Popular Culture

This volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopediaprovides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader.

Contains fifty-eight articles that provide information about various forms, genres, or themes of popular culture, and includes illustrations, photo essays, a chronological survey of each topic's history, and a comprehensive index.

This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. A timeline section covers events connected with the development of our celebrity culture and will be especially useful to younger readers who have not lived through the entire period covered by the book. An extensive bibliography of works dealing with celebrity is provided to encourage further reading and examination of the topic

This book offers a critical look at celebrity and celebrities throughout history, emphasizing the development of celebrity as a concept, its relevance to individuals, and the role of the public and celebrities in popular culture.

Popular culture has been a powerful force in the United States, resonating within the society as a whole and at the same time connecting disparate and even hostile constituencies. The novels of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the theater and minstrel shows of the mid-19th century, movies and the introduction of television and computers in the 20th century are the building blocks that Jim Cullen uses to show how unique and vibrant cultural forms overcame initial resistance and enabled historically marginalized groups to gain access to the fruits of society and recognition from the mainstream.

Popular Culture in American History collects the most widely cited and important writings on three hundred years of American popular culture. Each of the ten essays serves as a case study of a particular moment, issue, or form of popular culture, from seventeenth-century chapbooks to hip hop. Pedagogical features include further reading lists, contextualizing editorial introductions, discussion questions and chronologies of key events.

This book sets out to show that modern-day fears about the supposed moral threat posed to the young by violent movies or interactive computer games have their roots in nineteenth-century anxieties about the ill effects of popular forms of amusement on the "children of the lower classes." Penny theatres, "penny dreadfuls," dime novels, gangster films, horror comics. All these are discussed, evaluated, and placed in context. A postscript refers to "video nasties," violence on television, "gangsta rap," and computer games, each in turn playing the role of "folk devils" which must be causing delinquency. The book argues that since "moral panics" over popular culture are perennial, this tells us a great deal more about adult anxieties--fear of the future, technological change, and the erosion of moral absolutes--than about the nature of juvenile misbehavior.