This collection of insightful essays by outstanding artists, anthropologists, historians, classicists and humanists was developed to broaden the study of popular culture and to provide instances of original and innovative interdisciplinary approaches.
    Its first purpose is to broaden the study of popular culture which is too often regarded in the academic world as the entertainment and leisure time activities of the 20th century. Second, the collection gives recognition to the fact that a number of disciplines have been investigating popular phenomena on different fronts, and it is designed to bring examples of these disciplines together under the common rubric of “popular culture.” Related to this is a third purpose of providing instances of original and innovative interdisciplinary approaches. Last, the collection should be a worthwhile contribution to the component disciplines as well as to the study of popular culture.

Throughout Front Yard America, Schroeder inquires into the functions, values, and meanings that Americans have found in the domestic landscapes of back yards and front yards, walls and fences, porches and patios.

Although libraries and museums for many centuries have taken the lead, under one rational or another, in recovering, storing, and displaying various kinds of culture of their periods, lately, as the gap between elite and popular culture has apparently widened, these repositories of artifacts of the present for the future have tended to drift more and more to what many people call the aesthetically pleasing elements of our culture. The degree to which our libraries and museums have ignored our culture is terrifying, when one scans the documents and artifacts of our time which, if history in any wise repeats itself, will in the immediate and distant future become valuable indices of our present culture to future generations. As Professor Schroeder dramatically states it, “No doubt about it, it is the contemporary popular culture that is the endangered species.”
    The essays in this book investigate the reasons for present-day neglect of popular culture materials and chart the various routes by which conscientious and insightful librarians and museum directors can correct this disastrous oversight.