SEMINAR--HST 485P1 FALL, 2007
The Automobile and American Life
Class Meeting: Wednesday, 3:00-5:50 p.m.
HM 344
Instructors: Dr. John A. Heitmann and Edward Garten
Office: HM 466A
Telephone: x92803
E-mail: John.Heitmann@notes.udayton.edu; eddiegarten@gmail.com
Office Hours:
MW 1-2:50 p.m
It has been said that the automobile is the perfect technological symbol of American
culture, a tangible expression of our quest to level space, time and class, and a reflection of our
restless mobility, social and otherwise. In this seminar we will explore together the place of the
automobile in American life, and how it transformed business, life on the farm and in the city,
the nature and organization of work, leisure time, and the arts. This is a most complex transition
that we will study, as the automobile transformed everyday life and the environment in which we
operate. It influenced the foods we eat; music we listen to; risks we take; places we visit; errands
we run; emotions we feel; movies we watch; stress we endure; and, the air we breathe.
Required Texts:
John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life, online at
http://homepages.udayton.edu/~heitmann
Ben Hamper, Rivethead.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road.
Brock Yates, Outlaw Machine: Harley Davidson and the Search for the American Soul.
Grades: Course work will consist of seminar lectures, discussions, presentations, films, and
optional field trips to the Dayton Concurs and the Kil-Kare Drag Strip near Xenia. Grades will be
based on class discussion and 2 three page book review point papers (30%), an assigned book
class presentation (25%) and a research paper (45%).
In this class we will define the seminar as a shared learning experience in which one of its
purposes is to create new knowledge. Therefore, the research paper is the most significant
assignment of this course. It should critically explore an area of knowledge related to the
automobile and American life, and ideally should be 15 pages double spaced in length, with
footnotes and bibliography, and furthermore draw on minimally 15 sources, primary and
secondary. I plan to meet with you individually and collectively during the semester to ensure
that your topic has a proper focus and that sources are readily available for your project. A late
paper will be penalized one-half letter grade per day.
Among the term paper topics are the following suggestions:
A Reassessment of the Life of Henry Ford II
Edsel Ford and Design during the 1930s
Henry Ford, anti-Semitism, and Adolf Hitler
Sex and the Automobile – either in terms of culture and design, or in terms of sex in cars
Women as Depicted in Automobile Advertising, 1920 - 1980 (you should narrow down the decades)
Seat Belts (or the Airbag) and the Coming of Automobile Safety
Selling Hitler's Car in America: The VW Beetle, 1950-1970
Anti-Auto Literature in America, 1950-1980 (or 1970-2000)
Hell's Angels and Organized Crime in America
The Automobile and the Environment: California Air Quality after WWII
Automation and the Post-WWII American Auto Industry
Women Drivers: Pioneers in Auto Racing and American Social Attitudes – Denise McCluggage
Automobile Journalists and Writers – Tom McCahill or Floyd Clymer
Gasoline, Tetraethyl Lead, and the Environmental Crisis of the 1960s
The Automobile and American Literature: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Upton Sinclair
The Automobile and Film – Narrow down by decade or genre
Music about the Automobile or about Highways – again, narrow down by period
Drinking and Driving in the 20th Century
Auto Theft
Car Jackings and Drive-by Shootings during the 1990s
The Big Three at War: WWII and the American Auto Industry
Industry Pioneers: Hiram Maxim, Alexander Winton, Ransom Olds, or perhaps others
Poetry and the Automobile, narrowed down by period
Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion Car; or, aerodynamics, streamlining and culture during the 1930s
The Oil Shock of 1973, or 1979
Henry Ford and the Origins of Mass Production
The Automobile and Unionism
You will be required to submit point paper reviews on the books authored by Ben Hamper, Jack
Kerouac, and Brock Yates. You will need to do reviews on two of three of these books. These
are one page typed short essays that concisely summarize the key theme of each book and discuss
how successful each writer was in conveying his or her point. These papers will serve as the
starting point of in class discussions.
My manuscript book The Automobile and American Life is our key common reading in
this class and the touchstone for our discussions. While you will not be tested on this reading,
you will be responsible for reading this book and critically commenting on it in class.
Additionally, you must select from the syllabus a book that you will report on to the class
at the scheduled time. All books listed are in the Roesch Library; you are to prepare a 20-30
minute presentation in which you discuss the author’s main theme(s), the subject topic of the
book and its central narrative, and finally your own assessment of this book and how it
enhanced(or stultified) your knowledge and interest in the history of the automobile in America.
Schedule of Assignments and Class Meetings
Week 1 — August 22
Introduction. What our cars tell us about ourselves. The automobile and its inherent
contradictions. The automobile in art and as art.
Reading: Heitmann, Introduction.
Film: “Wild Wheels”
Week 2 — August 29
Pioneers
Reading: Heitmann, Chapters 1.
Film: “Horatio’s Drive”
Report(s): Michael Berger, The Devil Wagon on God’s Country: The Automobile and
Social Change in Rural America, 1893-1929.
Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
Week 3 — September 5
Henry Ford, Fordism, and the Model T.
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 2
Films: Mack Sennet, “Gussle’s Day of Rest( 1915).”
“California Straight Ahead,” (1925); “The Crowd Roars” (1932); “Burn ‘Em Up
Barnes’”(1934)
Music: Virginia Liston, Bertha Chippie Hill, Robert Johnson
Report(s): Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (Ann Arbor, 1972).
Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (Public Affairs,
2001).
Week 4 — September 12
The Rise of General Motors and Sloanism
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 3.
Film: “Roger and Me”
Report(s): Stuart W. Leslie, Boss Kettering: Wizard of General Motors (Columbia, 1983).
Henry Ashby Turner, General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel,
Europe’s Biggest Carmaker (New Haven, 2005).
Stephen Bayley, Harley Earl (New York, 1990).
Short Review of Rivethead is due.
Week 5 — September 19
America on the Road: The Highway and the City; Religion, Sex, and the Automobile
Reading: Heitmann, Chapters 4 and 5
Film: “Taken for a Ride”
Report(s): Ashleigh Brilliant, The Great Car Craze: How Southern California Collided
with the Automobile in the 1920s (Santa Barbara, 1989).
Scott Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile (Berkeley, 1987).
Stephen Bayley, Sex, Drink and Fast Cars (New York, 1986).
Week 6 — September 26
On the Road; Film and the Automobile
Film: “Grapes of Wrath;” “The Vanishing Point;”
Reading:
Reports: Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel,
1910-1945(Johns Hopkins, 1997); William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways(Boston,
1982).
Short Review of Kerouac is due.
Week 7 — October 3
Styling, Design and the Art of the Automobile: The Automobile and Literature
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 6.
Report: David Gartman, Auto Opium(New York, 1994); Stephen
Film: “Tucker”
Term Paper Proposal Due; The Completion of a Working Bibliography of no less than 15
Sources, 5 of which are articles.
Week 8 — October 10
Women Behind the Wheel
Reading:
Reports: Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor
Age(New Mexico, 1992); Sol Dollinger, Not Automatic: Women and the Left in Forging
the Auto Worker’s Union(New York, 2000); Elinor Nauen, Ladies Start your Engines:
Women Writers and the Road (Boston, 1996).
Films: “Thelma and Louise;”
Week 9 — October 17
Library and Consultation Day – no class
Week 11 — October 24
Chrome Dreams of the 1950s
Report(s): John Keats, The Insolent Chariots (Philadelphia, 1958); Katie Mills, The Road
Story and the Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fiction, and Television (Carbondale, IL,
2006).
Film: “Rebel Without a Cause;” “Thunder Road.”
Music: Jackie Berenson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Chuck Berry.
Term Paper Progress Reports — Entire Class
Week 12 — October 31
Muscle Cars of the 1960s; Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys
Readings: Heitmann, Chapter 7
Music: Dead Man’s Curve — Jan and Dean; Little Duce Coupe — The Beach Boys; GTO
– Ronny and the Daytonas;
Reports: Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (1965); Robert C. Post, High Performance:
The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing, 1950-1990 (Johns Hopkins, 1994); Tom
Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York, 1965).
Film: “Bullitt;” “American Graffiti”
Week 13 — November 7
Safety and the Environment;
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 8
Reports: Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (New York, 1965); Emma Rothchild,
Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (New York, 1973); Jane Holtz
Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it
Back(Crown, 1997); Brock Yates, The Critical Path (Little, Brown, 1996); Stan Luger,
Corporate Power, American Democracy, and the Automobile Industry (Cambridge,
2000).
Readings: Flink, pp. 295-345.
Film: “The Vanishing”
Week 14 -- November 14
Foreign Competition: VW, Nissan and Toyota
Japan Inc. in the USA
Germans in the New South
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 9.
Film: “The Fast and Furious;” “Gone in Sixty Seconds”
Music: Bruce Springsteen
Week 15 -- November 21 — Thanksgiving Holiday
Week 16 — November 28
Rolex Bikers
Report: Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (New York,
1967).
Short Review of Outlaw Machines is due.
Films: “The Wild One” (1953) “Easy Rider” (1969); “Motorcycle Diaries: Women and
Motorcycles.”
Week 17 – December 5 -- Term -Papers Due
Research Paper Discussion and Closing Statements