Professor Redman's new article "‘Have you ever been on the bridge? It has a heartbeat’: oral histories of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, 1933-1989" recently appeared in the UK journal Oral History. The article uses newly recorded oral history interviews, archival materials, and secondary sources to reinterpret how bridges in the San Francisco bay area evolved as popular symbols from their original construction to more recent events. This article explores the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge as elements of the cultural memory of Northern California. Focusing on newly-recorded oral history interviews at the University of California, Berkeley, this article argues that the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge evolved as cultural symbols in the decades following their opening. Both bridges emerged as symbols for the region, but each with distinctive and different meanings, including humanity’s triumph over nature, memorialisation of returning troops from war, disaster and site of tragedy. (Link to article forthcoming)
"This essay argues that meanings and interpretive identities socially connected to the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge, germinated during their construction, continually evolved over time and were influenced by varied factors.5 While the Golden Gate Bridge emerged as an important national, architectural symbol, the Bay Bridge also became enveloped in meaning, generally coming to be seen as the ‘working class’ or more prac- tical bridge. Furthermore, the Bay Bridge, we learned when interviewing over a dozen people, spoke to trans- figuring meanings connected to many other bridges in California, the United States and around the world."