Profiles of Popular Culture: A Reader

From Hank Williams to hip hop, Aunt Jemima to the Energizer Bunny, scrap-booking to NASCAR racing, Profiles of Popular Culture cuts a generous swath across what is perhaps the fastest growing discipline of the past several decades. Edited by a pioneer in the field, this volume invites readers to reflect on a diverse sampling of modern myths, icons, archetypes, rituals, and pastimes. Adopting an inclusive approach, editor Ray B. Browne has mined both scholarly and mainstream media to bring together penetrating essays on fads and fashions, sports fandom, the shaping of body image, aesthetic surgery, the marketing of food, vacationing and sightseeing, toys and games, genre fiction, post-9/11 entertainment, and much more. Like Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause's Popular Culture: An Introductory Text, this book opens critical doors into the study of popular culture-and does so within a fresh context that includes points of reference both established and new.