Recasting American Liberty

Through courtroom dramas from 1865 to 1920 Recasting American Liberty offers a dramatic reconsideration of the critical role railroads and their urban counterpart streetcars played in transforming the conditions of individual liberty at the dawn of the 20th century. The three-part narrative focusing on the law of accidental injury nervous shock and racial segregation in public transit captures Americans'' journey from a cultural and legal ethos celebrating manly independence and autonomy to one that recognized and sought to protect the individual against the corporate power modern technology and modern urban space.