"Includes numerous signed essays, alphabetically arranged, and written or reviewed by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries cover topics and persons in major areas of popular culture: film; music; print culture; social life; sports; television and radio; and art and performance "
The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the "fireside chats" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history,... the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples.
The Boomers are the generation that changed everything, from economics to politics to popular culture. This book examines the myriad ways and long-reaching consequences of the now fully "grown up" Baby Boomer generation on America. Once upon a time, the members of the Baby Boomer generation were young, idealistic, and hungry to change the world. And they did create sweeping, irreversible changes throughout American society--but probably not in the ways their younger selves imagined they would.
This book provides a stimulating account of the dominant cultural forms of 1950s America: fiction and poetry; theatre and performance; film and television; music and radio; and the visual arts. Through detailed commentary and focused case studies of influential texts and events - from Invisible Man to West Side Story, from Disneyland to the Seattle World's Fair, from Rear Window to The Americans- the book examines the way in which modernism and the cold war offer two frames of reference for understanding the trajectory of postwar culture.
Although now sometimes called "America's classical music," jazz has not always been accorded favorable appellations. Accurate though these encomiums may be, they obscure the complex and fractious history of jazz's reception in the U.S. Developing out of the African American cultural tradition, jazz has always been variously understood by black and white audiences. This penetrating study of America's attitudes toward jazz focuses on a momentous period in postwar history--from the end of World War II to the beginning of the Black Power Movement.
This book charts the changing complexion of American culture in one of the most culturally vibrant of twentieth-century decades. It provides a vivid account of the major cultural forms of 1960s America - music and performance; film and television; fiction and poetry; art and photography - as well as influential texts, trends and figures of the decade: from Norman Mailer to Susan Sontag; from Muhammad Ali's anti-war protests to Tom Lehrer's stand-up comedy; from Bob Dylan to Rachel Carson; and from Pop Art to photojournalism.
The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on Americans' understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this boldly inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O. J. Simpson's criminal trial.
The 1970s was one of the most culturally vibrant periods in American history. This book discusses the dominant cultural forms of the 1970s - fiction and poetry; television and drama; film and visual culture; popular music and style; public space and spectacle - and the decade's most influential practitioners and texts: from Toni Morrison to All in the Family, from Diane Arbus to Bruce Springsteen, from M.A.S.H.to Taxi Driver and from disco divas to Vietnam protesters.
From nineteenth-century American art and literature to comic books of the twentieth century and afterwards, Chad A. Barbour examines in From Daniel Boone to Captain America the transmission of the ideals and myths of the frontier and playing Indian in American culture.
Not long after the Allied victories in Europe and Japan, America's attention turned from world war to cold war. The perceived threat of communism had a definite and significant impact on all levels of American popular culture, from government propaganda films like Red Nightmare in Time magazine to Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This work examines representations of anti-communist sentiment in American popular culture from the early fifties through the mid-sixties.
When the actor Ted Danson appeared in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams to New York City's then mayor, David Dinkins. Through a far-reaching exploration of the long overlooked legacy of minstrelsy--cross-racial impersonations or "race changes"--throughout modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism, she documents the indebtedness of "mainstream" artists to African-American culture, and explores the deeply conflicted psychology of white guilt.
How midcentury periodicals that fostered an indelible middle-class ideal for American women also confronted the happy homemaker stereotype Read by millions of women each month, such mainstream periodicals as Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's delivered powerful messages about women's roles and behavior. In 1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique accused the genre of helping to create what Friedan termed "the problem that has no name" -- that is, presenting women as stereotypical happy homemakers with limited interests and abilities.
Focus is on the relationship between American society and movies and filmmaking in the United States from the late 19th century through the present.
This provocative history of early cold war America recreates a time when World War III seemed imminent. Headlines were dominated by stories of Soviet slave laborers, brainwashed prisoners in Korea, and courageous escapees like Oksana Kasenkina who made a "leap for freedom" from the Soviet Consulate in New York. Full of fascinating and forgotten stories, Cold War Captives explores a central dimension of American culture and politics--the postwar preoccupation with captivity.
Focused on a popular topic, this exciting collection gives students and teachers substantial material for discussion and research. The three-volume set shows how television has reflected and influenced American society and culture throughout its history, covering both positive and negative effects.
This 3 volume set highlights the writings, recordings, and visual works produced by countercultural movements to educate and incite action in all eras of U.S. history. The term "counterculture" refers to any intentional departure from conventional values and practices or the dominant lifestyles of the day.
From the Diggers seizing St. George Hill in 1649 to Hacktivists staging virtual sit-ins in the 21st century, from the retributive fantasies of Robin Hoods to those of gangsta rappers, culture has long been used as a political weapon. This expansive and carefully crafted reader brings together many of the classic texts that help to define culture as a tool of resistance.
After debuting in 1938, Superman soon became an American icon. But why has he maintained his iconic status for nearly 80 years? And how can he still be an American icon when the country itself has undergone so much change?
Cool. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture.The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style.
Louisa May Alcott's theater of time / Marlowe Daly-Galeano -- Queering the Katy series: disability, emotion, and imagination in the novels of Susan Coolidge / Eva Lupold -- Working girl: the value of girl labor in the five Little Peppers book series / Christiane E. Farnan -- A spectacle of girls: L. Frank Baum, women reporters, and the man behind the screen in early twentieth-century America / Paige Gray -- Nancy Drew's shadow: Trixie Belden and a case for imperfection / Michael Cornelius -- Bob-Whites of the Belden-Wheeler detective agency: gender, class, and race in the Trixie Belden series, 1948-1986 / Carolyn Cocca -- Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden: girl detectives, role models, and feminist icons / Nichole Bogarosh -- Cherry Ames: a new woman for the 1940s / Linda Simon
Through the perspectives of selected best-selling novels from the end of World War II to the end of the 20th century--including The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Godfather, Jaws, Beloved, The Silence of the Lambs, and Jurassic Park--this book examines the crucial issues the U.S. was experiencing during those decades. These novels represent the voices of popular conversations, as Americans considered issues of family, class, racism and sexism, feminism, economic ambition, sexual violence, war, law, religion and science.
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