American Popular Culture: Historical and Pedagogical Perspectives

American pop culture is no longer merely popular. It has penetrated to such deep-lying cultural and social structures that persons dream and fantasize in pop cultural terms. It is the new reality which increasingly measures all else in the social world. The present volume consists of original essays written expressly for the 2005 Conference of the American Pop Culture Association. They fall under three headings of the Association's lead: History of Pop Culture contains papers of a distinct historical dimension pointing out that although pop culture may become an autonomous force, it exists in a context of space and time. The Teaching of Pop Culture is critical because American pop culture has become so ubiquitous, classroom educators use it to present other unrelated materials, e.g., from history, economics, politics and sociology. Not even high culture such as Classic Literature is immune to pop culture treatment. Utilizing classic literature performs a double function of popularizing high culture while also paying hommage to it.