Blog Articles | Revs Program at Stanford

Course Article

Telling Car Stories

What is it about cars that make people talk so passionately? In ME 236 (Tales to Design Cars By) class this quarter, we are finding people relate to cars in ways unlike any other object. As a result they tell car stories differently than any other story.

We’re finding a number of elements contribute to this. Chief among them: a car provides a confined space that encourages but never forces interaction. Because the vehicle takes its occupant on a journey, it becomes a natural mechanism for storytelling.

Inspired by cinema, video, road trips, interviews and observations, our... Read More

Course Article

Do Automobiles Have Politics?

The gateway question to the Science and Technology Studies (STS) program at Stanford is deceptively simple: “do artifacts have politics?” An affirmative answer leads to four wonderful years at Stanford studying the myriad ways in which artifacts do, indeed, have politics – and the insights gained by considering technologies as social actors.

The car and its paradoxes offer a wonderful place to begin to explore these questions. At once an icon of freedom and mobility, the automobile has also brought unprecedented regulation in the form of policing, traffic and auto regulation, and... Read More

Course Article

Revs Course In Literature Authoring New Book

During this quarter in Auto-mobility: the Car in American Literature and Culture, we are revisiting our work from “On the Road,” last spring's Revs-sponsored literature course. Continuing our research, we are writing a book, tentatively titled Auto-mobility: the Car in American Literature and Culture. In our most recent meeting we discussed Gertrude Stein's Ford, Jay Gatsby's hand-built Rolls Royce, women and driving, driving instruction, licensing, suburbs, taxis in New York and Paris, and the growth of the oil industry in relation to the car's increasing popularity.