Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853.
LAWRENCE - A University of Kansas doctoral student in American studies has received a fellowship from the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute in Washington, D.C., to research a cultural history of the U.S. interstate highway system.
John Cotten Seiler of Louisville, Ky., is one of four Dwight Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts graduate fellows named nationally for the 2000-01 academic year. The fellowship provides $7,500. Seiler's dissertation is titled "Independence, Autonomy and Mobility: The Cultural Origins of the Interstate Highway System." "A lot has been written on the politics of producing the interstate highway system and on its cultural effects, such as the destruction of the small towns, suburbanization and standardization," Seiler says, "but little work exists discussing its original connection to deeply rooted American values."
Seiler is focusing on the cultural concepts of the 1950s that made the national interstate system proposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower successful. Impressed with the German autobahns' ability to move troops during World War II, Eisenhower envisioned a U.S. system to improve military security.
Seiler argues that the highways also celebrated and enhanced mobility and individual autonomy, values that distinguished American society from those of its Cold War enemies. "I'm looking at how the system was a product of a Cold War environment of the 1950s," Seiler says.
Independence and individualism are prominent values in America - appealing to both conservatives and liberals, Seiler says. Interstate highways permitted freedom to travel anywhere in the United States despite limited access to every town along the way, Seiler says.
"People are now talking about the information superhighway using a lot of the same rhetoric as they did for the interstate system," Seiler says. Phrases such as "You can go anywhere you want to go" or "It provides a radical new kind of freedom to switch jobs" were used in the 1950s about the interstates.
Seiler's dissertation director, Barry Shank, KU associate professor of American studies teaching this year at Ohio State University, says, "The key question he is asking is: 'Why did this plan to link the nation by four-lane divided highways make immediate sense to everyone?'"
Linking the nation with an interstate highway system was a huge federal project. Before the 1950s, federal works projects of this size, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, had considerable opposition, Shank notes. "I think we will learn a lot about the way the nation thought and what defined the nation," Shank says of Seiler's research.
In April, Seiler presented a paper titled "Limited Access: Middlebrow Culture, the Cold War and the Interstate Highway System" to the American Culture Association conference in New Orleans. Seiler says that the Eisenhower Library in Abilene and the Truman Library in Independence were invaluable in researching his topic.
He is the son of John Seiler and Harriette Seiler, both of Louisville, Ky. Seiler earned a bachelor's degree in English and fiction writing from Northwestern University in Chicago and a master's degree in American studies from KU.
Seiler also received a Carlin Graduate Teaching Assistant award and a KU Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship, both in May 2000. He taught in KU's Humanities and Western Civilization Program last year and will teach a course in sociology in Spring 2001.