Public Culture

Marguerite S. Shaffer is Associate Professor of American History and American Studies at Miami University and author of See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940.

• Preface: Why Public Culture?-Marguerite S. ShafferWhat Is Public Culture? Agency and Contested Meaning in American Culture-An Introduction-Mary Kupiec CaytonPART I. PUBLIC ACTIONChapter 1. Looking for the Public in Time and Space: The Case of the Los Angeles Plaza from the Eighteenth Century to the Present-Mary P. RyanChapter 2. Remembrance, Contestation, Excavation: The Work of Memory in Oklahoma City, the Washita Battlefield, and the Tulsa Race Riot-Edward T. LinenthalChapter 3. Public Sentiments and the American Remembrance of World War II-John BodnarPART II. PUBLIC IMAGEChapter 4. Sponsorship and Snake Oil: Medicine Shows and Contemporary Public Culture-Susan StrasserChapter 5. Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11-Lynn SpigelChapter 6. Screening Pornography-Wendy Hui Kyong ChunPART III. PUBLIC SPACEChapter 7. The Billboard War: Gender, Commerce, and Public Space-Catherine GudisChapter 8. The Social Space of Shopping: Mobilizing Dreams for Public Culture-Sharon ZukinChapter 9. Gates, Barriers, and the Rise of Affinity: Parsing Public-Private Space in Postindustrial America-Hal RothmanPART IV. PUBLIC IDENTITYChapter 10. To Serve the Living: The Public and Civic Identity of African American Funeral Directors-Suzanne SmithChapter 11. Denizenship as Transnational Practice-Rachel Ida BuffChapter 12. The Queen's Mirrors: Public Identity and the Process of Transformation in Cincinnati, Ohio-Mary E. FredericksonEpilogue: Pitfalls and Promises: Wither the "Public" in America?-Sheila L. CroucherNotesList of ContributorsIndexAcknowledgments

"An excellent dissection of the tension between common experience and societal plurality. . . . The final valuable insight that this book may evoke for readers is that civic culture of the kind Robert Putnam lamented is not necessarily endangered. . . . but that 'public culture' is and always has been contested by a variety of actors; and to understand how Americans engage one another in the public realm requires asking difficult questions about power, wealth, gender, and race." (Reviews in American History)