On April 16, Rowman & Littlefield will release Motorsports and American Culture: From Demolition Derbies to NASCAR. Co-edited by communications instructor Dr. Mark Howell and Dr. John Miller, a professor of English at Longwood University in Virginia, a motorsports scholar.
The book is a collection of essays covering all facets of motorsports commonly seen in North America. Scholars from across the United States provided articles exploring a diverse assortment of topics — everything from gender and ethnicity in NASCAR to 19th-century train wrecks staged before spectators at the Iowa State Fair. Research into various forms of motorsports have never been collected in one book before until now.
The book will be introduced at the national Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Chicago next week; Howell will be at the meeting presenting a lecture on recent policies within NASCAR introduced to address the growing problem of serious brain trauma.