General & Miscellaneous American Art, Modern Aesthetics, United States History - Social Aspects, Social Aspects of Technology, Popular Culture - United States, Modern Art

Popular modernity in America

Name: Popular modernity in America
Author: Michael Thomas Carroll
ISBN: 9780791447147

by Michael Thomas Carroll

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Overview

Popular Modernity in America examines a broad range of related cultural and technological phenomena - from Bing Crosby to Ice Cube, from the invention of the telegraph to the celebratory heralding of the internet in the 1990s - that have helped shape American popular culture over the past 150 years. Throughout, it avoids the binaries that label popular culture as inherently liberatory or subtly oppressive, arguing instead for the triadic relationship of experience, technology, and myth, each of which has an active role to play in how we interact with popular culture.

This is an excellent book, gracefully written and scrupulously detailed. The range and sweep of Carrol's scholarship is impressive, and he manages to link such unlikely figures as Bing Crosby and the culture of contemporary Rap music in ways that surprise and delight the reader's imagination. The theoretical arguments throughout the book and the range of of topics are remarkable and refreshing. I consider this to be on eof the most ably interdisciplinary texts I've ever encountered.

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Examines a broad range of related cultural and technological phenomena, from Bing Crosby to the Internet, that have helped shape American popular culture over the past 150 years. Period discussed is from the 1840s to the 1980s, with a few forays into the 1990s. Discusses the relationship of experience, technology, and myth and their roles in how we interact with popular culture, with chapters on the American notion of space, radio broadcasting, concepts of time in film and television, and the parallel development of fascism and consumerism. A case study examines black American culture. Carroll teaches English at New Mexico Highlands University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)