America Under Construction: Boundaries and Identities in Popular Culture (Studies in American Popular History and Culture)

This eclectic collection of original essays explores the role of popular culture in the creation of gender, class, regional, national, racial, and institutional identities in the U.S. The essays address such diverse topics as popular music, graffiti, funerary fashion and the treatment of the dead, government hearings on rock lyrics, gendered advertising, and professional wrestling. The collection offers theoretical insights in a number of areas of cultural and social theory, including: the history of gender relations in the U.S.; the evolution of jazz from a popular to an elite musical form; the interactions of race, class, and criminality; the role of graffiti in defining public and private space in an urban setting; mortuary practices as nationalism; the relationship between institutional and national identities, and the dialectical relationship of resistance and co-opting in subcultures. An introduction and bibliography enhance the collection.