Signs of Life in the USA, 8th edition
Table of Contents
* = New to this edition
Contents
Preface for Instructors
INTRODUCTION
Popular Signs: Or, Everything You Always Knew about American Culture (but Nobody Asked)
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]
*Rose Sorooshian, The Walking 99 Percent: An Analysis of The Walking Dead in the Context of the 2008 Recession [student essay]
*Ryan Kim, A Reading of Gran Torino [student essay]
Conducting Research and Citing Sources
Scott Jaschik, A Stand against Wikipedia
Patti S. Caravello, Judging Quality on the Web
Trip Gabriel, Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age
Synthesizing Sources
Chapter 1
Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption
Laurence Shames, The More Factor
*[e-reading] Gene Brockhoff, Shop ‘Til You Drop [documentary film clip]
PAIRED READINGS: UNDERSTANDING SHOPPING
Anne Norton, The Signs of Shopping
Malcolm Gladwell, The Science of Shopping
*Jon Mooallem, The Self-Storage Self
*Stephenie Clifford and Quentin Hardy, Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell
Thomas Hine, What’s in a Package
*James A. Roberts, The Treadmill of Consumption (from Shiny Objects)
Phyllis M. Japp and Debra K. Japp, Purification Through Simplification: Nature, the Good Life, and Consumer Culture
*Steve McKevitt, Everything Now
Thomas Frank, Commodify Your Dissent
Chapter 2
Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising
Jack Solomon, Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising
PAIRED READINGS: CREATING CONSUMERS
James B. Twitchell, What We Are to Advertisers
Steve Craig, Men’s Men and Women’s Women
*[e-reading] Ford, Two-Ford Freedom [vintage TV ad]
Jennifer L. Pozner, Dove’s “Real Beauty” Backlash
Gloria Steinem, Sex, Lies, and Advertising
*Juliet B. Schor, Selling to Children: the Marketing of Cool
*Joseph Turow, Introduction to The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth
Julia B. Corbett, A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World
*Portfolio of Advertisements
Chapter 3
Video Dreams: Television, Music, and Cultural Forms
*Nick Serpe, Reality Pawns: The New Money TV
PAIRED READINGS: SOUTHERN WOMAN
*Claire Miye Stanford, You’ve Got the Wrong Song: Nashville and Country Music Feminism
*Michelle Dean, Here Comes the Hillbilly, Again
* [e-readings] THIRTEEN, TV Gone Wrong [advertisements]
Carl Matheson, The Simpsons, Hyper- Irony, and the Meaning of Life
Natasha Simmons, Mad Men and the Paradox of the Past
*Jane Hu, Reality Hunger: On Lena Dunham’s Girls
*Willa Paskin, “Devious Maids” Skewers the One Percent
Neal Gabler, The Social Networks
Chapter 4
The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film
Linda Seger, Creating the Myth
* [e-reading] Louis J. Gasnier and Arthur Hoerl, Reefer Madness [film clip]
* [e-reading] George A. Romero and John A. Russo, Night of the Living Dead [film clip]
PAIRED READINGS: GENDER AND RACE IN FILM
Jessica Hagedorn, Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck
*Helena Andrews, “The Butler” vs. “The Help”: Gender Matters
Matt Zoller Seitz, The Offensive Movie Cliché that Won't Die
Michael Parenti, Class and Virtue
David Denby, High- School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies
*Michael Agresta, How the Western Was Lost—And Why It Matters
*Christine Folch, Why the West Loves Sci-Fi and Fantasy: A Cultural Explanation
Chapter 5
The Cloud: Semiotics and the New Media
S. Craig Watkins, Fast Entertainment and Multitasking in an Always-On World
PAIRED READINGS: FACING FACEBOOK
International Center for Media & the Public Agenda, Students Addicted to Social Media
*Simon Dumenco, If We’re All So Sick of You, Facebook, Why Can’t We Quit You?
danah boyd, Implications of User Choice: The Cultural Logic of MySpace or Facebook?
*Salvador Rodriguez, In the Digital Age, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
*Richard Rushfield, Toward a Unified Theory of How the Internet Makes Everything Terrible
*Daniel D’Addario, Everything Is “Trolling” Now
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture
* [e-reading] Ben Lewis, Polar Star Films, and BLTV, Google & the World Brain [documentary film clip]
*Chapter 6
Heroes and Villains: Encoding Our Conflicts
Robert B. Ray, The Thematic Paradigm
*Stevie St. John, Out of Character: Wonder Woman’s Strength Is Her Humanity—What Happened?
PAIRED READINGS: LOVING THE SINNER
*Laura Bennett, Against Antiheroes
*Heather Havrilesky, No Sympathy for the Devil
*George Packer, Celebrating Inequality
*Noah Gittel, The Lone Ranger Seals It: America’s New Favorite Villain Is a Rich Guy
*Tim Layden, A Patriot’s Tale
*Lorraine Devon Wilke, Snowden’s a Hero, Obama’s a Villain
* [e-reading] U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, iGuardians [video]
Chapter 7
My Selfie, Myself: Constructing Identity in the Age of Entertainment
*Rachel Lowry, Straddling Online and Offline Profiles, Millennials Search for Identity
PAIRED READINGS: PERFORMING GENDER
Aaron Devor, Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes
Deborah Blum, The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?
* [e-reading] Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender [documentary film clip]
Kevin Jennings, American Dreams
Mariah Burton Nelson, I Won. I’m Sorry
Alfred Lubrano, The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts
Michael Omi, In Living Color: Race and American Culture
*Dani McClain, Being “Masculine of Center” while Black
*Theresa Celebran Jones, Sanjay and Craig: Nickelodeon’s Hilarious New Mixed-Race Heroes
*Aymar Jean Christian, The End of Post-Identity Television
Glossary
Index of Authors and Titles
Other versions by this Author
