projected series that will examine the place of the motorcar in Trans-Mississippi America to 1940. Edited by Peter J. Blodgett, curator of manuscripts at the Huntington Library, the work brings together explanatory historical material that sets a critical and analytical context with a diverse collection of primary sources. The result is an interesting mix of readings that takes us well beyond Dayton Duncan’s Horatio’s Drive and the Ken Burns film sequel.

Stealing Freedom: Auto Theft And Autonomous Individualism In American Film, James Todd Uhlman, John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

In the real world today auto theft is usually about gangs, drugs, and money (Heitmann and Morales 5). However, since 1945, the cinematic representation of auto theft has had more to do with the symbolic meaning cars and driving hold in American culture. In the early twentieth century, the automobile and driving became associated with many of the classic qualities of American identity (March and Collette 107). The roots of that expectation stretch back even further to the role that movement played in the colonization of the continent. The unrestrained capacity to move became equated early in the American cultural …

Review: 'Harold Frederic’S Social Drama And The Crisis Of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) is a terrific novel. The title character is a young, naïve, poorly educated Methodist minister who — when the narrative begins — has been appointed to take the pastorate of a small-town church in upstate New York. It is within only a matter of weeks after moving to Octavius with his wife, Alice, that Theron makes the acquaintance of exotic and compelling individuals who challenge his heretofore unexamined evangelical faith. Abandoning his Methodism with impunity, Ware is soon hurtling toward his “damnation.”

Damned but not dead: At the end of the novel, …

Riley’S Empire: Northwestern Bible School And Fundamentalism In The Upper Midwest, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

In the 1920s a loosely-united band of militant conservatives launched a crusade to capture control of the major Protestant denominations. These fundamentalists staunchly affirmed the supernaturalness and literal accuracy of the Bible, the supernatural character of Christ, and the necessity of Christians to separate themselves from the world.

Most often Baptists and Presbyterians, they struggled to re-establish their denominations as true and pure churches: true to the historic doctrines of the faith as they perceived them, and pure from what they saw as the polluting influences of an increasingly corrupt modern culture. But by the late 1920s the fundamentalists had …