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popular culture

activities, experiences, or artistic products that pervade society in a particular time

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Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina.

"If America Doesn't Become America": Outlander and the American Revolution

"Outlander" challenges the myth of American exceptionalism at the root of much U.S. popular culture.
by Michelle Orihel via Age of Revolutions on July 3, 2023
Woody Guthrie

Will Rogers & Woody Guthrie, Two Great Americans

Popular culture and social critique through Rogers' writing and Guthrie's songs.
by Greg Mitchell via Between Rock and a Hard Place on June 29, 2023
Artistic representation of a man using psychedelics. The man's head appears like a matryoshka doll.

Brains on Drugs

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug use to expand one’s consciousness went from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of social decay.
by John Semley via The Baffler on June 14, 2023
A meme, entitled The Many Faces of Generation X, showing stills of a girl from a movie called The Breakfast Club.

The Constructive Culture of Gen X Cynicism

Skepticism drove some of this more cynical or realistic worldview, based on their experiences growing up in the 70s and 80s.
by Mindy Clegg via 3 Quarks Daily on June 5, 2023
A woman poses with a kitten next to a wooden barrel labeled "Queen of the Mist"

American Daredevils

The nineteenth-century commitment to thrilling an audience embodied an emerging synergy of public performance, collective experience, and individual agency.
by Robert Westbrook, Betsy Golden Kellem, William P. Goldman, Jacob Smith, Aimee Nezhukumatathil via JSTOR Daily on May 24, 2023
Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, and unknown pianist. NYC, September 1947.

On Menand’s "The Free World" and Dinerstein’s "The Origins of Cool in Postwar America"

Two differing explorations of post-WWII culture, politics, and ideals.
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 21, 2023
Barbie dolls in 1959 wearing the zebra-striped swimsuit.

A Cultural History of Barbie

Loved and loathed, the toy stirs fresh controversy at age 64.
by Emily Tamkin via Smithsonian on May 18, 2023
A man walking an alligator on a leash.

Photographs of the Los Angeles Alligator Farm

These images of the LA Alligator Farm depict a level of casual proximity unthinkable today.
by Erica X. Eisen via The Public Domain Review on May 11, 2023
Collage of baseball caps

The History of the Baseball Cap

The long, strange, history of the baseball cap.
by Michael Clair via Major League Baseball on May 9, 2023
A fast food worker working a drive thru hands a bag to a customer in a car.

A History of the Drive-Thru, From California to Coronavirus

COVID-19 has recast the often-maligned restaurant drive-thru window as both a critical amenity and a basic comfort.
by Adam Chandler via Serious Eats on April 1, 2023
A flower.

A Structural History of American Public Health Narratives

Rereading Priscilla Wald’s "Contagious" and Nancy Tomes’ "Gospel of Germs" amidst a 21st-century pandemic.
by Amy Mackin via Assay Journal on March 25, 2023
Oscar statues.

What the Oscars Represent: Meritocracy Without Merit

How the institution’s reactionary origins still leak into today’s film culture.
by David Hajdu via The Nation on March 8, 2023
J. Edgar Hoover and two other men pose with guns.

The Cult of J. Edgar Hoover

A zealot through and through, he ran the FBI like a religious sect.
by Adam Hochschild via The Nation on March 7, 2023
Four characters from "Dazed and Confused."

The “Dazed and Confused” Generation

People my age are described as baby boomers, but our experiences call for a different label altogether.
by Bruce Handy via The New Yorker on March 2, 2023
Cover of "Gravity's Rainbow," depicting a orange-red sky over a small city.

History Is Hard to Decode

On 50 years of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
by M. Keith Booker via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 28, 2023
Old computer with its mouse over the AOL logo.

America Online: A Cautionary Tale

On the rise and fall of the quintessential ’90s online service provider—and a warning about today’s social-media giants.
by Joanne McNeil via The Nation on December 15, 2022
original

The Life of Song

What the surprising career of Bob McGrath teaches us about popular music.
by Kathryn Ostrofsky on December 14, 2022
Collage of yoga, palm tree, police tape

The Birth of a New Brand of Exercise Fetish

From Bikram yoga to Tae Bo, the 1990s exploded with exoticized consumer fitness products.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The Nation on December 13, 2022
Crowds and escalators in the Mall of America.

The Rise and Fall of the Mall

Alexandra Lange's "Meet Me by the Fountain" recovers the forgotten past and the still hopeful future of the American shopping mall.
by Melvin Backman via The Nation on December 12, 2022
Ollie Brown holding Rolling Stone magazine.

What Was the Music Critic?

A new book exalts the heyday of music magazines, when electric prose reigned and egos collided.
by John Semley via The New Republic on November 18, 2022
Chuck Norris as Sergeant Cordell Walker in Walker: Texas Ranger.

Walkers and Lone Rangers: How Pop Culture Shaped the Texas Rangers Mythology

Texas’s elite police force has long played the hero in film and television, although the reality is far more complex.
by Sean O'Neal via Texas Monthly on November 16, 2022
Black and white photo of Woody Guthrie holding a guitar labeled "this machine kills fascists"

I've Got Those Old Talking-Blues Blues Again

The Folkies and WWII, Part Two.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on October 13, 2022
A line of G.I. Joe action figures, in various military-style uniforms as well as scuba gear.

How G.I. Joe Jump-Started the Action Figure Craze

In the late 1970s, smaller 'Star Wars' action figures took over.
by Becky Little via HISTORY on October 11, 2022
Flag of the Confederacy

The United States of Confederate America

Support for Confederate symbols and monuments follows lines of race, religion, and education rather than geography.
by David A. Graham via The Atlantic on October 4, 2022
A person holds up a "Don't Tread on Florida" poster at an August rally in Tampa featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio.
partner

The ‘Florida Man’ is Notorious. Here’s Where the Meme Came From

The practice of seeing Florida’s people, culture and history in caricature form is deeply rooted in the state’s colonial past.
by Julio Capó Jr., Tyler Gillespie via Made By History on September 14, 2022
Actor Tom Hanks and President George W. Bush stand on stage at the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004.

Destructive Myths

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.
by Jeff Faux via Dissent on August 30, 2022
A picture of the author as a teenager with his parents, in his bedroom decorated with rock music posters.

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022
Illustration of Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

Sex, Scandal, and Sisterhood: Fifty Years of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

They’re global icons who have left a lasting imprint on American culture. But do recent controversies threaten the squad’s future?
by Sarah Hepola via Texas Monthly on August 15, 2022
Vintage photograph of two little girls sitting on a mid-century television set.

The Lost Art of Striking a Pose With Your TV Set

In midcentury America, the machine itself became a character.
by Lynn Spigel via Slate on August 14, 2022
Black and white photo of a 1920s flapper girl.
partner

Flappers: Precursors to Modern-Day Social Media Influencers?

A 1923 article in a fashion magazine shows the connection between flappers and social media youth organizers today.
by Jason Ulysses Rose via HNN on August 7, 2022
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