Ray Broadus Browne

Marshall William Fishwick

Icons of Popular Culture

“When it comes to seeing depth and lateral connections in the development of popular culture, nobody exceeds Marshall Fishwick.” -Canadian Psychology In Probing Popular Culture: On and Off the Internet, one of the leading authorities in American and popular culture studies presents an eye-opening examination of the Information Age's influence on what we do, how we live, and who we are. Dr. Marshall Fishwick, author of the textbooks Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture; Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace; and Popular Culture in a New Age focuses his penetrating gaze upon the impact of the icons and events that color the fabric of our lives. Peppered with quotes from influential figures ranging from Plato to P. T. Barnum, this book provides food for thought that will spark smart discussion about every aspect of popular culture—from Henry Ford to Y2K, the impact on popular culture of the September 11 tragedy, and more. Probing Popular Culture examines our cultural icons, our fads, our hopes, and our fears-and ties them into the images we see everyday in the news and on the Web. Dr. Fishwick probes the most recent developments, crises, and anxieties encountered on our headlong dash down the Information Superhighway—and illustrates the reasons behind the media madness. Religion, sports, food, comic books, TV, and movies-none escape his microscopic dissection. Probing Popular Culture focuses on: historical pioneers—from Socrates to Walt Whitman and Walt Disney-who pondered and studied the phenomenon known as “popular culture” culture frenzies—why Americans have a tendency toward trends, fads, and frenzies the emergence of America as a “super” popular culture with current predominance in world media, movies, clothing, music, and food the loss of old traditions and the invention of new ones “hype”—its definition, its origin, and its negative effect on the human race the “gaps” that have developed all over the world—mainly between the United States and other countries—because of the introduction of the Information Age in popular culture and much more Who will arbitrate, regulate, and modify our flow of information? How much is too much? What is at stake? What lies ahead? Probing Popular Culture takes an incisive look at the current situation and probes for answers. With a foreword by Dr. Fishwick's former student, Tom Wolfe, a preface by Peter Rollins (Editor-in-Chief of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies), and the inclusion of opinions from other authorities on popular culture, this volume will be interesting and informative to the college student, the general reader, and the specialist.

Probing Popular Culture on and Off the Internet

Frank Hoffmann

As religious fervor grows, Dr. Fishwick, a recipient of the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Lifetime Achievement from The American Culture Association, takes a sweeping look at religion in the United States--the country with the highest church attendance in the Western world. Popular religion can take many shapes and forms. It can wax and wane, but it cannot be eliminated or ignored. That is what prompted him to write Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture. He ponders how religion affects American life and popular culture, and why religion has become a major force in contemporary politics. How has the Electronic Revolution furthered the religious right? What does popular religion tell us about popular culture? And about our faith? He identifies and explores five great religious revivals or "Great Awakenings:" the Atlantic Seaboard Awakening the Urban Awakening the Modernist Awakening the Celebrity Preacher Awakening the Electronic Awakening Fishwick explores the current events preceding and during each awakening, its leaders, followers, and critics. Great Awakenings gives a new understanding of the American religious past and leaves us with an anticipation for the next great awakening.

Popular Religion and Popular Culture

Great Awakenings

Marshall W. Fishwick

These essays, written by experts in their fields, demonstrate how necessary it is in the study of the humanities and social sciences to realize the interdependency of the fields and how rich the resulting study can be.

Popular Culture and Other Fields

Symbiosis

Michael T. Marsden

Heroes of Popular Culture

A Bibliography of the American Hero

Pursuing Popular Culture

Go, and Catch a Falling Star

Clara Barton

The twenty essays in this effort to bring new vitality to the humanities range through fields familiar in life but unfamiliar in the humanities canon. They include leisure, folk cultures, material culture, pornography, comics, animal rights, Black studies, traveling, and, of course, the bugbear of academics, television.

Rejuvenating the Humanities

An investigation of society’s heroes during any time period will reveal the personnel deemed worthy of being emulated at that particular time by that particular society. There will be many old and time-tested figures, sometimes with new faces and new profiles; there will also be a mix of new faces. Thus the hero—like history itself—is constantly in transition, and both the hero and the transition are fundamental to the study of a culture. These essays turn the pantheon of heroes around before our eyes and reveal the many complicated aspects of hero worship.

Marshall William Fishwick

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