American Culture

Selling the Past: Levi's as an Agent of Consumptive Mass Culture

by Ben Plache

The Civil Rights Movement and American Television in the 1960s

by Nadeem Fayaz

The American Revolutionary War

by Mohammed Amine Belbachir

Dear Second semester students, and others whom are concerned with "The American Culture" subject. I conducted a research on "The American Revolutionary War", and i'd like to share it with you, due to its extreme relevancy to the American History. So,hopefully you'll enjoy it, and learn something as well.

Conventions and intentions: Speech Act Theory in an intercultural context

by Gregory Bornmann

Journal of Kibi International University, 4, 199-208. March 1994.

An ideological critique of speech act theory may help us to understand some of the differences that exist between... more An ideological critique of speech act theory may help us to understand some of the differences that exist between American and Japanese communicative contexts. Cross-cultural studies of particular speech acts suggest an ongoing conflict between politeness and sincerity, convention and intention. Convention and intention are logically incompatible, as they can offer conflicting explanations for the same utterance. But as Derrida (1977) demonstrates, determinations of meaning oscillate unstoppably between these two models. The model which is emphasized will vary from context to context, and from culture to culture. We may infer th at the Japanese interpret many speech acts by reference to social conventions, with little regard for sincerity. However , we may also infer that Americans, focusing on intention, often have an idealized and therefore unrealistic view of their own speech behavior due to what Pratt (1986) calls "the ideology of sincerity:'

[Non-refereed Op-ed] Whose Arms Will Embrace You? The United States and the Beijing Consensus

by Amarnath Amarasingam

The United States is increasingly playing a game of subtle communication in the international arena. I suspect we had... more The United States is increasingly playing a game of subtle communication in the international arena. I suspect we had a passing glimpse of this at the 19th Session of the Human Rights Council, which gathered in Geneva last month. The question is: who is the United States talking to and what is it trying to say?

"An Art That Won't Behave": Film and the Seven Arts, 1907-1921

by Michael Devine

American Literature 84.1 (March 2012): 89-117

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to... more In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to transform the cinema into an indigenous art free from European influence. Precisely because the cinema was “an art that won't behave,” as the journal's first essay on film put it, it depended on the arts as tutor texts in the effort to restrain sensory disorder and reinvigorate communal life. Wholly absent from critical treatments that see film as a model for the most kinetic modernist practices, the journal provides entry to a richly interdisciplinary history of American cinema: in the critical writings and poetry of the journal's contributors, including James Oppenheim, Waldo Frank, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Babette Deutsch, and in the works of artists close to the journal—John Sloan's painting Movies, Five Cents (1907) and Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's abstract film Manhatta (1921). Imagined as a shelter from the most dispiriting forces of urban-industrial modernity, the cinema was at once embraced, challenged, and idealized by these artists who practiced what Wanda Corn has called a “transcendent modernism.”

Americanasana (review essay on history of yoga in America)

by Jared Farmer

Special attention given to Mark Singleton's YOGA BODY, Stefanie Syman's THE SUBTLE BODY, and Robert Love's THE GREAT OOM.

Changing the Sound and Image of Commercial Country Music: The John Rich Effect

by David Pruett

For presentation at Society for American Music annual meeting,
March 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina

In his seminal study, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (1997), sociologist Richard Peterson emphasizes... more In his seminal study, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (1997), sociologist Richard Peterson emphasizes the structural arrangements in which musical artists work, i.e. their distinct social system, while deemphasizing the role of innovation in the contributions of a few select people.  Using Nashville artist, producer, songwriter, music publisher, and television personality John Rich as a case study, my research takes a different approach from Peterson, examining instead how a single individual who, while working within Nashville’s commercial structure, has contributed to significant change in the system’s output, 2004-2011.

I emphasize this time frame because it marks a period of dramatic change in both the sound and image of commercial country music. This is evidenced by the sudden popularity in 2004 of Big & Rich (John Rich and Kenny Alphin), Gretchen Wilson, whom Rich discovered and produced, and the MuzikMafia that Rich co-founded and that Country Music Television (CMT) identified as the number-one hit of the year. Rich has since charted forty Billboard Top Forty country singles as a songwriter, ten albums as a recording artist, and eleven Top Ten albums as a producer, and has been featured on a variety of hit television shows, including Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice, whose fourth season he won in May 2011. Drawing upon extensive interviews with the artist himself, this paper explores Rich’s influence on Nashville’s contemporary scene, contextualizing his frequently underrated cultural and historical significance to the ongoing development of commercial country music.

Review of Jonathan Auerbach, Dark Borders: Film Noir and American Citizenship

by Matt Tierney

Published in Film Criticism 36:2 (2011).

А. Скромницкий. В. Талах. Энциклопедия доколумбовой Америки. Часть 1. Южная Америка. Том 2. Источники XVI-XVII веков по истории Южной Америки: Хроники. Документы.

by Alejandro Skromnitsky

A. Skromnitsky (editor). V. Talakh (editor).
The Encyclopedia of pre-Columbian America. Part 1. South America. Vol 2. Cronicas and documents of the XVI-XVII centuries about South America. / Ed. A. Skromnitsky, V. Talakh. - Kiev: Blok.NOT, 2012. - 1335 p.

Скромницкий, А. (редактор-составитель), Талах, В. (редактор).
Энциклопедия доколумбовой Америки. Часть 1. Южная Америка. Том 2. Источники XVI-XVII веков по истории Южной Америки: Хроники. Документы. / под ред. А. Скромницкого. — Киев: Blok.NOT, 2012. — 1335 с.
ISBN 978-966-XXXX-XX-X


© А. Скромницкий, 2012,
перевод с испанского и английского, статьи, составление, редактирование, оформление, комментарии

© В.Н. Талах, 2012,
перевод, статьи, редактирование, комментарии

© В. Тюленева, 2012,
перевод, статья

© различные авторы, 2012,
статьи

Детектив величиною с континент. Именно так можно охарактеризовать эпоху завоевания Нового света европейцами, и... more Детектив величиною с континент. Именно так можно охарактеризовать эпоху завоевания Нового света европейцами, и прочесть этот «детектив» помогут документы, включенные в данное издание украинскими историками и переводчиками А. Скромницким и В. Талахом.
Во второй том первой части «Энциклопедии доколумбовой Америки» вошло большинство доступных на русском языке источников по истории Южной Америки XVI-XVII веков, в которых отражены все стороны жизни индейцев, даны описания индейских обществ, их обычаев, нравов, традиций, военного дела, а также подробно изложена политическая, социально-экономическая история.
Источники поданы в книге в хронологическом порядке: это позволит понять логику конкисты, степень проникновения европейцев в индейский мир и обратного влияния «индейского» на представителей Старого Света.
Книга рассчитана на студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей исторических факультетов высших учебных заведений, а также всех тех, кто интересуется историей Южной Америки (Аргентина, Боливия, Бразилия, Венесуэла, Колумбия, Панама, Парагвай, Перу, Чили, Эквадор), эпохой Великих географических открытий, завоеванием Нового Света и доколумбовыми цивилизациями, в частности инками, чибча-муисками и другими менее известными народами.

Review: Greil Marcus / Werner Sollors (eds.): A New Literary History of America, Cambridge, MA / London: Harvard University Press 2009, XXVII + 1095 S., ISBN 978-0-674-03594-2

by John Andreas Fuchs

In: sehepunkte 10 (2010), Nr. 6

“Private Sch♥♥l … For Girls: Young Female Theatergoes, Early-80s Teen Sex Comedies, and the "Make-out Movie”

by Richard Nowell

Forthcoming

This essay counters the prevailing notions that teenaged males were targeted at the expense of other audiences during... more This essay counters the prevailing notions that teenaged males were targeted at the expense of other audiences during the "New Hollywood" years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and that the commercial potential of young female Americans was only fully recognized by the culture industries in the mid-90s, by showing that, in terms of production, content, and promotion, the New Hollywood youth market was so heavily underwritten by a date-movie mentality that even the period's sexually explicit R-rated teenpics - notably raucious teen sex comedies and melodramatic tales of adolescent sexual awakening - were conceived for and pitched aggressively at teenage girls and young women.

Fear and Loathing at the Cineplex: Gender Differences In Descriptions and Perceptions of Slasher Films

by Justin Nolan

"American Stiob: Or, what late-socialist aesthetics of parody reveal about contemporary political culture in the West"

by Alexei Yurchak Алексей Юрчак

co-authored with Dominic Boyer
Cultural Anthropology, v. 25, n. 2, May 2010.

visuals for the paper: http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/322

“‘Top Dog,’ ‘Black Threat,’ and ‘Japanese Cats’: The Impact of the White-Black Binary on Asian American Identity.” Radical Philosophy Review 1.2 (1998): 98-125.

by Brian Locke

“Strange Fruit: White, Black, and Asian in the WWII Combat Film Bataan.” Journal of Popular Film and Television. 36.1 (Spring 2008): 9-20.

by Brian Locke

US cultural involvement and its association with suicidal behavior among youth in the Dominican Republic

by Elián Cabrera-Nguyen

published in American Journal of Public Health:

Peña, J.B., Zayas L.H., Cabrera-Nguyen, P., & Vega W.A. (2011). US cultural involvement and its association with suicidal behavior among youths in the Dominican Republic. American Journal of Public Health. e-View Ahead of Print. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300344

Refer to link to access the article. APHA is copyright holder.

Incompatibility of Sex Trafficking Law and Practice

by Judy Villeneuve

Judy Villeneuve - Final Paper
The New School for Social Engagement, GPIA
Displacement Asylum and Migration – Fall 2011
with Professor Graeme Rogers, PhD

The following critical analysis explores why human trafficking continues to grow unabated. In an effort to illuminate... more The following critical analysis explores why human trafficking continues to grow unabated. In an effort to illuminate the reason for current ineffective legal initiatives, this paper will focus on international and domestic laws directed at combating the traffic of women.  Relevant law will be introduced, reviewed and compared to discuss how the infectivity of international law is a direct result of the domestic political priorities, economic realities, and social phenomena which prevent U.N. member states from enforcing anti-trafficking conventions into their government legal frameworks.

Corporate power and the market: Automotive performance and the automobile industry

by Alan Listiak

Private Taste and Public Accomplishment: Women and Music in the Early Republic

by Glenda Goodman

Colloquium presentation at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and
Culture

Late eighteenth-century Americans were ambivalent about feminine musical accomplishment. When young women played... more Late eighteenth-century Americans were ambivalent about feminine musical accomplishment. When young women played music, was it a sign of the new nation’s cultural sophistication, or was it aristocratic pretension? This essay explores the intellectual and musical climate of the Early Republic through a unique manuscript source: the commonplace book into which the well-educated New Yorker and senator’s wife, Catharine Akerly Mitchill, copied music for her personal use. Copying music by hand, a widespread practice in this era, represented an enormous yet undervalued investment of time and effort. The repertory that women such as Catharine Akerly Mitchill copied and performed was largely sentimental songs in the galant style taken from British comic operas, and connoted European decadence and frivolous self-indulgence. Combined, the two factors—labor and aesthetics—provide crucial clues to understanding why women’s musical accomplishment was controversial.