Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States

Table of Contents

Contents Preface: Why Public Culture? ix Marguerite S. Shaffer What Is Public Culture? Agency and Contested Meaning in American Culture—An Introduction 1 Mary Kupiec Cayton Part I. Public Action 1 Looking for the Public in Time and Space: The Case of the Los Angeles Plaza from the Eighteenth Century to the Present 29 Mary P. Ryan 2 Remembrance, Contestation, Excavation: The Work of Memory in Oklahoma City, the Washita Battlefield, and the Tulsa Race Riot 52 Edward T. Linenthal 3 Public Sentiments and the American Remembrance of World War II 67 John Bodnar Part II. Public Image 4 Sponsorship and Snake Oil: Medicine Shows and Contemporary Public Culture 91 Susan Strasser 5 Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11 114 Lynn Spigel 6 Screening Pornography 143 Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Part III. Public Space 7 The Billboard War: Gender, Commerce, and Public Space 171 Catherine Gudis 8 The Social Space of Shopping: Mobilizing Dreams for Public Culture 199 Sharon Zukin 9 Gates, Barriers, and the Rise of Affinity: Parsing Public-Private Space in Postindustrial America 219 Hal Rothman Part IV. Public Identity 10 To Serve the Living: The Public and Civic Identity of African American Funeral Directors 249 Suzanne Smith 11 Denizenship as Transnational Practice 263 Rachel Ida Buff 12 The Queen’s Mirrors: Public Identity and the Process of Transformation in Cincinnati, Ohio 273 Mary E. Frederickson Epilogue: Pitfalls and Promises: Wither the “Public” in America? 303 Sheila L. Croucher Notes 315 List of Contributors 363 Index 367 Acknowledgments 375 viii Contents ...