Originally published as The New People, this classic volume examines the great changes in popular culture that unfolded in the 1960s with major steps toward political, racial, gender, and social empowerment. The popular culture of the time expressed a series of themes that have become, if not more significant, then certainly more visible in the 1990s. We are now entering the third generation of Americans who are living out the themes that are traced in this book. The author sees a depolarization, a neutering in content and key people in the popular arts. Some of these trends result from technological changes and others reflect what is happening in the psychosocial interior of the family as well as larger economic movements. Winick believes that in such wide-ranging features of our society as sports, furniture, and architecture, the expression of an epoch can be identified. Clothing conveys the imbalance and ambiguity that reflect larger social forces and that have been identified more recently by Jacques Lacan as so important in modern life. Desexualization in American Life is remarkably prescient and accurate in identifying key trends that affect us today and will continue to do so for the remainder of the decade.

Originally published as The New People, this classic volume examines the great changes in popular culture that unfolded in the 1960s with major steps toward political, racial, gender, and social empowerment. The popular culture of the time expressed a series of themes that have become, if not more significant, then certainly more visible in the 1990s. We are now entering the third generation of Americans who are living out the themes that are traced in this book. The author sees a depolarization, a neutering in content and key people in the popular arts. Some of these trends result from technological changes and others reflect what is happening in the psychosocial interior of the family as well as larger economic movements. Winick believes that in such wide-ranging features of our society as sports, furniture, and architecture, the expression of an epoch can be identified. Clothing conveys the imbalance and ambiguity that reflect larger social forces and that have been identified more recently by Jacques Lacan as so important in modern life. Desexualization in American Life is remarkably prescient and accurate in identifying key trends that affect us today and will continue to do so for the remainder of the decade.

Providing a convenient and unique look at fashion and costume literature and how it has developed historically, this volume discusses monographic and reference literature and provides information on periodicals, research centers, and costume museums and collections. It also provides a new way of looking at the literature through a database of 58 Library of Congress subject headings. It covers topics from jeans to wedding dresses and features popular examples of how clothing is used and reflected in our culture through the literature discussed. Of interest to scholars, students, and anyone curious about the unique power clothing holds in our lives. Various types of reference sources are discussed including other guides to the literature, encyclopedia, dictionaries, biographical dictionaries, specialized bibliographies, and indexing and abstracting services. Electronic CD-ROM and online databases equivalents are included in the presentation of indexing and abstracting services with major networks such as OCLC, RLIN, Lexis/Nexis, and Dialog mentioned as well. In addition a list of 123 research centers, mainly libraries, is provided and arranged geographically by state, some 176 costume museums and collections of costumes located at colleges and universities are listed alphabetically, and a list of 278 periodicals on fashion, costume, clothing and related topics is provided. A database of some 58 clothing and accessory subject headings is analyzed in the Worldcat database with the literature of the top ten specific clothing and accessory subject terms limited to media publication format are covered. Additionally, histories of costume and fashion in the U.S. and works which concentrate on psychological, sociological or cultural aspects are outlined. An appendix, including the clothing and accessory database, and author and subject indexes conclude the volume.

Arthur Asa Berger, author of an array of texts in communication, popular culture, and social theory, is back with the second edition of his popular, user-friendly guide for students who want to understand the social meanings of objects. In this broadly interdisciplinary text, Berger takes the reader through half a dozen theoretical models that are commonly used to analyze objects. He then describes and analyzes eleven objects, many of them new to this edition—including smartphones, Facebook, hair dye, and the American flag—showing how they demonstrate concepts like globalization, identity, and nationalism. The book includes a series of exercises that allow students to analyse objects in their own environment. Brief and inexpensive, this introductory guide will be used in courses ranging from anthropology to art history, pop culture to psychology.

Style of dress has always been a way for Americans to signify their politics, but perhaps never so overtly as in the 1960s and 1970s. Whether participating in presidential campaigns or Vietnam protests, hair and dress provided a powerful cultural tool for social activists to display their politics to the world and became both the cause and a symbol of the rift in American culture. Some Americans saw stylistic freedom as part of their larger political protests, integral to the ideals of self-expression, sexual freedom, and equal rights for women and minorities. Others saw changes in style as the erosion of tradition and a threat to the established social and gender norms at the heart of family and nation. Through the lens of fashion and style, Dressing for the Culture Wars guides us through the competing political and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Although long hair on men, pants and miniskirts on women, and other hippie styles of self-fashioning could indeed be controversial, Betty Luther Hillman illustrates how self-presentation influenced the culture and politics of the era and carried connotations similarly linked to the broader political challenges of the time. Luther Hillman’s new line of inquiry demonstrates how fashion was both a reaction to and was influenced by the political climate and its implications for changing norms of gender, race, and sexuality.