Popular
Culture & Expressive
Forms
Also be sure to check links
under American
Studies Research Resources - General which will point
you to additional materials on Popular Culture & Expressive
Forms.
American
Popular Culture: Online Resources--Guide to online
popular culture resources. Created and regularly updated
by T.V. Reed Washington State University. Focuses on
the critical analysis of American popular culture,
particularly on issues of race/ethnicity, class, gender,
sexuality, cultural imperialism and censorship, as
shaped by and reflected in various mass media. Also
includes sections that introduce and give resources
for four main types or elements of popular culture
analysis: production analysis, textual analysis, audience
analysis, and historical analysis (of the first three
dimensions as they change over time).
Movies
Internet
Movie Database--Search by movie title, character names,
or cast/directors names. Includes links to reviews and
to filmographies for the cast members and directors. Extended
search capabilities let you search by many other criteria,
for example by genre or by Academy Award nominations.
Film
Search Engines--Links to all the major movie databases,
including the Internet Movie Database.
The
Greatest Films--Plot summaries (with actual film
dialogue), review commentary with emphasis on story
content and historical background, and hundreds of
colorful, vintage film posters for some of the best
Hollywood and American classic films in the last century.
The
Silents Majority--Comprehensive site providing
information on all aspects of the silent film era in
the U.S. and Great Britain.
Music
American
Music Resource--Reference information about all styles
of music indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. Houses over
800 bibliographies, lists, and files, indexed by topic
(genre and style subdivisions) and subject (individuals
- mostly composers). Some listings also include links to
selected Internet resources.
The Authentic History Center--Contains primary sources from American popular culture from the Antebellum period to the present.
Music
for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885--Archival
collection of 22,000 pieces of sheet music copyrighted
after the United States Civil War, digitized for the
Library of Congress's American Memory Site. The collection
is listed alphabetically by author (composer), subject,
and title, and is easily searched by keyword. Also
contains a short bibliography, an informative essay/overview
of the decade in music 1870-1879, and in-depth information
about selected pieces of choral music from the collection,
with Real Audio and Wav Format versions of these pieces.
Historic
American Sheet Music--Sheet music (including color
covers) published in the United States between 1850
and 1920 from Duke University collections. Excellent
search feature. Provides an good window into popular
culture and consciousness during these crucial decades.
African-American
Sheet Music, 1850-1920--1,305 pieces, including
songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy
in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of
the same period. Numerous titles are associated with
the novel and the play Uncle Tom's Cabin. Civil War
period music includes songs about African-American
soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave.
Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction
and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern
migration of African Americans. Twentieth century titles
feature many photographs of African-American musical
performers, often in costume.
Red
Hot Jazz Archive--Covers history of jazz before
1930. Includes sound recordings, capsule biographies,
essays, and suggested further readings.
Visual
Arts
Artsource--Links
to wide range of print and visual resources on visual arts. A good place to
start.
National
Museum of American Art--Includes over 3,000 digitized
images from its collection.
World
Wide Web Virtual Library: Museums--Guide to web
sites for art museums world wide. Regularly updated
and includes helpful judgments about quality of the
sites.
Metropolitan
Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York--National
Museum of American Art site. It explores the urban
vision of the six Ashcan artists and places their work
within the social and cultural context of early-twentieth-century
America.
Photography
American
Museum of Photography--Image-rich site providing a
useful, informative overview of the first century of the
art form. Major strength is in exhibits on photography
from the invention of the medium 1839 until WWI.
California
Museum of Photogarphy--Describes current exhibitions
at UC Riverside's California Museum of Photography.
Advertising
Ad*Access--
Images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements
printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between
1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject
areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene,
and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number
of major campaigns and companies through images preserved
in the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency collection
at Duke University.
