American Culture in the 1960s Hardback - 2008 - 1st Edition

Twentieth-Century American Culture Series Editor: Martin Halliwell This academic series provides accessible but challenging studies of American culture in the twentieth century. Each title covers a specific decade and offers a clear overview of its dominant cultural forms and influential texts, discussing their historical impact and cultural legacy. Collectively the series reframes the notion of 'decade studies' through the prism of cultural production to rethink the ways in which decades are usually periodised. Broad contextual approaches to the particular decade are combined with textual case studies, focusing on themes of modernity, commerce, freedom, power, resistance, community, race, class, gender, sexuality, internationalism, war, technology and popular culture. American Culture in the 1960s Sharon Monteith Just when it seems as if there might be nothing new to be said about the 1960s, Sharon Monteith has crafted an original and highly valuable new take on the decade and its legacies. She combines perceptive cultural analysis and shrewd aesthetic judgements with a firm grasp of historical and social context. The result is a smart, engaging and persuasive introduction to the decade's complex cultural politics. Brian Ward, Professor of American Studies, University of Manchester This book charts the changing complexion of American culture in one of the most culturally vibrant of twentieth-century decades. It provides a vivid account of the major cultural forms of 1960s America - music and performance; film and television; fiction and poetry; art and photography - as well as influential texts, trends and figures of the decade: from Norman Mailer to Susan Sontag; from Muhammad Ali's anti-war protests to Tom Lehrer's stand-up comedy; from Bob Dylan to Rachel Carson; and from Pop Art to photojournalism. The volume as a whole looks to the West and especially to the South in the making of the sixties as myth and as history. Key Features: * Focused case studi