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Events
Jan. 9 | Call for papers: Identities and Technocultures
A 2-day conference about American culture and technologies that examines how new technologies dominate and define Americaness in the US and abroad. Co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (CESA) and the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA).
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Swift, Elizabeth A.. "Class, Taste and Empire in Reagan's America ," Department of American Studies, University of New Mexico, May 2007. Advisor: Alex Lubin
This dissertation investigates the production and consumption of elite culture during an era of conservative politics and growing neoliberalism the United States. It argues that white, aristocratic, European culture, particularly British culture, played a prominent role in defining what “elite culture” meant to Americans at this time, and further argues that the reasons for why Americans, both producers and consumers, turned to European and British cultural models were at once political, social, economic and cultural.
In an era of tremendous social change, some American consumers—white, middle-class ones in particular—gravitated toward cultures and traditions that, in their minds, represented the pinnacle of “good taste” and civilized beliefs and practices. This elite culture also represented, for them, the political, economic and cultural strength—the imperial strength—they hoped their nation could re-achieve. At the same time, producers of such elite culture at museums, on public television and in the fashion industry, looked to Britain and to Europe for their subject matter because these were regions with which the United States had strong political ties, and which they, like their consumers, believed to be culturally pre-eminent.
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