Popular Culture Theory And Methodology

by Hinds, Harold E., Jr.; Motz, Marilyn Ferris; Nelson, Angela M. S.

• ISBN13: 9780879728717
• ISBN10: 087972871X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-03-17
• Publisher: Popular Pr of Bowling Green State

Summary

Since its birth in the 1960s, the study of popular culture has come a long way in defining its object, its purpose, and its place in academe. Emerging along the margins of a scholarly establishment that initially dismissed anything popular as unworthy of serious study-trivial, formulaic, easily digestible, escapist-early practitioners of the discipline stubbornly set about creating the theoretical and methodological framework upon which a deeper understanding could be founded. Through seminal essays that document the maturation of the field as it gradually made headway toward legitimacy,Popular Culture Theory and Methodologyprovides students of popular culture with both the historical context and the critical apparatus required for further growth. For all its progress, the study of popular culture remains a site of healthy questioning. What exactly is popular culture? How should it be studied? What forces come together in producing, disseminating, and consuming it? Is it always conformist, or has it the power to subvert, refashion, resist, and destabilize the status quo? How does it differ from folk culture, mass culture, commercial culture? Is the line between "high" and "low" merely arbitrary? Do the popular arts have a distinctive aesthetics? This collection offers a wide range of responses to these and similar questions. Edited by Harold E. Hinds, Jr., Marilyn F. Motz, and Angela M. S. Nelson,Popular Culture Theory and Methodologycharts some of the key turning points in the "culture wars" and leads us through the central debates in this fast developing discipline. Authors of the more than two dozen studies, several of which are newly published here include John Cawelti, Russel B. Nye, Ray B. Browne, Fred E. H. Schroeder, John Fiske, Lawrence Mintz, David Feldman, Roger Rollin, Harold Schechter, S. Elizabeth Bird, and Harold E. Hinds, Jr. A valuable bibliography completes the volume.

Author Biography

    Harold E. Hinds, Jr. is professor of history and director of Latin American area studies at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Marilyn F. Motz is associate professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University. Angela M. S. Nelson is associate professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University and chair of the department.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(6)
Angela M. S. Nelson
I. The Pioneers: What is Popular Culture?	7	(40)
Masscult & Midcult	9	(6)
Dwight Macdonald
Popular Culture: Notes Toward a Definition	15	(8)
Ray B. Browne
Notes for an Introduction to a Discussion of Popular Culture	23	(7)
Russel B. Nye
Revolution in Popular Culture	30	(17)
Peter Burke
II. Beyond the Frontier: Post-1960s and '70s Answers to What is Popular Culture?	47	(106)
The Discovery of Popular Culture Before Printing	49	(6)
Fred E. H. Schroeder
Synchronic vs Diachronic Popular Culture Studies and the Old English Elegy	55	(7)
Tim D. P. Lally
On the Nature and Functions of Popular Culture	62	(13)
Gary L. Harmon
Popular Culture as the New Humanities	75	(10)
Ray B. Browne
The New Validation of Popular Culture: Sense and Sentimentality in Academia	85	(22)
Michael Schudson
Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the Classic American Science Fiction Short Story	107	(11)
John Huntington
Understanding Popular Culture	118	(9)
John Fiske
The Joke(r) is on Us: The End of Popular Culture Studies	127	(26)
Barry W. Sarchett
III. Macro How-to-Do-It Approaches to the Study of Popular Culture	153	(28)
Notes Toward a Methodology of Popular Culture Study	155	(8)
Lawrence E. Mintz
A Holistic Approach to the Study of Popular Culture: Context, Text, Audience, and Recoding	163	(18)
Harold E. Hinds, Jr.
IV. Formula: A Pioneering Theory	181	(48)
The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature	183	(9)
John G. Cawelti
Formalism and Popular Culture	192	(22)
David N. Feldman
An Economic Perspective on Formula in Popular Culture	214	(15)
David Paul Nord
V. Popular Culture, a Unique Aesthetics?	229	(80)
Against Evaluation: The Role of the Critic of Popular Culture	231	(13)
Roger B. Rollin
A Critical Analysis of Roger B. Rollin's ``Against Evaluation''	244	(16)
John Shelton Lawrence
Son of ``Against Evaluation'': A Reply to John Shelton Lawrence	260	(6)
Roger B. Rollin
With the Benefit of Hindsight: Popular Culture Criticism	266	(5)
John G. Cawelti
New Experimental Aesthetics and Popular Culture	271	(38)
Dan Ash
VI. Popular Culture and Folk Culture	309	(48)
The Folklore Popular Culture Continuum	311	(2)
Peter Narvaez
Martin Laba
The Bosom Serpent	313	(5)
Harold Schechter
Contemporary Legends and Popular Culture: ``It's the Real Thing''	318	(26)
Paul Smith
Cultural Studies as Confluence: The Convergence of Folklore and Media Studies	344	(13)
S. Elizabeth Bird
VII. Popularity	357	(50)
Popularity: The Sine Qua Non of Popular Culture	359	(12)
Harold E. Hinds, Jr.
Popularity: How to Make a Key Concept Count in Building a Theory of Popular Culture	371	(11)
Harold E. Hinds, Jr.
The Development and Stages of Popular Culture: A Case Study of Tokugawa and Meiji Japan	382	(25)
Ling Chan Becker
Harold E. Hinds, Jr.
VIII. Selective Bibliography of Additional Work on Popular Culture Theory and Methodology	407