[audiobook] Dance Matters: Performing India on Local and Global Stages by From Routledge India at Arts-Photography

Description

The use of cars and trucks over the past century has remade American geographymdash;pushing big cities ever outward toward suburbanization; spurring the growth of some small towns while hastening the decline of others; and spawning a new kind of commercial landscape marked by gas stations; drive-in restaurants; motels; tourist attractions; and countless other retail entities that express our national love affair with the open road. By its very nature; this landscape is ever changing; indeed ephemeral. What is new quickly becomes old and is soon forgotten. In this absorbing book; John Jakle and Keith Sculle ponder how ldquo;Roadside Americardquo; might be remembered; especially since so little physical evidence of its earliest years survives. In straightforward and lively prose; supplemented by copious illustrationsmdash;historic and modern photographs; advertising postcards; cartoons; roadmapsmdash;they survey the ways in which automobility has transformed life in the United States. Asking how we might best commemorate and preserve this part of our pastmdash;which has been so vital economically and politically; so significant to the cultural aspirations of ordinary Americans; yet so often ignored by scholars who dismiss it as kitschmdash;they propose the development of an actual outdoor museum that would treat seriously the themes of our roadside history. Certainly; museums have been created for frontier pioneering; the rise of commercial agriculture; and the coming of water- and steam-powered industrialization and transportation; especially the railroad. Is now not the time; the authors ask; for a museum forcefully exploring the automobilersquo;s emergence and the changes it has brought to place and landscape? Such a museum need not deny the nostalgic appeal of roadsides past; but if done properly; it could also tell us much about what the authors describe as ldquo;the most important kind of place yet devised in the American experience.rdquo;