American History Goes to the Movies: Hollywood and the American Experience / Edition 1

by W. Bryan Rommel Ruiz

Overview

Whether they prefer blockbusters, historical dramas, or documentaries, people learn much of what they know about history from the movies. In American History Goes to the Movies, W. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz shows how popular representations of historic events shape the way audiences understand the history of the United States, including American representations of race and gender, and stories of immigration, especially the familiar narrative of the American Dream.

Using films from many different genres, American History Goes to the Movies draws together movies that depict the Civil War, the Wild West, the assassination of JFK, and the events of 9/11, from The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind to The Exorcist and United 93, to show how viewers use movies to make sense of the past, addressing not only how we render history for popular enjoyment, but also how Hollywood’s renderings of America influence the way Americans see themselves and how they make sense of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415802208
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/02/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

W. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz is Associate Professor of History at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 Exorcising the Demons Within: Gender, Race, and the Problem of Evil in American History and Cinema 10

2 Redeeming the South, Redeeming the Nation: Representations of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in American Film, Television, and Historical Scholarship 47

3 Envisioning and Re-visioning America: Hollywood Westerns and Engaging the American Past 79

4 Historicizing Triumphs and Tragedies in the American West: The Hollywood Western as Cultural Text in Recent American History 105

5 Immigration, the American Dream, and the Problem of the Irish American Experience 131

6 The European American and Mexican American Immigration Experience: The Problem of Narrative in American Social History 154

7 Beyond Dallas: History, Narrative, and the Struggle for Meaning in the Kennedy Assassination 191

8 "We Are Alive in Hell": Finding Historical Meaning and Significance in 9/11 226

Notes 264

Index 290