Hi folks -- a presentation proposal just sent in for the Society of Automotive Historians Tenth Biennial Conference, to be held at Stanford University, April 10-12, 2014.
Title: Early
Motorsports in America: Interpretive Approaches
This proposed presentation marks my initial foray into an
area where the number of studies done by academic historians and scholars can
be counted on a two hands. In contrast, popular histories of early automobile
racing proliferate, some researched and written with great acuity, others less
so. To my knowledge, there exists not one academic study of monograph length on
early automobile racing. Some might
argue that perhaps that void is good thing, given the turgid work that academics
can produce! Seriously, however, a careful examination of this seminal era
offers endless possibilities to see a bigger picture, and to offer new
interpretations critical to our understanding of the place of the automobile in
American life.
Undoubtedly, the prevailing theme in the literature on early
auto racing -- no matter whether written
by academic or "buff" historians -- centers on the symbiotic relationship
between pioneering racing and the emergence of automobile production and use.
Since the first decade of the 20th century, authors have explored how racing
technologically influenced the manufacture of the first generation of motor
cars and vice-versa. This is a question of primary importance, and reflected in
the previously written surveys by John Rae, James Flink, and others, who traced
connections in terms of demonstrator technologies, significant advertising
strategies, utility and practicality, and the necessity for better roads. An interpretive argument of enormous import
at the time, it best justified the human carnage that took place on road and
track. This rationale, then, provides
one significant wing for the story of "Glory Road," where nationalism,
innovation, heroism, and blood sacrifice come together for progress and the
common good.
However, recent historiography has shifted away from this
traditional view, and has focused on the significance of speed as being the transformative
signifier associated with early auto racing. Pointing to an interpretation
first articulated in Wolfgang Sachs For
Love of the Automobile (1984), Tom McCarthy asserted in 2007 that "as
the first cars whizzed down city streets, they drew crowds of curious and the
enthralled, and early auto races demonstrated the thrilling possibilities of
road travel at breathtaking speeds." In 2012 David Lucsko followed McCarthy up by
concluding that "racing did not simply get the word out. It was the word.
Outright speed remained important to the dreams of a nation now on
wheels." The American adoption of the automobile, then, can fundamentally
be seen as a revolution in ways of perceiving and conceptualizing time and
space. Speed then entranced a public eager to adopt a democratic technology
that leveled space and time, and consequently society.
One final interpretation to address -- among
several that I have not mentioned -- is that of class and gender. The era of early auto racing racing -- ending
for my purposes in 1921 with Jimmy Murphy's victory at Lemans -- was one that
witnessed the transition from wealthy elites as drivers to the professionals, a
transition well worth further study. And as Ian Boutle concluded in 2012 in the
context of British racing at Brooklands, these two decades can be described in
ways going beyond portraying racing as a technological spectacle. Indeed, Boutle
asserts that the complexity of how motorsport defined car culture can be seen
in terms of manly strength, gentlemanly virtue, and mental supremacy. Whether
Boutle's analysis can be extended to the American scene awaits further study,
however.
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