What's Popular Culture?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, popular culture is "the cultural traditions of the ordinary people of a particular community. It is based on popular taste, usually commercialized and made widely available by the mass media." Furthermore, popular culture is interdisciplinary, as it incorporates a variety of music, literature, film, art, television, computer and video games, fashion, comics and graphic novels, popular magazines, etc.
Databases
- Academic Video Online
Is the most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers more than 64,000 titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, education, film, health, history, music, and more. Provides more than 17,000 titles that are exclusive to Alexander Street.
- Audio Drama: the L.A.Theatre Works
"The L.A. Theatre Works Collection delivers, for the first time online, more than three hundred important dramatic works in streaming audio from the curated archive of the nation’s premiere radio theatre company. The plays - which include some of the most significant dramatic literature of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries - are performed by leading actors from around the world and recorded specifically for online listening. Specialized indexing at the track level for over half of these recordings links individual segments of plays to specific academic disciplines and subject keywords. This allows researchers to find relevant scenes that touch on subjects in the humanities, social sciences, theatre, hard sciences, law, medicine, and virtually every other field of study."
- Black DramaThis third edition contains approximately 1,700 plays by over 200 playwrights. It also has selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Nearly 600 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors. The library also has the catalog records and the plays can be searched by title in the online catalog.
- Black Thought and CultureProvides primary source materials published by the leading African American thinkers and intellectuals of their day.
- Digital Theatre Plus
Digital Theatre Plus offers streamed films of leading British theatre productions for educational use in schools, colleges, and universities. Each production is supported by additional content, including interviews with the creative and production teams and written study guides.
- Films on Demand
These videos cover American Literature, with authors such as Alice Walker, Emily Dickinson, John Steinbeck, Eudora Welty and others. It also features videos about English literature, history, religion and theater. These videos are made available via the RODP program and paid by the TBR Media Consortia.
- Gale OneFile: Communication and Mass Media
Powered by InfoTrac, the Communications & Mass Media Collection brings together information found in more than 400 journals. Nearly 3 million articles on all aspects of the communications field, including advertising, public relations, linguistics, and literature, meet the needs of researchers. Exclusive features, including Topic Finder, InterLink, and a mobile-optimized interface, support and enhance the search experience.
- Gale OneFile: Popular Culture StudiesProvides access to scholarly journals and magazines that both analyze and contribute to popular culture. The database offers useful information for researchers in social science, history, art, or liberal arts courses. It provides useful information from over two million articles found in over 100 subject-appropriate,full-text periodicals that are updated daily.
- Libby eBooks
Borrow popular ebooks to enjoy online, on your device, Kindle, or eReader. The collection is strongest in high-use and popular fiction. Check out materials using your TSU network logins.
- New York Public Library Digital GalleryThe New York Public Library's image database has been developed to provide free and open online access to thousands of images from the original and rare holdings of the Research Libraries. Spanning a wide range of visual media, NYPL Digital Gallery offers digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and more. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of the Research Libraries, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, Music and Performing Arts, and social sciences.
- New York Times (1851 - 2020)
It offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
- Popular Magazines Collection
Provides access to more than 1,000 full-text magazines covering subjects such as current events, sports, science, health, and more.
Books
Check out these call numbers when you are browsing the shelves for books on topics related to popular culture:
|
Comics |
PN6707 - PN6728 |
|
Fashion |
GT813-GT818 |
|
Film/motion pictures |
PN1993-1998 |
|
Media/communication |
NX650 - P96 |
|
Music, United States |
ML3918 |
|
Performing Arts, general |
PN1560 - PN1590 |
|
Popular Culture, general |
CB151 - CB430 |
|
Television |
PN1992 |
Professional Organizations
Entertainment Software Association
Motion Picture of America Association
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Minorities in Communication
Popular Culture Association · American Culture Association
Recording Industry Association of America
Book Highlights
Adaptations of Mental and Cognitive Disability in Popular Media by Call Number: P96.64 .A33 2022ISBN: 9781793648310Publication Date: 2022Examining representations of mental difference, this collection focuses on the ways that adaptations (including remakes, reboots, and other examples of remixed narratives) can shape and shift the social contexts and narratives we use to define mental disability. The movement of narratives across media via adaptation, or within media but across time and space in the case of remakes and reboots, is a common tactic for revitalization, allowing storytellers to breathe new life into tired narratives, remedying past inaccuracies and making them accessible and relevant for contemporary audiences. Thus, this collection argues that adaptation provides a useful tool for examining the constraints or opportunities different media impose on or afford narratives, or for measuring shifts in ideology as narratives move across cultures or through time. Further, narrative functions within this collection as a framework for examining the ways that popular media exerts rhetorical power, allowing for deeper understandings of the ways that mental disability is experienced by differently situated individuals, and revealing relationships with broader social narratives that attempt to push definitions of disability onto them.
Black Hollywood : reimagining iconic movie moments by Call Number: TR681.B52 A94 2022ISBN: 9781728258393Publication Date: 2022In Black Hollywood, photographer Carell Augustus has enlisted Black celebrities and performers from all areas of entertainment to recreate iconic scenes from classic Hollywood movies, television, and other media. The images illuminate the role of race in Hollywood history by re-imagining classic films with Black actors, renewing readers' appreciation of the past while celebrating the hottest Black stars of today and inspiring the artists of the future. More than a book about pop culture, film history, or race, Black Hollywood is truly an inspirational artistic homage to our greatest blockbuster movies and the actors who brought them to life.
Blacksound : making race and popular music in the United States by Call Number: ML3479 .M69 2024ISBN: 9780520390577Publication Date: 2024Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States took shape during slavery out of blackface. "Blacksound" as an idea is not the music or sounds produced by Black Americans but instead the material and fleeting remnants of their sounds and performances that have been co-opted and amalgamated into the making of popular music.
Buy Black : how Black women transformed US pop culture by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780252053269Publication Date: 2022Buy Black examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on their pivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s. Through an exploration of the dolls, princesses, and rags-to-riches stories that represent Black girlhood and womanhood in everything from haircare to Nicki Minaj's hip-hop, Aria S. Halliday spotlights how the products created by Black women have furthered Black women's position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racial progress. Far-ranging and bold, Buy Black reveals what attitudes inform a contemporary Black sensibility based in representation and consumerism. It also traces the parameters of Black symbolic power, mapping the sites where intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood, beauty, play, and sexuality meet and mix in consumer and popular culture.
Desegregating Comics : debating Blackness in the golden age of American comics by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781978825055Publication Date: 2023Some comics fans view the industry's Golden Age (1930s-1950s) as a challenging time when it comes to representations of race, an era when the few Black characters appeared as brutal savages, devious witch doctors, or unintelligible minstrels. Yet the true portrait is more complex and reveals that even as caricatures predominated, some Golden Age comics creators offered more progressive and nuanced depictions of Black people. Desegregating Comics assembles a team of leading scholars to explore how debates about the representation of Blackness shaped both the production and reception of Golden Age comics. Some essays showcase rare titles like Negro Romance and consider the formal innovations introduced by Black comics creators like Matt Baker and Alvin Hollingsworth, while others examine the treatment of race in the work of such canonical cartoonists as George Herriman and Will Eisner. The collection also investigates how Black fans read and loved comics, but implored publishers to stop including hurtful stereotypes. As this book shows, Golden Age comics artists, writers, editors, distributors, and readers engaged in heated negotiations over how Blackness should be portrayed, and the outcomes of those debates continue to shape popular culture today.
The Encyclopedia of LGBTQIA+ Portrayals in American Film by Call Number: PN1995.9.H55 D96 2022ISBN: 9781538153901Publication Date: 2022The depictions of LGBTQIA+ characters in film have always varied immensely. However, the negative depictions often seem to outweigh the positive, perhaps because of the hurt they inspire or perhaps because they regrettably outnumber the positive films. The Encyclopedia of LGBTQIA+ Portrayals in American Film explores works from the past fifty years in order to not only discuss how LGBTQIA+ characters are portrayed in American film, but also how these portrayals affect viewers. Contributors to this valuable reference include film and media scholars, gender studies scholars, journalists, LGBTQIA+ advocates, and more, representing countries from around the world. This rich array of perspectives provide careful and critical examinations of more than 100 films, ranging from the ethical and compassionate to the deliberately cruel and destructive.
Game Changers : the video game revolution by Call Number: GV1469.3 .G36 2023ISBN: 9781838666989Publication Date: 2023A visual history of all things video games, this book will provide the reader with an overview of the gaming industry, from the very first game created around the mid-twentieth century, right through to the present day. Particular focus is given to advances within the industry during this time, such as new technologies, innovative gameplay, never-before-seen graphics, and design. An introduction by Simon Parkin provides an overview of gaming history, and exploring how iconic games have pushed the boundaries of the medium and 300 entries, hand picked by a panel of industry experts, showcase the most influential and celebrated games, consoles, publishers, and more. Each entry is accompanied by text informing the reader about the game and its history, its place in wider popular culture, and including useful information and facts, with exciting and sometimes unexpected pairings provided by the A to Z organization.
Pop culture and power : teaching media literacy for social justice by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781487536565Publication Date: 2022"Literacy education has historically characterized mass media as manipulative towards young people who, as a result, are in need of close-reading "skills." By contrast, Pop Culture and Power treats literacy as a dynamic practice, shaped by its social and cultural context. It develops a framework to analyze power in its various manifestations, arguing that power works through popular culture, not as everyday media. Pop Culture and Power thus explores media engagement as an opportunity to promote social change. Deeming pop culture as an opportunity rather than a threat, Dawn H. Currie and Deirdre M. Kelly worked with K-12 educators to investigate how pop culture can support teaching for social justice.
The Sisterhood : how a network of Black women writers changed American culture by Call Number: PS153.B53 T48 2023ISBN: 9780231204729Publication Date: 2023One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan's Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves "The Sisterhood," the group-which also came to include Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Margo Jefferson, and others-would get together once a month over the next two years, creating a vital space for Black women to discuss literature and liberation. The Sisterhood tells the story of how this remarkable community transformed American writing and cultural institutions. Drawing on original interviews with Sisterhood members as well as correspondence, meeting minutes, and close readings of their works, Courtney Thorsson explores the group's everyday collaboration and profound legacy. The Sisterhood advocated for Black women writers at trade publishers and magazines such as Random House, Ms., and Essence, and eventually in academic departments as well-even in the face of sexist, racist, and homophobic backlash. Thorsson traces the personal, professional, and political ties that brought the group together as well as the reasons for its dissolution. She considers the popular and critical success of Sisterhood members in the 1980s, the uneasy absorption of Black feminism into the academy, and the younger writers building on the foundations the group laid. Highlighting the organizing and community building that nurtured Black women's writing, this book demonstrates that The Sisterhood offers an enduring model for Black feminist collaboration.
When Broadway Was Black : the triumphant story of the all-black musical that changed the world by Call Number: PN2270.A35 G35 2023ISBN: 9781728259390Publication Date: 2023For readers of Hidden Figures and Something Wonderful, When Broadway Was Black is the story of New York in the roaring twenties and the first Broadway show with an all-Black cast and creative team to achieve success-and its impact on our popular culture. Amidst a culture actively whitewashing, controlling, or trying to prevent their stories from being told, these artists changed the course of American entertainment. This groundbreaking group of performers and the creators (including composer Eubie Blake and lyricist Noble Sissle) sowed the seeds of the Harlem jazz scene and paved the way for people of color on stage and screen, ultimately leading to productions such as West Side Story, Black Panther, and of course, Hamilton.