The Editor's Reflections and Reports

Special Editor's Introduction | Editor's Corner We of Film & History have been busy since the last issue of thejournal and here are some of the highlights of the past months. The Editor's Reflections and Reports More Exciting News: 2002 Fall Meeting taking shape (yes, 2002) We have been excited by the enthusiastic response by subscribers —and those on the Internet—to our announcement of a meeting for November, 2002 (yes, 2002) at the Kansas City Marriott Hotel near the famous Country Club Plaza. As subscribers know, the title ofthe conference is TheAmerican West(s) in Film, Television, and History and is scheduled for November 7-10, 2002, a year from now. Although the conference is far off, we have received wonderful suggestions from our many friends and we thank you all for them! Our conference has stimulated discussion and Peter Rollins, Suzanne Broderick, and others have been talking about Areas for the meeting. We are still evolving the plan, but our current assessment is on a special blocked page as part of this introduction. The plan follows the approach of our journal and can be stated as a series of questions about "Hollywood as historian": When are the films correct and on target? When do the films go astray? Do films interpret the West or reflect the concerns of the period in which they are made—or both? Can films about the West be useful in the classroom? Where does the historian contribute: in the creation of such films or as a critic after they are released? Recently, Gary Edgerton (a member of the Film & History Editorial Board) has broached the concept of "popular memory" in a book entitled Television Histories (UP of Kentucky , 2001). We need to take a close look at how treatments of the West have impacted popular memory. Back in the 1950s, Henry Nash Smith produced a classic study of the literary legacy, The Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Harvard UP, 1950), but, in so many ways, the Hollywood version has dominated. Since Kansas City was the jumping off point for the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails—as featured in such epics as James Cruz's The Covered Wagon (1923) and John Ford's The Big Trail (1930)— there is no better place for us to extrapolate from Smith's pioneering research to the American Western film as Myth and Symbol. The Forthcoming American Historical Association Meeting (January 3-6, 2002) As it has for over thirty years, Film & History will have a session at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco. Dr. Larry Wilcox (U of Toledo) has organized a fine panel involving such topics as "The First Holocaust Documentary Films," "Feature Films about Neo-Nazis Since 1945," and "Hollywood's Holocaust." Our Founder, John E. O'Connor, will comment on the papers and the Holocaust film as a genre. This panel is extremely timely and will draw considerable attention at the conference; the papers, along with other research, will subsequently be published in our journal. We will also produce a CD-ROM on the topic—a resource of lasting value to film and history researchers. Both this session and the PCA panel (below) are scheduled for the Saturday afternoon of the conference. Our panel will be scheduled right before a Popular CultureAssociation panel dealing with "ClintEastwood'sAmerica." Robert Sickels, our film review editor, will chair the session which will focus on the Eastwood version of America and its values. Andrew Horton (Distinguished Professor ofFilm, U of Oklahoma) has invited both Henry Bumstead and Clint Eastwood to the session and it looks as though both will attend. Bumstead has been the Art Director for a half-dozen of Eastwood's films and has been, as a result, a major creative force on the mise en scene for Clint Eastwood's America. At the conclusion of a recent TV special by Hollywood to raise funds for the NYC fallen, Clint Eastwood was chosen to summarize and conclude; like JohnWayne before him, Eastwood epitomizes theAmerican spirit for so many in our time. The goal of our AHA panel will be to define and explore the many...