The Journal of American Culture back issues from June 2003:
Becoming the Most Hated Woman in America: Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Jun 01, 2003; ... On December 8, 1960, Madalyn Murray filed suit in the Superior Court of Baltimore, Maryland, asking the Court to rule unconstitutional required Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's prayer in the city's public schools. She claimed that her son William's First Amendment rights were being ...
The Culture of Disease or the Dis-ease of Culture in Motherless Brooklyn and Eve's Apple
Jun 01, 2003; ... Should the postmodern view of the world legitimate the ideas of cultural disease, cultural dis-ease, the dis-ease of culture, and the disease of culture? Or is that going too far? I think not. There seems to be an almost symbiotic, cultural link between disease and dis-ease, and that link was ...
Battling the Elements: Reconstructing the Heroic in Robert Rogers
Jun 01, 2003; ... Robert Rogers was an eighteenth-century American military figure who attracted envy and malice in his own day, and continues to evoke both admiration and contempt in our own. Famous on both sides of the Atlantic for his exploits during his lifetime, before the end of the century he had died in ...
Workers' Control and the Struggles Against "Wage Slavery" in the Gilded Age and After
Jun 01, 2003; ... In nineteenth-century America, visions about the good life among labor reformers often entailed the concept of a democratic republic of citizens dedicated to self-directed work as small producers. Specific strains of the emerging workingclass movement helped to transform this artisan republican ...
Wyatt Earp at the O. K. Corral: Six Versions
Jun 01, 2003; ... "Westerns have changed and reflected our culture over the different decades." Dennis Quaid (Kasdan 107) When asked by Teddy Roosevelt why he had not written about his colorful Ufe, Bat Masterson is said to have answered, "Mr. President, the real story of the Old West can never be told ...
The Uses and Abuses of World Literature
Jun 01, 2003; ... We urgently need maps of the mind to supplement and interpret our maps of the globe, if ever we are to orient ourselves and feel at home in the new environment in which our generation must live and work out its destiny. (Christy and Wells v) Canon defence is national defence. (Morrison ...
Home(land) Invasion: Poe, Panic Rooms, and 9/11
Jun 01, 2003; ... Early in director David Fincher's film Panic Room, the character Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) comments that the hidden safe room in the house she is thinking of buying "makes me nervous." When asked why, she responds, "Ever read any Poe?" Later, when she and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are ...
A Short History of the Modern Creation Movement and the Continuing Modern Cultural Wars
Jun 01, 2003; ... Introduction Until the early 1800s, both common and highly educated persons in the Western world believed that all living things were deliberately created according to the general outline found in Genesis (Numbers, "Creationism" 5; Darwinism Comes 24-48). Jared Diamond argues that often ...
An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front
Jun 01, 2003; ... An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, Editors. New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2002. As the shelf of Civil War books continues to sag, repetition and duplication continue to grow. But each volume- because it is written or edited ...
Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History
Jun 01, 2003; ... Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History David Goldfield. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002. The slavery South, according to Goldfield, was like a many-layered stack of pancakes, with the syrup of comfort and pleasure running only over the top ...
The Education of Green Lantern: Culture and Ideology
Jun 01, 2003; ... Comic books and comic strips are worthy and exciting areas of research. The primary reason is that neither comic books nor comic strips now are just a medium to entertain children and adolescents, but are manifestations of popular culture. They are purveyors of ideology. One example is ...
Antietam: The Battle that Changed the Course of the Civil War
Jun 01, 2003; ... Antietam: The Battle that Changed the Course of the Civil War James McPherson. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002. This book is an example of a new approach to the writing (and studying) of history called "contingency"- that is, as David Hackett Fischer says in the Editor's Note to this ...
Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture
Jun 01, 2003; ... Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture Mark Meister and Phyllis M. Japp, Editors. Westchester, CT: Praeger, 2002. This pioneering general study of one field of popular culture opens doors and suggests new fields of study. As such it is valuable. But although it ...
New Class Culture: How an Emergent Class Is Transforming America's Culture
Jun 01, 2003; ... New Class Culture: How an Emergent Class Is Transforming America's Culture Avrom Fleishman. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. This book glides along what is becoming increasingly a well-traveled road beside familiar landmarks. The road is the recognition that democracy and technology in the ...
The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
Jun 01, 2003; ... The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow Richard E. Bales. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. The city- wide fire that destroyed Chicago on the evening of October 8, 1871 still lights up a controversy over how it was set, though nearly all agree it was not by Mrs. O'Leary ...
Encyclopedia of Literature In Canada
Jun 01, 2003; ... Encyclopedia of Literature In Canada W. H. New, Editor. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2002. For the scholar interested in popular culture in this magnificent, comprehensive, and thorough study of all kinds of Canadian literature, the main focus comes under the heading "Popular Culture ...
Tin Men
Jun 01, 2003; ... Tin Men Archie Green. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 2002. In the world of steel and reinforced concrete in which we live, we are often overwhelmed by the size and strength of our environment. But many professional artists and everyday workmen and women try to humanize the steel and ...
Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West
Jun 01, 2003; ... Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West David M. Wrobel. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2002. Since the first settlers landed on the east coast, "the West" has presented a challenge, a vision, and an opportunity for adventure and wealth. It has been ...
American Popular Culture Through History: The 1930s
Jun 01, 2003; ... American Popular Culture Through History: The 1930s William H. Young and Nancy K. Young. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. This volume of the popular culture of the thirties is enlightening, though both depressing and encouraging. The authors point out that the thirties ...
The Futures of American Studies
Jun 01, 2003; ... The Futures of American Studies Donald E. Pease and Robyn Wiegman, Editors. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2002. The reader opens this heavy volume with a strong and eager heart, expecting to find "future" written all over a subject that continues to unfold as the world opens on new and ...
Kennedy and The Promise of the Sixties
Jun 01, 2003; ... Kennedy and The Promise of the Sixties W. J. Rorabaugh. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Youth-glamour-style-promise-America in the Sixties. Camelot revisited. A narrow slice of American history that was surely optimistic and now seems, in retrospect, self-deceiving. The ...
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: The Letters From Children of the Great Depression
Jun 01, 2003; ... Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: The Letters From Children of the Great Depression Robert Cohen, Editor. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002. Those of us old enough to remember or know those old enough to remember the Great Depression that followed the stock market crash in 1929 will ...
To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915
Jun 01, 2003; ... To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 Sally G. McMillen. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002. Everyone recognizes that important events trigger great demands, and such demands call forth powerful movements. Such was the Civil War in many ...
The Magic Window: American Television, 1939-1953
Jun 01, 2003; ... The Magic Window: American Television, 1939-1953 James A. Von Schilling. New York: Haworth Press, 2002. Those of us ancient enough to remember the first click of the TV switch at the 1939 World's Fair and its early struggle to get breathing oxygen, or those who will look back through ...
Blood and Ink: An International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature
Jun 01, 2003; ... Blood and Ink: An International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature Albert Borowitz. Kent, OH: Kent State Univ. Press, 2002. The connection between suggested crime and its being carried out is, of course, too tenuous to be more than hypothesized. But the tie-in between actual crime and ...
They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War
Jun 01, 2003; ... They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002. On the whole, what readers can glean about Civil War women soldiers from the few twentieth-century historians who addressed them is that ...