Writing History With Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth-Century America on Film (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2019) - co-edited with John Inscoe
As opposed to previous volumes focused on topics like slavery or the West, Writing History with Lightning edited by Matthew Christopher Hulbert and John C. Inscoe offers an expansive look at how films represent the history of nineteenth-century America and, in turn, how those depictions influence the ways in which mass audiences remember, envision, and reimagine the nation’s past. Across twenty-six essays, a group of prominent historians, including Catherine Clinton, Kenneth Greenberg, and Marcus Rediker, moves beyond separating fact from fiction to consider the raw power that movies possess in influencing broad interpretations of American history.
Essayists: Donna Barbie, John Inscoe, Michael Burlingame, John Marszalek, Brian Rouleau, Jacob Lee, Catherine Clinton, Diane Miller Sommerville, Lesley Gordon, William Andrews, Marcus Rediker, James Crisp, Kenneth Greenberg, Nicole Etcheson, Graham Hodges, John David Smith, Joseph M. Beilein, Jonathan Sarris, Tom Lee, Matthew Stanley, Matthew Christopher Hulbert, Kevin Waite, Ryan Keating, Drew Swanson, Stephen Whitfield, Allison Dorsey, Kevin Waite
Films covered include: The Far Horizons (1955), The Journey of August King (1995), Lincoln (2012), Young Abe Lincoln (1939), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), The President’s Lady (1953), In the Heart of the Sea (2015), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Revenant (2015), The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Birth of a Nation (2016), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Amistad (1997), The Alamo (1960), The Alamo (2004), Mandingo (1975), Jezebel (1938), Santa Fe Trail (1940), Gangs of New York (1999), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), Free State of Jones (2016), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), The Conspirator (2010), Sommersby (1993), The Hateful Eight (2015), The Undefeated (1969), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Little Big Man (1970), Far & Away (1992), Bright Leaf (1950), Hester Street (1975), Daughters of the Dust (1991)
“Historians love to complain about how popular movies distort the past, even as we envy their power to shape perceptions and beliefs. The authors in this lively collection instead consider what those films can teach us about the past, the film makers’ present, and the evolving mythologies of American exceptionalism.”
- Kenneth Noe, author of The Yellowhammer War: Alabama in the Civil War and Reconstruction“In Writing History with Lightning, Matthew Hulbert and John Inscoe assemble an all-star cast of scholars to explore a century of filmmaking about nineteenth-century America. Covering a wide range of movies and subjects, these fun, insightful essays shine the brightest when they look beyond Hollywood’s historical inaccuracies and explain what filmmaking and history have in common―tension, interpretation, narrative, context, and resonance. I give it two thumbs up!”
- Jason Phillips, author of Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future