America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind

Peter C. Rollins

Description

America Reflected offers eclectic film criticism and considerations of distinctive American voices from the ante-bellum era to the present.

"Rollins examines the roles of language, satire, and film in reflecting the American consciousness through such diverse sources as Orestes Brownson, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Will Rogers, and Hollywood. Readers of America Reflected are in for a delightful voyage as they travel through American history and culture with Peter Rollins as their guide providing personal and scholarly insights into the shaping of the American mind."
–Ron Briley is the Assistant Schoolmaster, Sandia Preparatory School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and editor, The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad (2010).

"From cowboy philosopher Will Rogers to popular perceptions of two world wars and Vietnam, from the history of language to the language of film and television, Peter Rollins has devoted his career to exploring the intriguing ways in which the creative impulse both shapes and reflects
American culture. His observations are fresh, illuminating and of enduring value."
–John E. O'Connor, co-founder and long-term editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies

"Even those who have known and admired Peter Rollin's acclaimed works will here find enlightening surprises. Epistemology, language theory, war's polemics, filmed history, and an array of significant creators of American
culture are all elegantly displayed. This book will make you a wiser person and charm you while it does it."
–John Shelton Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Morningside College.

"Two decades ago I was privileged to work on a book, America Observed, with Alistair Cooke. Now we have America Reflected by Peter Rollins, one of the most respected cultural historians working today. Not only does Rollins make good observations about our lives and times, his reflections on a diverse set of subjects helps us to see the meanings of our observations."
–Ronald A. Wells is Professor of History Emeritus at Calvin College, Michigan.

"In America Reflected, Rollins gathers together glimpses of our shared worlds, so that we may observe their interconnections across media, genres, and time. From down-home values and front-porch philosophy, to tales of wars and chronicles of lives, the subjects considered here are all part of the stories we tell about ourselves and our social worlds."
–Cynthia J. Miller, President, Literature/Film Association.

Sujets

• Histoire
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780984583201
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 35 Mo

Extrait

America Reflected:
Language, Satire, Film, and the National MindAlso by New Academia Publishing
Cinema
MOSCOW BELIEVES IN TEARS: Russians and Their Movies, by Louis Menashe
SCIENCE FICTION EXPERIENCES, by Angela Ndalianis
HERETICAL EMPIRICISM, by Pier Paolo Pasolini
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI: In Living Memory, Ben Lawton and Maura Bergonzoni, eds.
EVERY STEP A STRUGGLE: Interviews with Seven Who Shaped the African-American Image in
Movies, by Frank Manchel
IMAGING RUSSIA 2000: Film and Facts, by Anna Lawton
BEFORE THE FALL: Soviet Cinema in the Gorbachev Years, by Anna Lawton
Popular Culture/ Visual Culture
PASSION AND PERCEPTION : Essays in Russian Culture, by Richard Stites
RUSSIAN FUTURISM: A History, by Vladimir Markov
WORDS IN REVOLUTION: Russian Futurist Manifestoes 1912-1928 A. Lawton and H. Eagle,
eds., trs.
SHOPPING FOR JESUS: Faith in Marketing in the USA, Dominic Janes, ed.
SUPER/HEROES: From Hercules to Superman, Wendy Haslem, Angela Ndalianis, and Chris
Mackie, eds.
WE’RE FROM JAZZ: Festschrift in Honor of Nicholas V. Galichenko, Megan Swift and Serhy
Yekelchyk, eds.
TERROR ON THE SCREEN: Witnesses and the Reanimation of Terrorism as Image Event, Popular
Culture and Pornography, by Luke Howie
REMEMBERING UTOPIA: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia, Breda Luthar and
Maruša Pušnik, eds.
VISUAL CULTURE IN SHANGHAI, 1850s-1930s, Jason Kuo, ed.
See excerpts at: www.newacademia.comð
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America Reflected:
Language, Satire, Film, and the
National Mind
by Peter C. Rollins
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Copyright © 2011 by Peter C. Rollins
Published in eBook format by New Academia Publishing
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9845-8320-1
New Academia Publishing, LLC
P.O. Box 27420
!"#$%&'(")*'$+,-.*/0*12Washington, DC 20038-7420
www.newacademia.com - [e-mail]3'/0*124516$78
!!
Š—1‘Ž1Š’˜—Š•1’—To Ray and Pat Browne,
who encouraged us to
find America and
ourselves.Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: America Reflected in Satire, Language, and Film
Will Rogers’ Popular Culture
1. The Evolving Persona of Will Rogers: Symbolic Man, Journalist, and Film
Image
2. Will Rogers and The Saturday Evening Post: Kindred Spirits?
3. The Context and Rhetorical Strategy of Will Rogers’ Letters of a Self-Made
Diplomat to His President (1926)
4. Will Rogers on Aviation: A Means of Fostering Frontier Values in an Age of
Machines and Bunk?
5. Regional Literature and Will Rogers: Film Redeems a Literary Form
6. The Making of Will Rogers’ 1920s: A Cowboy’s Guide to the Times: An
Experiment in Historian Filmmaking
Benjamin Whorf on the Native American vs. Western Languages/Cultures
7. Benjamin Lee Whorf: Transcendental Linguist
8. The Sapir-Whorf Relationship Reconsidered
9. The Whorf Hypothesis as a Critique of Western Science and Technology
Part II: America’s Wars: Film Images and Historical Realities
World War I
10. Memories of War: Was World War I a Heroic Crusade or a Traumatic
Nightmare?
11. Parallels or Continuities in Two Historical Compilation Films: Goodbye Billy
and The Frozen War
World War II
12. Frank Capra’s Why We Fight Series and Our American Dream
13. Remembering D-Day: Perspective from the Fiftieth Anniversary
14. Storm of Fire: Reflections on Cadre Films and the Historian as Filmmaker
Cold War
15. Victory at Sea: Cold War Epic
16. Nightmare in Red: A Cold War View of the Communist RevolutionVietnam
17. Using Popular Culture to Study the Vietnam War: Perils and Possibilities
18. Television’s Vietnam: The Impact of Visual Images
19. Press History Repeating Itself as Farce?: Critical Responses to Television’s
Vietnam: The Real Story (1985)
20. Behind the Westmoreland Trial of 1984: What Was so Wrong with the CBS
Program, The Uncounted Enemy (1982)
21. The Uncounted Expert: George Carver’s Views on Intelligence “Deception”
Reported by CBS in The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception (1982)
22. Neil Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie: The Story of John Paul Vann or of
America’s New Media Elite?
23. Dear America (HBO 1988): Oral History as Interpretation of the Vietnam
Experience?
24. Para dismentir “television’s vietnam”: Los motivos de un Documentarista
25. Teaching International Politics: What the Historian-Filmmaker Has to Offer
Part III: American Cultural Figures, Movements, Classics
26. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Declaration of
Independence from Calvinism
27. Frederick Henry Hedge: Brookline’s Conservative Transcendentalist
28. Amy Lowell of Brookline: The Patterns of a Life
29. John James Audubon: The ‘American Woodsman’?
30. Ideology and Film Rhetoric: Three Documentaries of the New Deal Era
(1936-1941)
31. Tulsa (1949) as an Oil Field Film: A Study of Ecological Ambivalence
Photo CreditsForeword
by Michael T. Marsden
It is undeniable that popular culture has emerged world-wide as a legitimate field
of study. But certainly that was not the case when I entered graduate school more
than four decades ago. Nor was it so when Peter Rollins returned from the
battleground of Vietnam to complete his graduate work.
This volume presents selections from a lifetime of Peter’s work in the fields
of Popular Culture and American Culture Studies. It clearly demonstrates the
impressive scope of his scholarly embrace from Will Rogers and Benjamin
Whorf to studies of the history of wars and their depictions on film from World
War I to Vietnam. But Peter has also continued throughout his career to examine
the cultural significance of major American personalities from Harriet Beecher
Stowe to John James Audubon.
This volume, then, pays witness to an ever active mind searching through the
artifacts of the American experience in order to make sense of them. The
scholarly work that Peter has done in film and history is well known and well
respected. With his dozens of books, hundreds of articles, films, television
programs and CDs, Peter has reached out to the general public as well as to the
scholarly community with his insights.
Very early in his career Peter was not content to work only within the
confines of his classroom and study, or even only within his professional
organizations for that matter. He chose instead to pursue the role of what we refer
to as the “public intellectual,” seeking every opportunity to bridge the academic
world and the world of public discourse on topics of major importance. Whether
it was a focus on the significance of Will Rogers or new insights into the Vietnam
conflict, Peter sought to enlighten and inform. As a consequence of this reaching
out, his scholarly work found audiences both within the academy and among the
several publics who attend to media outlets such as Public Broadcasting, the
Discovery Channel, and C-SPAN. For Peter there is no bridge too far, no matter
what the effort, if the result is sharing new knowledge.
Peter’s untiring work on behalf of the Popular Culture Association and the
American Culture Association from their foundings to the present is noteworthy.
Whether it was his organizational work for hosting the national PCA/ACA
Meeting in Wichita, for the many Southwest Texas PCA/ACA Conferences, or
for the PCA/ ACA Meetings in Mexico, Peter’s efforts were everywhere noted
and appreciated. Peter was also the founder and co-moderator of the H-PCA/
ACA internet discussion list at a point in the organizations’ history when the
transition to computer based communication was essential to the long term well
being of the organizations. Peter was also there when the late Ray Browne and
others wanted to start an endowment for the organizations, the results of which
have subsequently supported many graduate students and young faculty members
in their scholarly work.
On yet another level, Peter has been a gracious mentor to many young
scholars across the country who have sought and received his wise counsel. A
distinguished faculty member at Oklahoma State University, Peter has reached out to those who needed assistance from across the country in the same gracious
manner and spirit exhibited to him and to me by the late Russel Nye and the late
Ray Browne when Peter and I were finding our way in the scholarly world.
This volume is but a glimpse into the life’s work of a scholar who may live
and work in Oklahoma, but whose scholarly reach knows no state or national
borders. Peter has received many awards and recognitions for his work over the
years. But his real reward is to be found precisely where Russel Nye’s and Ray
Browne’s rewards are to be found in the lives and work of the generations of
young scholars they and he have encouraged and supported through the years.
Michael T. Marsden is Dean of the College and Academic Vice President and
Professor of English, American Studies, and Media Studies at St. Norbert
College. He is also Co-Executive Editor of the Journal of Popular Film and
Television.’—œ’Ž›
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