Varieties of Urban Experience The American City and the Practice of Culture

by Borer, Michael Ian; Lofland, Lyn H.; Williams, Rhys H.; Henry Benham, Lisa Carolyn; Nesbit, Thomas; Schrank, Sarah L.; Sekhon, Sharon; Keogan, Kevin; Krase, Jerome; Monti, Daniel J., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780761833864
• ISBN10: 0761833862
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-24
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

Cities play an important role in contemporary American culture as sites of commerce, trade, entertainment, and the arts. We can learn a lot about what Americans believe and how they act upon those beliefs by looking at the ways our cultural dramas are continually played out on the city's stage. Without relying on one theoretical, disciplinary, or ideological framework, the essays in this volume decipher some of these experiences and offer fresh analytical insights.

Table of Contents

Foreword	v
Lyn H. Lofland
Acknowledgements	vii
Cultural Analysis and the American Urban Landscape	1	(20)
Michael Ian Borer
Religion in the City: Confronting the ``Other'' Every Day	21	(18)
Rhys H. Williams
Community, Commerce, and Consumption: Businesses as Civic Associations	39	(24)
Michael Ian Borer
Daniel J. Monti, Jr.
The Occupation of New Orleans: Reactive Performance and the Creation of Place	63	(18)
Lisa Carolyn Henry Benham
The Chrysler Building as Sacred Space in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3	81	(16)
Thomas Nesbit
Artland and Barnsdall Park: Cultural Politics, Public Art and Competing Visions of Civic Space in 1920s Los Angeles	97	(14)
Sarah L. Schrank
The Los Angeles Anti-Myth and Southern California Sense of Place: Navigating A Mediated Landscape	111	(22)
Sharon Sekhon
Between the Past and the Future: The ``Present'' Politics of U.S. Immigration	133	(22)
Kevin Keogan
Italian American Urban Landscapes: Images of Social and Cultural Capital	155	(26)
Jerome Krase
Lost in Boston	181	(16)
Daniel J. Monti, Jr.
About the Contributors	197	(4)
Index	201