Title Public Culture : Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States

Published University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012

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Description 1 online resource Contents Preface : why public culture? / Marguerite S. Shaffer -- What is public culture? : agency and contested meaning in American culture : an introduction / Mary Kupiec Cayton -- pt I. Public action -- 1. Looking for the public in time and space : the case of the Los Angeles Plaza from the eighteenth century to the present / Mary P. Ryan -- 2. Remembrance, contestation, excavation : the work of memory in Oklahoma City, the Washita Battlefield, and the Tulsa Race Riot / Edward T. Linenthal -- 3. Public sentiments and the American remembrance of World War II / John Bodnar -- part II. Public image -- 4. Sponsorship and snake oil : medicine shows and contemporary public culture / Susan Strasser -- 5. Entertainment wars : television culture after 9/11 / Lynn Spigel -- 6. Screening pornography / Wendy Hui Kyong Chun -- part III. Public space -- 7. The Billboard war : gender, commerce, and public space / Catherine Gudis -- 8. The social space of shopping : mobilizing dreams for public culture / Sharon Zukin -- 9. Gates, barriers, and the rise of affinity : parsing public-private space in postindustrial America / Hal Rothman -- part IV. Public identity -- 10. To serve the living : the public and civic identity of African American funeral directors / Suzanne Smith -- 11. Denizenship as transnational practice / Rachel Ida Buff -- 12. The queen's mirrors : public identity and the process of transformation in Cincinnati, Ohio / Mary E. Frederickson -- Epilogue : pitfalls and promises : wither the "public" in America? / Sheila L. Croucher -- Notes -- List of contributors -- Index -- Acknowledgments Summary In the United States today many people are as likely to identify themselves by their ethnicity or region as by their nationality. In this country with its diversity and inequalities, can there be a shared public culture? Is there an unbridgeable gap between cultural variety and civic unity, or can public forms of expression provide an opportunity for Americans to come together as a people?InPublic Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses these questions while considering the state of American public culture over the past one hundred years. From medicine shows to the Internet, from the Los Angeles Plaza to the Las Vegas Strip, from the commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing to television programming after 9/11, public sights and scenes provide ways to negotiate new forms of belonging in a diverse, postmodern community. By analyzing these cultural phenomena, the essays in this volume reveal how mass media, consumerism, increased privatization of space, and growing political polarization have transformed public culture and the very notion of the American public. Focusing on four central themespublic action, public image, public space, and public identityand approaching shared culture from a range of disciplinesincluding mass communication, history, sociology, urban studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studiesPublic Cultureoffers refreshing perspectives on a subject of perennial significance Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Popular culture -- United States -- Congresses Political culture -- United States -- Congresses Cultural pluralism -- United States -- Congresses Democracy -- United States -- Congresses Community life -- United States -- Congresses Public spaces -- United States -- Congresses National characteristics, American -- Congresses Civilization Community life Cultural pluralism Democracy National characteristics, American Political culture Popular culture Public spaces Social conditions. SUBJECT United States -- Civilization -- Congresses United States -- Social conditions -- Congresses Subject United States Genre/Form Conference papers and proceedings. Form Electronic book ISBN 1283898187 9781283898188 9780812222029 0812222024 9780812206845 0812206843 0812240812 9780812240818

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