Miss America's God
Regular price
€40.99
A01=Mandy McMichael
American Christian history
American Christianity
American dream
American Evangelical Culture
American Evangelicalism
American History
American pageantry
Americans and sexuality
Author_Mandy McMichael
Bible Belt
Category=JBCC1
Category=NHK
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Christian Culture
Christianity and Culture
conservative America
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Evangelical womanhood
feminist scholarship
pageantry
Women in American society
women in Christianity
Product details
- ISBN 9781481311977
- Weight: 566g
- Dimensions: 182 x 238mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2019
- Publisher: Baylor University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Miss America pageant has extraordinary staying power. Despite the cultural winds of the past century, Miss America continues to captivate the nation, giving America what it wants most - sex, entertainment, competition, religion, and even self-discovery.
In Miss America's God, Mandy McMichael traces the pageant's long and complicated history. She demonstrates that the pageant is a little explored window into American culture, one that reveals a complex cocktail of all Americans hold dear. Ultimately, McMichael contends that the pageant is an unexpected cultural space of religious expression and self-discovery for many contestants whose faith communities support and validate their pageant participation.
Miss America's God utilizes feminist theory, women's history, sociology, psychology, ethnography, and religious studies to explain the enduring popularity of the pageant, as well as religion's curious embrace of its spectacle. While contestants use the pageant to build faith and identity, the pageant uses the faith of the contestants to remain relevant in a society that is increasingly suspicious of it. McMichael shows just how central religion has been to Miss America. Religion, for Miss America, sanctifies sex, ritualizes entertainment, justifies competition, and enables self-discovery. Religion makes Miss America a cultural icon that withstands the test of time.
In Miss America's God, Mandy McMichael traces the pageant's long and complicated history. She demonstrates that the pageant is a little explored window into American culture, one that reveals a complex cocktail of all Americans hold dear. Ultimately, McMichael contends that the pageant is an unexpected cultural space of religious expression and self-discovery for many contestants whose faith communities support and validate their pageant participation.
Miss America's God utilizes feminist theory, women's history, sociology, psychology, ethnography, and religious studies to explain the enduring popularity of the pageant, as well as religion's curious embrace of its spectacle. While contestants use the pageant to build faith and identity, the pageant uses the faith of the contestants to remain relevant in a society that is increasingly suspicious of it. McMichael shows just how central religion has been to Miss America. Religion, for Miss America, sanctifies sex, ritualizes entertainment, justifies competition, and enables self-discovery. Religion makes Miss America a cultural icon that withstands the test of time.
Mandy McMichael is J. David Slover Assistant Professor of Ministry Guidance at Baylor University.
