This L216 seminar will combine intensive reading and writing with
weekly discussion.  The central focus of our work will be the
automobile, but we will often use that subject as a platform to think
widely across decades of time and around the world.  The seminar will
have a historical orientation but will provide abundant opportunity
to think about the present and speculate on the future.  We’ll study
issues of technology and culture, of working men and women, of race
and gender, of cities and streets, of backseat sex and rock and roll,
of interstate highways, environmental challenges, oil supplies,
government regulation, and other topics that might lead to the
conclusion that contained in the past and present of the automobile
is just about all there is to know about business and humanities.