Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

Draws on Hollywood films to illustrate the ideas and values that have animated American culture
Presents engaging profiles of Hollywood icons like Clint Eastwood, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Meryl Streep
Written in a clear-cut prose that will appeal to anyone interested in American history or Hollywood film

Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

Description

How do perceptions of the past--not just of particular events, but of the trajectory of history as a whole--shape our experience of the world? Sensing the Past tackles this question with an unlikely source of historical insight--the work of six major Hollywood stars: Clint Eastwood, Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Jodie Foster. By focusing on the career choices made by these iconic actors, Cullen uncovers a discrete set of historical narratives, revealing the surprising ways historical forces shape our understanding of the world.

Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

Introduction
Chapter One Tending to the Flock: Clint Eastwood, Ambivalent Wanderer
Chapter Two Daniel Day-Lewis and the Frontier in American History
Chapter Three Equal Work: The Mystique of Meryl Streep
Chapter Four Denzel Washington, Affirmative Actor
Chapter Five Team Player: Tom Hanks, Company Man
Chapter Six The Brave One: Jodie Foster, American Loner
Index

Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

Author Information

Jim Cullen teaches history at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation, Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition, and other books. Cullen is also a book review editor at the History News Network. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

Reviews and Awards

"It's unlikely that many of us have thought to connect Dirty Harry to Thomas Jefferson or Bill the Butcher to Frederick Jackson Turner, but somehow Jim Cullen makes such improbable pairings work in this heartfelt, enlightening book. Writing as both a fervent fan and a serious scholar, he deftly reveals how some of our greatest contemporary movie stars have played an important role as public historians."--Steven Biel, author of American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting

"Sensing the Past will change the way readers think about movie stars and American history. Through a series of penetrating profiles, Jim Cullen examines how actors have embodied the central themes of our past and weds them to the present. Every page glistens with insights about actors we admire and movies we think we know."---Louis P. Masur, author of The Civil War: A Concise History

Sensing the Past

Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions

Jim Cullen

From Our Blog

The strange career of Birth of a Nation

Today represents a red letter day -- and a black mark - for US cultural history. Exactly 98 years ago, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation premiered in Los Angeles. American cinema has been decisively shaped, and shadowed, by the massive legacy of this film.

Posted on February 8, 2013

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Denzel Washington's Flight from authority

By Jim Cullen Over the course of the last thirty years, Denzel Washington has played a notable variety of roles: leading man and aging man; hero and villain; emblem of his race and Everyman. Yet to a truly striking degree the various roles he's chosen -- and here it's worth noting that as one of the most blue-chip actors in Hollywood, he's long enjoyed considerable power in this regard -- revolve around two key relationships: mentor and prot©g©.

Posted on November 8, 2012

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The Day-Lewis Lincoln: (racial) frontiersman

By Jim Cullen As anyone vaguely familiar with his work knows, Day-Lewis is legendary for the extraordinary variety of characters he has played, and the vertiginous psychological depth with which he has played them. I first became aware of Day-Lewis in early 1985, when, in the space of a week, I watched him portray the priggish Cecil Vyse in the tony Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of E.M. Forster's Room with a View and then saw him play Johnny, the punk East End homosexual, in Stephen Frears's brilliantly brash My Beautiful Launderette.

Posted on November 27, 2012

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