"Building Suburbia"

I wasn't really a fan of how the book was written, but the message it was trying to get across was an interesting one. When you really stop to think about it, most of what it had to say seems like common sense, but it's the sort of stuff that you normally wouldn't stop to think about unless someone pointed it out to you. The book's main point, like most of the other readings we've done so far, is to relate some aspect of American development to the technology that was responsible for it. In this book the automobile seems to be the star of the show so to speak. Most of the chapters, at least so far, are in some way related to the expansion and mobility enabled by the use of cars and other forms of motorised transportation. By allowing people to easily commute to and from work, they no longer had to live as close to where the worked. One of the major results of this shift was the rise of the suburbs. Of course there are alot of other factors that contributed to it, but to me it seems like the Automobile was one of the leading contributors.

American Studies

Throughtout the course a common theme that has been brought up is the fact that American Studies is "interdisciplinary". I can certainly see how that can be said about the field, but it seems, to me at least, that it is most closely tied to the various History subjects. In class our readings have progressed from hte colonies to the era of westward expansion, to how the Native Americans were dealt with, and now to the rise of the suburbs. With every new theme studied, regardless of the other fields involved, it always seems like something that could be taught in an American History class. Almost as if the whole subject of American Studies is a sub-section of it. It makes sense i suppose. It would be kind of difficult to study things about America that havent happened yet.