Researching American Culture PDF Download

Author: Conrad Phillip Kottak
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472080243
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Applies anthropological techniques to the study of contemporary American behavior

Author: Christopher J Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252095049
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The Creolization of American Culture examines the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, and biography of the painter William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) as a lens through which to see the multiethnic antebellum world that gave birth to blackface minstrelsy. As a young man living in the multiethnic working-class community of New York's Lower East Side, Mount took part in the black-white musical interchange his paintings depict. An avid musician and tune collector as well as an artist, he was the among the first to depict vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers precisely and sympathetically. His close observations and meticulous renderings provide rich evidence of performance techniques and class-inflected paths of musical apprenticeship that connected white and black practitioners. Looking closely at the bodies and instruments Mount depicts in his paintings as well as other ephemera, Christopher J. Smith traces the performance practices of African American and Anglo-European music-and-dance traditions while recovering the sounds of that world. Further, Smith uses Mount's depictions of black and white music-making to open up fresh perspectives on cross-ethnic cultural transference in Northern and urban contexts, showing how rivers, waterfronts, and other sites of interracial interaction shaped musical practices by transporting musical culture from the South to the North and back. The "Africanization" of Anglo-Celtic tunes created minstrelsy's musical "creole synthesis," a body of melodic and rhythmic vocabularies, repertoires, tunes, and musical techniques that became the foundation of American popular music. Reading Mount's renderings of black and white musicians against a background of historical sites and practices of cross-racial interaction, Smith offers a sophisticated interrogation and reinterpretation of minstrelsy, significantly broadening historical views of black-white musical exchange.

Author: Michael Kammen
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307827712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

Author: Lester C. Olson
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 141294919X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Visual images, artifacts, and performances play a powerful part in shaping U.S. culture. To understand the dynamics of public persuasion, students must understand this "visual rhetoric." This rich anthology contains 20 exemplary studies of visual rhetoric, exploring an array of visual communication forms, from photographs, prints, television documentary, and film to stamps, advertisements, and tattoos. In material original to this volume, editors Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope present a critical perspective that links visuality and rhetoric, locates the study of visual rhetoric within the disciplinary framework of communication, and explores the role of the visual in the cultural space of the United States. Enhanced with these critical editorial perspectives, Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture provides a conceptual framework for students to understand and reflect on the role of visual communication in the cultural and public sphere of the United States. Key Features and Benefits Five broad pairs of rhetorical action—performing and seeing; remembering and memorializing; confronting and resisting; commodifying and consuming; governing and authorizing—introduce students to the ways visual images and artifacts become powerful tools of persuasion Each section opens with substantive editorial commentary to provide readers with a clear conceptual framework for understanding the rhetorical action in question, and closes with discussion questions to encourage reflection among the essays The collection includes a range of media, cultures, and time periods; covers a wide range of scholarly approaches and methods of handling primary materials; and attends to issues of gender, race, sexuality and class Contributors include: Thomas Benson; Barbara Biesecker; Carole Blair; Dan Brouwer; Dana Cloud; Kevin Michael DeLuca; Anne Teresa Demo; Janis L. Edwards; Keith V. Erickson; Cara A. Finnegan; Bruce Gronbeck; Robert Hariman; Christine Harold; Ekaterina Haskins; Diane S. Hope; Judith Lancioni; Margaret R. LaWare; John Louis Lucaites; Neil Michel; Charles E. Morris III; Lester C. Olson; Shawn J. Parry-Giles; Ronald Shields; John M. Sloop; Nathan Stormer; Reginald Twigg and Carol K. Winkler "This book significantly advances theory and method in the study of visual rhetoric through its comprehensive approach and wise separations of key conceptual components." —Julianne H. Newton, University of Oregon

Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226251454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
Our nation began with the simple phrase, “We the People.” But who were and are “We”? Who were we in 1776, in 1865, or 1968, and is there any continuity in character between the we of those years and the nearly 300 million people living in the radically different America of today? With Made in America, Claude S. Fischer draws on decades of historical, psychological, and social research to answer that question by tracking the evolution of American character and culture over three centuries. He explodes myths—such as that contemporary Americans are more mobile and less religious than their ancestors, or that they are more focused on money and consumption—and reveals instead how greater security and wealth have only reinforced the independence, egalitarianism, and commitment to community that characterized our people from the earliest years. Skillfully drawing on personal stories of representative Americans, Fischer shows that affluence and social progress have allowed more people to participate fully in cultural and political life, thus broadening the category of “American” —yet at the same time what it means to be an American has retained surprising continuity with much earlier notions of American character. Firmly in the vein of such classics as The Lonely Crowd and Habits of the Heart—yet challenging many of their conclusions—Made in America takes readers beyond the simplicity of headlines and the actions of elites to show us the lives, aspirations, and emotions of ordinary Americans, from the settling of the colonies to the settling of the suburbs.

Author: Christopher N. Phillips
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404893
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This book investigates the concept of what it means to be 'epic' and its form in American life, literature, and art from the country's early days.

Author: Scott E. Casper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
CD-ROM contains: Digital image archive of books, magazines, manuscripts, technologies, and readers to accompany text.

Author: Ruben Molina
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780896729964
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Although it concentrates on Chicano soul music in San Antonio and the Los Angeles area, this book also covers the music scene in Albuquerque, Phoenix, Dallas, El Paso, and other locations.

Author: Carol Delaney
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118868862
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
The third edition of Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, the highly praised innovative approach to introducing aspects of cultural anthropology to students, features a series of revisions, updates, and new material. Offers a refreshing alternative to introductory anthropology texts by challenging students to think in new ways and apply cultural learnings to their own lives Chapters explore key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, the body, food, and time, and provide an array of cultural examples in which to examine them Incorporates new material reflecting the authors’ research in Malawi, New England, and Spain Takes account of the latest information on such topical concerns as nuclear waste, sports injuries, the World Trade Center memorial, the food pyramid, fashion trends, and electronic media Includes student exercises, selected reading and additional suggested readings

Author: Kurt Edward Kemper
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025203466X
Category : Cold War
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Waging the Cold War's ideological battles on the gridiron