Angela Ray provides a refreshing new look at the lyceum lecture system as it developed in the United States from the 1820s to the 1880s. She argues that the lyceum contributed to the creation of an American "public" at a time when the country experienced a rapid change in land area, increasing immigration, and a revolution in transportation, communication technology, and social roles. The history of the lyceum in the nineteenth century illustrates a process of expansion, diffusion, and eventual commercialization. In the late 1820s, a politically and economically dominant culture--the white Protestant northeastern middle class--institutionalized the practice of public debating and public lecturing for education and moral uplift. In the 1820s and 1830s, the lyceum was characterized by organized groups in cities and towns, particularly in the Northeast and the Old Northwest (now the Midwest). These groups were established to promote debate, to create a setting for study, and to provide a forum for members' lecturing. By the 1840s and 1850s, however, most lyceums concentrated on the sponsorship of public lectures, presented for institutional profit as well as public instruction and entertainment. Eventually, lyceum lectures became a commercial enterprise and desirable platform for celebrities who wished to expand their incomes from lecturing.

On television production popular anthropology

This book places the study of public support for the arts and culture within the prism of public policy making. It is explicitly comparative in casting cultural policy within a broad sociopolitical and historical framework. Given the complexity of national communities, there has been an absence of comparative analyses that would explain the wide variability in modes of cultural policy as reflections of public cultures and cultural identity. The discussion is internationally focused and interdisciplinary. Mulcahy contextualizes a wide variety of cultural policies and their relation to politics and identity by asking a basic question: who gets their heritage valorized and by whom is this done? The fundamental assumption is that culture is at the heart of public policy as it defines national identity and personal value.

From medicine shows to the Internet, from the Los Angeles Plaza to the Las Vegas Strip, from the commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing to television programming after 9/11, scholars examine issues of democracy, diversity, identity, community, citizenship, and belonging through the lens of American popular culture.

This book expands our historical understanding of postcolonial India by examining how cricket has shaped Indian society and politics.

These strikingly lucid and accessible essays, ranging over nearly a century of Jewish communal life, examine the ways in which immigrant Jews grappled with issues of group survival in an open and accepting American society. Ten case studies focus on Jewish strategies for maintaining a collective identity while participating fully in American society and public life. Readers will find that these essays provide a fresh, provocative, and compelling look at the fundamental question facing American Jewry at the end of the 20th century, as at its start: how to assure Jewish survival in the benign conditions of American freedom.

This is an open access book. 2023 2nd International Conference on Public Culture and Social Services (PCSS 2023) was held on August 11–13, 2023 in Qingdao, China Public culture is a cultural form formed to meet the common needs of society, where everyone can participate in culture, enjoy culture, and create culture. A good public culture can not only enhance the happiness of residents, but also cultivate one's character through moral cultivation. Moreover, it can improve the charm, vitality, self-confidence and cohesion of the city, and promote the cultural exchanges between the city and the outside world. The more developed the economy is, the more powerful the country is, the more it attaches importance to the construction of Urban culture. Public culture is the basic culture of a city and has far-reaching significance in shaping Urban culture. Social services refer to activities in the fields of education, medical and health care, elderly care, childcare, housekeeping, culture, tourism, sports, and other social sectors that rely on diverse entities to provide services to meet the multi-level and diverse needs of the people. They are related to the most direct and practical interests of the general public. There is an essential difference between social services and for-profit commercial services, as they are welfare services. PCSS explores how to make society develop better and people feel happier by discussing the relationship between public culture and social services. The specific content, activities, and services provided by public culture need to be adapted to the level of social development and supply capacity, and therefore are dynamically adjusted, up-to-date, and tailored to local conditions. Public culture involves a wide range of social undertakings, including ideology, culture, news and publishing, radio and television, as well as national fitness, popular science, and mass rule of law cultural activities. Social services belong to the basic public services provided by the government, which is the most prominent feature of public culture compared to other cultural types and forms, and also the theoretical basis for forming a policy system for public cultural services. Public culture and social services interact with each other, and to a certain extent, public culture determines the type of social services, which in turn affects the development of public culture.