Profiles of Popular Culture: A Reader

by Ray B. Browne (Editor)

From Hank Williams to hip hop, Aunt Jemima to the Energizer Bunny, scrap-booking to NASCAR racing, Profiles of Popular Culture cuts a generous swath across what is perhaps the fastest growing discipline of the past several decades.  Edited by a pioneer in the field, this volume invites readers to reflect on a diverse sampling of modern myths, icons, archetypes, rituals, and pastimes.  Adopting an inclusive approach, editor Ray B. Browne has mined both scholarly and mainstream media to bring together penetrating essays on fads and fashions, sports fandom, the shaping of body image, aesthetic surgery, the marketing of food, vacationing and sightseeing, toys and games, genre fiction, post-9/11 entertainment, and much more.  Like Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause's Popular An Introductory Text , this book opens critical doors into the study of popular culture-and does so within a fresh context that includes points of reference both established and new.

410 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 2005

Reviews

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confession: I almost never read introductions to nonfiction books, and I never read them in novels (after a crucial plot point in David Copperfield was spoiled for me in one Critical Edition). This book is about 2/3 introduction - almost every (very short) essay is introduced by a piece of similar length. Actually, calling them essays is a little generous, a lot of them are pieces from USA Today and similar publications.

The essays are followed by discussion questions in case, after a pedantic introduction and a simple article written at a sixth grade level, you still aren't able to figure out what the darned thing's about. Skip this one.