Mad Men and Politics

Lilly J. Goren is Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Carroll University, USA. She is the author of You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby: Gender, Politics and Popular Culture (2010) and co-author of Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture and Presidential Politics (winner of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Susan Koppelman Award 2014).Linda Beail is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Margaret Stevenson Center for Women’s Studies at Point Loma Nazarene University, USA. She is co-author of Framing Sarah Palin: Pit Bulls, Puritans, and Politics (2012).

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsThe American CenturyI. Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and The Remaking of AmericaLilly J. Goren and Linda BeailII. If You Don’t Like What They Are Saying, Change the Conversation: The Grifter, Don Draper, and the Iconic American HeroLilly J. Goren III. The Power Elite and Semi-Sovereign Selfhood in post-War AmericaLoren GoldmanIV. Cash or Credit?: Sex and the Pursuit of Happiness Laurie Naranch Business and IdentityV. Appearances, Social Norms, and Life in Modern America: Nationalism and Patriotism in Mad MenLawrence Heyman VI. Going Groovy or Nostalgic: Mad Men and Advertising, Business, and Social MovementsKate Edenborg Those Seen and Not Seen, Heard and Not Heard VII. Masculinity and Its Discontents: Myth, Memory and the Future on Mad Men Denise WitzigVIII. “You Can’t Be a Man. So Don’t Even Try”: Femininity and Feminism in Mad Men Natalie Fuehrer Taylor IX. Invisible Men: The Politics and Presence of Racial and Ethnic “Others” in Mad MenLinda Beail ConclusionX. Tomorrowland: Contemporary Visions, Past Indiscretions Rebecca Colton JosephsonAppendix I: Products of Mad Men Appendix II: Episodes of Mad Men Bibliography Author Biographies Index

The ten essays in Mad Men and Politics offer a number of ruminations on the various ways in which the series dramatized the seismic socio-cultural shifts of that decade ... [The book provides] structured, rigorous textual analysis of themes, characters and plot lines.