Each semester, the Africana Studies Program presents a series of lectures covering a variety of topics relevant to Africana studies.
Dr. Fon Gordon, UCF Associate Professor of History will present “100 Years of Gasoline Alley: Race, Cars, and American Modernity, 1918-2018.”
In 1918, Frank Oscar King (1883-1969), a staff artist at the Chicago Tribune, began a comics Sunday series called Gasoline Alley. The topical, familiar and everyday text of white domesticity, motorcar mania and continuity in which the characters aged in real time contributed to the comic strip’s popularity. A century later, Gasoline Alley survives as retail space at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure theme park. This presentation examines the racial meaning of Gasoline Alley in American culture.
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