Popular Culture: An Introductory Text provides the means for a new examination of the different faces of the American character in both its historical and contemporary identities. The text is highlighted by a series of extensive introductions to various categories of popular culture and by essays that demonstrate how the methods discussed in the introductions can be applied. This volume is an exciting beginning for the study of the materials of everyday life that define our culture and confirm our individual senses of identity.

• Contents 
• Getting to Know Us An Introduction to the Study of Popular Culture: What is this Stuff that Dreams are Made Of?
• Section 1
• Taking Popular Culture Seriously
• Seeing What We've Said: The Top Ten American Box-Office Hits Taken Seriously
• Lause, Kevin
• How Much Can You Swallow?
• Miller, Mark Crispin
• New Legends for Old
• Brunvand, Jan Harold
• The Cabinet of Dr. Seuss
• Lurie, Alison
• Section 2
• Songs of the Unseen Road: Myths, Beliefs and Values in Popular Culture
• Four Morality Tales
• Reich, Robert
• Culture and Continuity: Three American Myths in the Prints of Currier & Ives
• Nachbar, Jack
• The American Myth of Success: Visions and Revisions
• Marsden, Madonna
• Endless Love Will Keep Us Together: The Myth of Romantic Love and Contemporary Popular Movie Love Themes
• Kile, Crystal
• Section 3
• Living in the Material World: The Meaning and Power of Popular Icons
• For Whom the Bell Tolled
• Patton, Phil
• The Malling of America
• Kowinski, William Severini
• “Seen Through Rose-Tinted Glasses”: The Barbie Doll in American Society
• Motz, Marilyn Ferris
• Section 4
• Breaking the Mold: The Meaning and Significance of Stereotypes in Popular Culture
• The VALS Typology
• Mitchell, Arnold
• From the Plantation to Bel-Air: A Brief History of Black Stereotypes
• Geist, Christopher D.
• Nelson, Angela M.S.
• Yellow Devil Doctors and Opium Dens: The Yellow Peril Stereotype in Mass Media Entertainment
• Hoppenstand, Gary
• One Size Does Not Fit All: Being Beautiful, Thin and Female in America
• Caputi, Jane
• Nance, Susan
• Section 5
• Look! Up in the Sky! (And Right Next Door): Popular Heroes in America
• What Makes Superman So Darned American?
• Engle, Gary
• Henry Ford: Symbol of an Age
• Nash, Roderick
• The Rap on Rap
• Samuels, David
• The Wretched of the Hearth: The Undainty Feminism of Roseanne Arnold
• Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Section 6
• All Together Now: Popular Rituals in America Family Reunion
• Fields, Jean
• Game Day U.S.A.
• The South - Willie Morris
• The Midwest - Frank Conroy
• The West - Richard Hoffer
• Halloween: Rite of Season, Rite of Passage
• Santino, Jack
• Section 7
• Would You Repeat That—Please!: The Meaningful Delights of Formula in the Popular Arts
• The Western
• Schatz, Thomas
• Television Soap Opera: “Incest, Bigamy, and Fatal Disease”
• Derry, Charles
• Monster Movies: A Sexual Theory
• Evans, Walter
• Magic and Transformation: Relationships in Popular Romance Novels, 1950 to the 1980s
• Hubbord, Rita C.
• Section 8
• Thirteenth Generation Born: 1961-1981
• Strauss, William
• Howe, Neil