 |
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| Color Adjustment.
Dir. Marlon Riggs. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1991.
|
| |
Documentary on the evolution of
the potrayal of blacks in television. |
|
| Ethnic Notions.
Dir. Marlon Riggs. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1987.
|
| |
Documentary on the history of black prejudice. |
|
|
Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s
House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1998.
|
| |
Brilliant
interpretation of a major Chicano art retrospective that raises
key questions about the construction of high art vs. popular art
among marginalized ethno-racialized groups. |
|
|
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the Presidency: A History
and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. |
| |
Classic study of how advertising techniques have shaped the
American electoral process. |
|
|
Lears, T.J. Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History
of American Advertising. New York: Basic Books, 1994. |
| |
Richly detailed study of the rise of American advertising in
the context of later 19th and early 20th century American culture.
|
|
|
Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
|
| |
The most comprehensive study to date on Asian Americans in pop
culture, covering two centuries and many different cultural
forms. |
|
|
Lefèvre, Pascal and Dierick Charles, eds. Forging a
New Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century. Brussel: Vub Brussels University Press, 1999. |
| |
Establishes the historical background necessary to understand
the origin and nature of the modern comic strip. Includes essays
on rise of comics in particular countries, among them England,
Spain, Germany, and the US, essays from prominent artists in
the genre, as well as a useful timeline on the development of
the comic strip. |
|
|
Levine, Lawrence. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural
Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. |
| |
Highly influential study of the formation of our current split
of “high” and “popular” culture in the later
19th, early 20th century. |
|
|
Lipsitz, George. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American
Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. |
| |
Innovative study of relations between mass-produced pop culture
and the realities of communal memory dimly present in those
commodified productions. |
|
|
Lutz, Catherine and Jane L. Collins. Reading National Geographic.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
|
| |
Two visual anthropologists study the racial, gender, and international
politics of this influential journal. |
|
|
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock and
Roll Music. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. |
| |
The revised American Studies dissertation of one of America’s
foremost rock critics is a searching study of the gritty roots
of what has become glossy pop culture. |
|
|
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. |
| |
Very lucid, rich introduction to the history and visual and
verbal meaning making processes of comic books. The book itself
is done in brilliant comic book form. |
|
|
Nasaw, David. Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements.
New York, NY: Basic Books, 1993.
|
| |
Wide-ranging study of the culture industries of the early 20th
century, with particular emphasis on the role they played for
immigrant workers. |
|
|
Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure
in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Philadelphia, PN: Temple University Press, 1986. |
| |
Classic American Studies text, looking at the various forms
of early 20th century pop culture aimed at women from the working
class. |
|
|
———.
A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary
Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1997. |
| |
One of the few books that looks carefully at the construction
of “middle-brow” taste as exemplified in the book
of the month club’s efforts to provide enlightening reading.
|
|
|
Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture.
New York: Routledge, 1989.
|
| |
Important collection of essays tracing the various kinds of
analysis US intellectuals have made of popular culture over
the course of the 20th century. |
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