Issues in Americanisation and Culture

Americanisation—the cultural, political and economic influence of the USA—has played an important role in the shaping of modern Europe. This has been the case from the 19th century, when new and old worlds were negotiating fundamental issues such as race and empire, to the 20th century, when mass media communications intensified and reconfigured the transatlantic relationship.Developments since the Cold War, including the September 11th attacks and the second Gulf War, have made this process ever more globally complex, contested and relevant. This textbook offers students an interdisciplinary and theoretically informed understanding of the cultural processes of Americanisation. Designed with classroom use in mind, it provides a number of different routes into the debates and problems surrounding the notion of Americanisation. The editors’ introduction offers an accessible in-depth survey of the theoretical questions and is followed by two chapters which present responses to contemporary Americanisation. Subsequent chapters are focused on specific case studies and are grouped in the following themed sections:• Histories• Cultural Geographies• Popular Music• Literary Narratives• Mass Media• Visual and Material CultureEach chapter includes teaching points addressed to students and a guide to further reading. The editors’ conclusion considers the key contemporary question of Americanisation in relation to globalisation.Key Features:*The first student-friendly introduction to the Americanisation of European culture*Includes chapters on music, art, film and literature*Considers the cultural, political and economic of influence of the USA on Europe*Can be read as a linear narrative or used as a sourcebook from which key case studies can be selected for study

Jude Davies is a Principal Lecturer in American Studies and English at University College, Winchester. He is co-author of Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film (EUP, 1997) and author of Diana, A Cultural History (Palgrave, 2001). Neil Campbell is Head of American Studies at the University of Derby. Author of The Cultures of the American New West (EUP, 2000) and co-author of American Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1997). George McKay is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. He is author of Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (Verso, 1996) and Glastonbury: A Very English Fair (Orion, 2000). He is editor of Yankee Go Home: Americanisation and Popular Culture (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) and DiY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain (Verso, 1998). He also co-edits the journal Social Movement Studies.