European Readings of American Popular Culture

(Hardback)

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Since the Second World War, Europe has undergone a continual invasion: wave after wave of American popular culture. The diffusion of American culture in Europe is both a European story about America and an American story about Europe. This work examines this cross-cultural phenomenon from the European viewpoint. Nearly two dozen European experts in their respective fields offer an engaging and open-minded examination of America as perceived with the acute insight of the interested European outsider - a fruitful tradition that stretches back to Lafayette, de Tocqueville, and Goethe, to name three. Of interest to scholars, students and general readers alike. The book's focus is both sensuous and seen (The Image); heard (Popular Music); perused (The Written Word); digested (Food); learned from its common ways (Social Custom); perceived by minorities (Ethnic Cultures); and taken as an instrument of change (Americanisation). It is the first book of its kind published in the United States. It is rich with selected, up-to-date critical bibliographies in areas for which very little information is otherwise available. In sum: a cogent, cross-cultural analysis of how US popular culture exposes both European dreams of well-being and nightmares of discontent.

Author Bio

JOHN DEAN is an American, born and educated in the United States, who has lived half his life in Europe. He is currently professor of American Civilization and Mass Media Studies at Universit Strasbourg II. He has written books and professional articles on popular culture, including American Popular Culture (1992). JEAN-PAUL GABILLIET is professor of English and North American Studies at the Strasbourg Institute of Political Studies. He is the author of an unpublished doctoral thesis on anthropological aspects of comic books and comic-book reading in North America, as well as numerous articles on North American popular culture and U.S.-Canadian relations.