Viewing America


Book Description

Christopher Bigsby explores the potential of television drama to offer a radical critique of American politics, myths and values.




See America


Book Description

In homage to America’s National Parks and their iconic art posters, this volume features new artwork for seventy-five parks and monuments across all fifty states. “In this sepia-tinged homage” to the iconic National Parks posters “modern artists contribute dazzling new graphics” (Entertainment Weekly). From 1935 to 1943, the WPA’s Federal Art Project hired American artist to create posters celebrating the National Parks Service. The icon See America posters inspired Americans to fall in love with the country’s landmarks and wild spaces from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Gateway Arch and from the Grand Canyon to the Great Smokey Mountains. Originally published to coincide with the centennial anniversary of the National Parks Service, the Creative Action Network has partnered with the National Parks Conservation Association to revive and reimagine the legacy of WPA travel posters. Artists from all over the world participated in the creation of this new, crowdsourced collection of See America posters for a modern era.




Watching America


Book Description

The first scientific study to trace the overt and covert messages of television entertainment throughout its history.




Watching M*A*S*H, Watching America


Book Description

It has been said that M*A*S*H was a show set in the 1950s which reflected the shifting values of the 1970s and early 1980s. Hawkeye Pierce, Radar O'Reilly, Trapper John McIntyre, Sherman Potter, Margaret (Hot Lips) Houlihan, B.J. Hunnicutt, Frank Burns, Charles Emerson Winchester, Max Klinger--these and the many other characters who populated the MASH 4077 used the Korean War as a backdrop to comment on many of the social issues of their day. Using a unique blend of comedy and drama, the show's first three seasons (1972-1975) focused on the anti-Vietnam War sentiment that consumed much of America. As Vietnam ended, M*A*S*H moved on to concentrate on other contemporary issues--the women's movement, the rise of the religious right in American politics, the new narcissism that marked the early 1980s, the heightened awareness of underage or excessive alcohol use, and the increased emphasis on family in American life. How the series presented these issues and its success in doing so are the subjects of this critical study. An episode listing--brief plot outline, casts and credits, air dates, and titles--is also provided.




See America First


Book Description

The American sculptor, painter, draftsman, and printmaker H.C. Westermann (1922-1981) was a central figure in American art, lauded as an American original who steadfastly followed his own finely crafted and keenly ironic sensibilities. Published in conjunction with the David and Alfred Smart Museum's "See America First" exhibit, this book presents the first comprehensive, scholarly consideration of Westermann's graphic work and serves as a catalogue raisonné of his prints: 100 large-format color images and 20 black and white illustrations are accompanied by detailed entries containing key historical information on Westermann's art. Critic, curator, and art historian Dennis Adrian contributes an overview essay examining Westermann's body of work. "See America First" will be exhibited at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art from June 30 to September 23, 2001.




I See America Dancing


Book Description

Representing dancers, scholars, admirers, and critics, I See America Dancing is a diverse collection of primary documents and articles about the place and shape of dance in the United States from colonial times to the present. This volume offers a lively counterpoint between observers of the dance and dancers' views of what they do when they dance. Dance traditions represented include the Native American pow-wow; tribal music and dance activities on Sunday afternoons in New Orlean's Congo Square; the colonial Playford Balls and their modern offspring, country line dancing; and the Buddhist-inspired Japanese Bon dances in Hawaii. Anti-dance perspectives include government injunctions against Native American dancing and essays from a range of speakers who have declared the waltz, the twist, or the senior prom to be a careless quick-step away from hell or the brothel. I See America Dancing examines the styles that have marked theatrical dance in America, from French ballet to minstrel shows, and presents the views of influential dancers, choreographers, and the pioneers of early modern dance in America. Specific pieces examined include George Ballanchine's ballet Stars and Stripes, Yvonne Rainer's protest piece "Flag Dance, 1970," and Sonjé Mayo's "Naked in America." Covering historical social attitudes toward the dance as well as the performers and their works, I See America Dancing is a comprehensive, scholarly sourcebook that captures the energy and passion of this vital artform.




Seeing America


Book Description

Missouri, 1910. John Hartmann is graduating from high school under the critical eye of his father and has no idea what options lie beyond the family farm and his small town. When Paul Bricken, nineteen and blind, buys a brand-new Ford Model T and suggests John drive him to Yellowstone National Park, John jumps at the chance. He’s less enthusiastic about inviting Henry Brotherton, who’s loud, crude, and a bigot—but Henry’s available both as a second driver and a tough guy who might be helpful in a tight spot. As the three young men set off on their tumultuous journey, America is preparing for the fight of the century between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries—and is headed for its biggest racial upheaval since the Civil War. With Yellowstone drawing ever closer and tensions rising, Paul, John, and Henry will soon learn there is a great deal they didn’t know about the fledgling American Midwest—or about each other.




See America First


Book Description

In See America First, Marguerite Shaffer chronicles the birth of modern American tourism between 1880 and 1940, linking tourism to the simultaneous growth of national transportation systems, print media, a national market, and a middle class with money and time to spend on leisure. Focusing on the See America First slogan and idea employed at different times by railroads, guidebook publishers, Western boosters, and Good Roads advocates, she describes both the modern marketing strategies used to promote tourism and the messages of patriotism and loyalty embedded in the tourist experience. She shows how tourists as consumers participated in the search for a national identity that could assuage their anxieties about American society and culture. Generously illustrated with images from advertisements, guidebooks, and travelogues, See America First demonstrates that the promotion of tourist landscapes and the consumption of tourist experiences were central to the development of an American identity.




Landscape in Sight


Book Description

During a long and distinguished career, John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) brought about a new understanding and appreciation of the American landscape. Hailed in 1995 by New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp as 'America’s greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies,' Jackson founded Landscape Magazine in 1951, taught at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, and wrote nearly 200 essays and reviews. This appealing anthology of his most important writings on the American landscape, illustrated with his own sketches and photographs, brings together Jackson’s most famous essays, significant but less well known writings, and articles that were originally published unsigned or under various pseudonyms. Jackson also completed a new essay for this volume, 'Places for Fun and Games,' a few months before his death. Focusing not on nature but on landscape - land shaped by human presence - Jackson insists in his writings that the workaday world gives form to the essential American landscape. In the everyday places of the countryside and city, he discerns texts capable of revealing important truths about society and culture, present and past. For this collection Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz provides an introduction that discusses the larger body of Jackson’s writing and locates each of the selected essays within his oeuvre. She also includes a complete bibliography of Jackson’s writings.




Seeing America


Book Description

Seeing America explores the camera work of five women who directed their visions toward influencing social policy and cultural theory. Taken together, they visually articulated the essential ideas occupying the American consciousness in the years between the world wars. Melissa McEuen examines the work of Doris Ulmann, who made portraits of celebrated artists in urban areas and lesser-known craftspeople in rural places; Dorothea Lange, who magnified human dignity in the midst of poverty and unemployment; Marion Post Wolcott, a steadfast believer in collective strength as the antidote to social ills and the best defense against future challenges; Margaret Bourke-White, who applied avant-garde advertising techniques in her exploration of the human condition; and Berenice Abbott, a devoted observer of the continuous motion and chaotic energy that characterized the modern cityscape. Combining feminist biography with analysis of visual texts, McEuen considers the various prisms though which each woman saw and revealed America. Their documentary photographs were the result of personal visions that had been formed by experiences and emotions as well as by careful calculations and technological processes. These photographers captured the astounding variety of occupations, values, and leisure activities that shaped the nation, and their photographs illuminate the intricate workings of American culture in the 1920s and 1930s.