The 1910s
	Sowing the American Dream
Hell on Wheels

Top row: Sheet Music of 1910s Ragtime Legend Scott Joplin; H.M.S. Titanic departing on its maiden (and only) voyage, 1912; Members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), c. 1911.
Middle row: Grange Producer Propaganda, c. 1874 (Farmer is at the center of all commerce; all occupations are respected except for the "General Broker," second from left on lower row, who claims "I Fleece You All"); Illinois farm woman reading Montgomery Ward catalog with her daughters, c. 1880.
Bottom row: 1914 New Automobile Show, New York City; Auto accident, c. 1920.

Areas of Interest and Historical Research:

• The United States from 1865 to 1945; with an emphasis on urban and rural history, popular and consumer culture, the automobile, and notions of collective safety and personal risk within a modern society.
• I am currently working on a book on the Hollywood film director Cecil B. DeMille.

Selected Publications:

• Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of America's Car Culture, 1900-1940 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007).
  • A link to a radio interview/podcast with John Aielli of KUT-FM (Austin, TX) can be found at: http://kut.org/items/show/9123
• "Consumer Choice, Consumer Agency, and New Directions in Rural Consumer History," in Agricultural History Vol 81, No 2 (Spring, 2007) 182-204.
• "Buckeye Legacies: Aspects of Urban Community in Ohio and the Ohio River Valley" in the Journal of Urban History Volume 29, Number 3 (March 2003): 310-321.
• The 1910s, American Popular Culture Through History, Edited by Ray B. Browne (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).
• "A World of Goods: Appreciating Material Culture on the Prairie," in Dennis E. Suttles and Daniel W. Stowell, eds., From Courtroom to Classroom: The Lincoln Legal Papers Curriculum (Springfield, IL: Papers of Abraham Lincoln, 2002).
• Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000).
• "Leisure and Rural Life," "Rural Institutions and Organizations," and "Catalog, Mail Order, and Direct Home Sales" in The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, edited by Rishard Sisson, et. al (Indiana University Press, 2007).
• Staff and contributor for The Encyclopedia of Chicago, James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
• "A Selected Bibliographic Essay: Consumer Culture during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras," November 25, 1996, for H-SHGAPE and archived on the H-Net Home Page
• "A Comparison of the Catalogs Issued From Sears, Roebuck & Company and Montgomery Ward Company, 1893-1906," Essays in Economic and Business History Volume XII (June 1994): 319-385.

Return to Dr. Blanke's Home Page
Return to TAMU-CC Home Page