Poverty in American Popular Culture

Wylie Lenz is an assistant professor of English in the humanities and social sciences department at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, Florida.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Poverty, Policy, Beliefs and Popular CultureWylie LenzHenry Ossawa Tanner and African American Realist Paintings of Poverty in the 1890sLyrica TaylorNot Picturing Poverty: The New Woman and ­Nineteenth-Century Periodical IllustrationAnna M. DempseyEarly Film and Child Welfare Issues: Charlie Chaplin’s TheKathleen A. TobinAgnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth and Representations of the SocialMichael MayneSpeaking the Language of the New Deal: Efficiency, Poverty and Economic Security in the 1930s Campaign Against Venereal DiseaseErin Wuebker“The Language of Pictures”: Images of Poverty in New Deal AmericaCourtney L. KisatA Hillbilly, a Bum and an Old Woman Meet a Screwball Redhead: Lampooning the Poor in I Love LucyMark BernhardtPoverty, Opportunity and Art Legacies in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaKatelynd L. GibbonsPrecarious Mobility: Vagrancy in American Pop CultureWibke SchniedermannMaking a (Third) Space for Learning: Analyzing Urban Education in HBO’s The WireChad William Timm“In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”: Poverty and Potentiality in Beasts of the Southern WildLauren Riccelli ZwickyA Place to See: Poverty in American Theater, 1935–2015Mary K. Ryan“What You Are About to See Will Make You Question What Matters Most”: Poverty Porn, The Briefcase and the Deserving PoorOwen Cantrell“Welcome to The First 48”: Identity, Delinquency and Reality ­TelevisionJessica H. ZbeidaAbout the ContributorsIndex

“Lenz's thesis that purely fictional narratives may influence our view of poverty just as strongly as fact-based ones do is well supported by the scholarship gathered here.”—Journal of Popular Film and Television