Consuming the past: Television and the popular American historical consciousness

This dissertation explores the shape and content of the American popular historical consciousness and how Americans think about history and the past, and the meaning and use that it has for them. The main subject of inquiry is the mediated versions of history that are disseminated through television, but this inquiry takes place within a larger consideration of the popular historical cultural environment in the United States today.; While professional historians have become increasingly self-conscious about their own encounters with the past and how those encounters are turned into "history," outside the academy Americans are much less aware of or articulate about historical thinking and their connections to the past. For scholars of American society and culture, it is important to understand how Americans think of their history and the meaning and use that it has for them. It is important, not only because it is an integral part of the larger cultural landscape, something that surrounds us all the time, but also because it provides context for any study of American culture or American history. The particular circumstances of the American past---our ideological foundation, our national birth in rebellion against tradition, our existence as an immigrant nation where nearly everyone is from somewhere else and, in becoming American, breaks with the past---gives Americans an almost hostile relationship with the past. Many commentators have also observed that in our contemporary fast-paced, rootless society many Americans seem to seek a sense of "rootedness" in the present by becoming preoccupied with and enamored of connections to the past. These seemingly contradictory reactions, wishing to ignore or escape history while at the same time expressing or acting out an affinity for it, provide a fascinating framework within which to consider the American historical consciousness, its shape and content, its characteristic features, its dynamic, and its popular practices.; This study also includes an exploration of terms and concepts connected to understanding popular conceptions of history, including nostalgia, heritage and tradition. It also suggests new terminology to facilitate an understanding of how Americans outside the academy think of and use American history.; Exploring both the framework, theoretical and practical, and the popular American historical consciousness itself, this study draws on history and memory scholars such as Michael Wallace, Michael Kammen and David Blight, and popular culture scholars like Janice Radway and John Fiske, to cross disciplinary boundaries and situate popular American conceptions of history into a historical and cultural framework.