Signs of Life in the USA Readings on Pop Culture for Writers
by Maasik, Sonia; Solomon, JackEdition: 11th
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2024-09-17
Publisher(s): Bedford/St. Martin's
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Summary
With readings from a diverse range of voices, Signs of Life in the USA helps you become a better reader and writer by giving you the tools to think critically about today’s popular culture.
Table of Contents
Preface for Instructors
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Popular Signs: Or, Everything You (Probably) Always Knew about American Culture (but Nobody Asked)
- The Rural Purge
- From Folk to For-Profit
- Pop Culture Goes To College
- The Semiotic Method
- Abduction and Overdetermination
- Cultural Mythologies
- Interpreting Popular Signs: or A Tale of Two Sitcoms
- A House Divided: or “Duck Dynasty,” Meet “Euphoria”
- The Classroom Connection
- Your Turn
Writing about Popular Culture
- Using Active Reading Strategies
- Prewriting Strategies
- Developing Strong Arguments about Popular Culture
- Conducting a Semiotic Analysis
- Reading Visual Images Actively
- Reading Essays about Popular Culture
- Amy Lin: Barbie: Queen of Dolls and Consumerism [student essay]
- Irina Bodea: Banks: Progressive or Conventional? [student essay]
Conducting Research and Citing Sources
- Scott Jaschik: A Stand against Wikipedia
- Patti S. Caravello: Judging Quality on the Web
- Trip Gabriel: For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste
- Audrey Campbell, The best writing AI practices unveiled: Mastering AI for simple tasks
- Synthesizing, Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Citing Sources
- In-Text Citations
- List of Works Cited
Chapter 1
American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.
- A House Invaded
- Six Ideological Conflicts Behind the Insurrection
- A City on a Hill
- The Summer of Love
- The Puritan Paradox
- The 1 Percent
- The Statue of Liberty vs. the Wall
- The End of the "Post-Racial" Society
- What's Red and Blue and Mad All Over?
The Readings
- Mark Murphy: The Uncivil War: How Cultural Sorting of America Divides Us
- Dan Rather and Elliot Kirscher: The MAGA Party
- Rhodes Cook, The “Big Sort” Continues, with Trump as a Driving Force
- Urban Institute: Debunking Three Myths about Rural America
- Michelle Goldberg: The Radicalization of the Young Right
- Michael Feola: Moms for Liberty is part of a long history of rightwing mothers’ activism in the US
- Rakesh Kochar and Stella Sechopoulos: How the American middle class has changed in the past five decades
- Constance Grady: Why so much Obama-era pop culture feels so cringe now
- George Parker: Celebrating Inequality
- Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-Sided
Chapter 2
An Irrepressible Conflict: Identity and Ideology in the New Millennium
- The Tuvel Affair
- Who Are You? The Personal is the Political Part 1: Sex and Gender
- The Personal is the Political Part 2: Race
- Intersections
- The Big Sort
The Readings
- Michael Omi: In Living Color: Race and American Culture
- Jens Manuel Krogstad and Kiana Cox: For Black History Month, a look at what Black Americans say is needed to overcome racial inequality
- Rachelle Hampton: Which People?
- Zahir Janmohamed: Your Cultural Attire
- Aaron Devor: Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes
- Deborah Blum: The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?
- Ellie Muir: A Timeline of JK Rowling’s comments about women and transgender rights
- Michael Hulshof-Schmidt: What’s in an Acronym? Parsing the LGBTQQIP2SAA Community
- Hanna Flint: How Tainted Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 25 Years On?
- Alfred Lubrano: The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts
Chapter 3
The Digital Divide: Social Media, Politics, and the Marketing of America
- The Company Formerly Known as Twitter
- Whose Space?
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- The New Panopticon
- Where Have All the Adverts Gone?
- Big Sister
- AI, or It's the End of the World as We Know It
- Back to the Future
The Readings
- Chandra Steele: Under Elon, Twitter's Political Divide Deepens Markedly
- Fonda Lee: Twitter Is the Worst Reader
- John Herrman: Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine
- Brooke Gladstone: Influencing Machines: The Echo Chambers of the Internet
- Jacob Silverman: “Pics or It Didn’t Happen”: The Mantra of the Instagram Era
- Kaitlyn Tiffany: No One Knows Exactly What Social Media Is Doing to Teens
- Rebecca Jennings: Stop Canceling Normal People Who Go Viral
- Elijah Clark: The Ethical Dilemma of AI in Marketing: A Slippery Slope
- Judy Estrin: I Helped Create the Internet, and I’m Worried About What It’s Doing to Young People
- Derek Thompson: The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything
Chapter 4
Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption
- It's Not Your Grandfather's Automobile
- The Tesla Challenge
- #leggingsdaynd
- The Handmaid’s Tale
- Jeans, Spandex, Leotards, and Leg Warmers
- Life in a Consumer Culture
- Disposable Decades
- The Pandemic
The Readings
- James A. Roberts: The Treadmill of Consumption
- Naily Ordabayeva: How Liberals and Conservatives Shop Differently
- Avery Koop: Ranked: Gen Z’s Favorite Brands, Compared with Older Generations
- Jordyn Holman: Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, But Gen Z Might Save It
- Emily Stewart: The Bud Light boycott, explained as much as is possible
- Forrester: Three Consumer Behaviors That Emerged During the Pandemic Are Persisting
- Chris Arning: What Can Semiotics Contribute to Packaging Design?
Chapter 5
The Streaming of America: How TV Divides Us
- Yellowstone
- Something for Everyone
- From Mary Tyler Moore to The Handmaid’s Tale
- Litchfield Is the New Mayberry
- Writing about Television
- From Symbols to Icons
- And Now a Word from Our Sponsors
- Reality Bites
The Readings
- Caryn James: 1923 and the Violent TV Universe That Has Electrified the US
- Samuel Getachew: The Problem with Euphoria
- Kathryn VanAredonk: TV’s White Guys Are in Crisis
- Oihab Allal-Chérif: Black Mirror: The Dark Side of Technology
- Claire Miye Stanford: You’ve Got the Wrong Song: Nashville and Country Music Feminism
- Neal Gabler: The Social Networks
- Massimo Pigliucci: The One Paradigm to Rule Them All: Scientism and The Big Bang Theory
- Brittany Levine Beckman: Why We Binge-Watch Stuff We Hate
Chapter 6
The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film
- The Pandora Perplex
- The Culture Industry
- Interpreting the Signs of American Film
- Repetition with a Difference
- Movies as Metaphors
The Readings
- Adam Scovell: How masterly horror Deliverance set a controversial trend
- Robert B. Ray: The Thematic Paradigm
- Linda Seger: Creating the Myth
- Nicholas Barber, The Little Mermaid: Why are films becoming so badly-lit and difficult to see?
- Brandon Ambrosino, Sound of Freedom: Is the child trafficking drama a watershed moment for 'faith-based' filmmaking?
- Maya Phillips: The Narrative Experiment That is the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Mikhail Lyubansky: The Racial Politics of Black Panther
- Michael Parenti: Class and Virtue
Chapter 7
Tangled Roots: The Cultural Politics of Popular Music
- Get Back to Where You Once Belonged
- It’s Been a Long Time Coming
- The Turning Point
- Country Road
- The Ties That Don’t Bind
- Rebels with a Cause: The Rebirth of the Protest Song
- Coda: The Diva
The Readings
- Nolan Gasser: Music Is Supposed to Unify Us. Is the Streaming Revolution Fragmenting Us Instead?
- Brendan Morrow: Jason Aldean's “Try That in a Small Town” controversy, explained
- Conor Friedersdorf: Why Is Tracy Chapman at the Center of a Country-Music Controversy?
- Kenan Malik: The protest song that’s taken America by storm hits too many false notes
- Jon Meachan and Tim McGraw: How Country Music Explains America’s Divided History
- Karis Rivers, Hip-Hop’s Evolution: From Political Empowerment to Commercial Beast
- Nadra Nittle: Lil Nas X Isn’t an Anomaly
- Eileen O'Grady: Visions of power in Barbie, Beyoncé, Swift
- Christina Newland: A Cultural History of the Diva
- Dani Deahl: Monsta X and Steve Aoki: How K-pop Took Over YouTube
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