Finding Information on Popular Culture
at Homewood-Flossmoor High School
Definition: Popular culture comprises the prevalent elements of a given society, be they the plays of William Shakespeare in England at the turn of the seventeenth century or reality television in America at the turn of the twenty-first century. Sources for the dissemination of popular culture have evolved over time, and in contemporary America include news media, book publishers, the Internet, and the advertising, film, music and television industries. Popular culture is a pervasive phenomenon, and its elements essentially play a part in the backdrop of the society in which they developed.~Popular culture can be deemed as what is popular within the social context of the common man and popularly accepted among society in general.
A pop culture icon or artifact is a man-made object which gives information about the culture of its creator and users. The artifact may change over time in what it represents, how it appears and how and why it is used as the culture changes over time. A cultural icon often represents or symbolizes what is going on in a society or culture. A cultural icon can be an object, event, or even a person.
Keywords: ~Try using similar or related words and phrases to find information on your topic. When looking for topics in our Online Book Catalog, you will find more results if you search by KEYWORD rather than subject. Here are some KEYWORDS to consider for this assignment:
Culture ~~ Popular Culture ~ Social Life and Customs~~~ Fashion ~ Decades ~~ Icon ~~ Symbol ~~~~ Artifact
Related Web Sites
Digital Museum of Cultural Artifacts
Cultural Studies Central
How Stuff Works
For additional web sites, go to the library's online catalog and type in "internet sites about culture" and click "Title" then, "elec. access." Browse through the list of sites about culture linked to our catalog.
E-Books
Don’t forget our DATABASES!!! (See librarian for password)
Go to the HFHS Library Homepage*. Here you will find a variety of subscription databases filled with information from published, reliable sources like reference books, magazines and journals, as well as newspapers. The following databases would work best for this assignment:
- Student Resource Center (Hint: Search by KEYWORD instead of subject. Also, once the results list appears, check the left-hand column for additional and more specific topics related to your search.)
Citing Sources
Click here for links to several citation composers that will help you with your bibliography.
Reminder: To access our databases at home or at school, you will need to type in the password when asked for a username, login, etc. See the librarian for password info.
*Visit us on the Web at www.hfhighschool.org. Scroll down the H-F Homepage and click on "Library Online Resources" on the lower right.
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Homewood-Flossmoor High School Library
Available Books Related to Popular Culture
001.9 KRA Beyond Star Trek: physics from alien invasions to the end of time. Explores the connection between science and popular culture, discussing how the laws of physics relate to situations presented in films and television shows such as "Star Trek," and exploring topics such as alien visitation, interstellar travel, and ESP.
301.16 ROS Mass culture revisited.
301.2 BIG Approaches to popular culture.
301.2 WAR The immediate experience: movies, comics, theatre & other aspects of popular culture.
303.4 ILL I'll buy that!: 50 small wonders and big deals that revolutionized the lives of consumers : a 50-year retrospective.
303.4 MAR Follies and foibles: a view of 20th century fads. Discusses various American fads in
chronological order.
306 MIT Cultural geography : a critical introduction.
306 PAN Panati's parade of fads, follies, and manias : the origins of our most cherished obsessions. In depth study of one hundred years of American Popular culture: what it was, how it's changed, and what it has become.
306 SMI Poplorica: a popular history of the fads, mavericks, inventions, and lore that shaped modern America. Tells the stories behind twenty inventions and innovations that have had a major influence on how people work, live, play, and eat, including the introduction of TV dinners, air conditioning, black velvet paintings, and permanent-press clothing.
306.09 CUL The art of democracy: a concise history of popular culture in the United States.
309.173 PET Prisoners of culture. New York: Scribner, [1970].
309.173 SKO Fads
332.7 SIM The credit card catastrophe: the 20th century phenomenon that changed the world. Examines the credit card industry from the viewpoint of one who was in on the beginnings of the Diner's Club, which started the plastic revolution, with case histories of people whose fortunes were lost or made using the cards.
391 CAR Fashions of a decade: the 1980s. A pictorial survey chronicling the international clothing fashions of the 1980s.
391 CLA Costume since 1945 : couture, street style, and anti-fashion. Captures in drawings and text
the changes of mood and style in dress from 1945 to 1995.391 HER Fashions of a decade. A decade-by-decade look at the most influential trends in twentieth-
century fashion, covering the years between 1920 and the 1990s, with original paintings,
photographs, and illustrations of record jackets, advertisements, and posters.
391 MCD McDowell's directory of twentieth century fashion. Contains an alphabetical directory of 350
major designers and a section on the fashion trends of this century.
391 PER From top hats to baseball caps, from bustles to blue jeans : why we dress the way we do. Discusses the types of clothing people have worn throughout history, why they dressed the way they did, and how clothing reflects and even influences history.
391 PRO Shoes in Vogue since 1910.
391.009 HOW In Vogue: sixty years of international celebrities and fashion from British Vogue.
500 GAR Fads and fallacies in the name of science. Examines the various fads, fallacies, strange
Cults, and curious panaceas which at one time or another have masqueraded as science.
702 NIE The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-To Guide for Young Artists.
741.5 HAR The art of the comic book: an aesthetic history. Traces the evolution of comic books from
their beginnings in the 1930s through the mid-1990s, demonstrating how the words and pictures function together as a unique art form.
746.9 BON The Guinness guide to 20th century fashion.
810.9 WAT The birth of the beat generation : visionaries, rebels, and hipsters. Chronicles the lives of
poets and novelists, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others drawing connections between their unique brand of literature.
909.82 OXF The Oxford history of the twentieth century. Contains twenty-seven essays in which a
variety of historians from throughout the world examine significant events and key themes of the twentieth century, and contemplate what the future might bring.
917.303 SAN Fads, follies and delusions of the American people.
920 WIL Famous modern artists: from Cézanne to pop art.
973.03 TUL The New York Public Library book of popular Americana. Alphabetical entries on American
popular culture, from M&M's to the First Amendment.
973.91 LIF Life: century of change: America in pictures, 1900-2000. A photographic exploration of the
twentieth century, examining the themes of home, family, machines, entertainment, lifespan, cultures, shopping, sex, design, and celebrity.
973.917 HAR The forties and fifties: an illustrated history in colour, 1945-1959. Presents the major events of a period characterized by fear of another world war, unprecedented high standards of living, and great scientific advances.
973.917 HEI Home front America: popular culture of the World War II era. Presents memorabilia from
those left behind during World War II discussing home front activities like the U.S.O. dances, victory gardens, and war bond rallies.
R 306.0973 PEN Bowling, beatniks, and bell-bottoms : pop culture of 20th-century America. This book
recounts the enduring products, innovative trends, and fun fads of the years of the 1900s and 1910s.
R 700 BRO Timelines of the arts and literature. A chronological presentation of the cultural aspects of
human history, from the earliest recorded creations to the present.
R 809.3 ENC The encyclopedia of fantasy. Contains over 4,000 entries that provide information about
various aspects of fantasy in literature, films, television, opera, art, and comics, ranging primarily from the decades preceding the start of the nineteenth century through 1995.
R 909 ROO The roots of Western civilization : A Grolier multicultural resource.
R 909.82 BRO Timelines of the 20th century: a chronology of 7,500 key events, discoveries, and people
That shaped our century. Year-to-year chronology of the 20th century, from 1900 through 1994, looking at the key people and events in the four general areas of politics and war; science, technology, and medicine; arts and literature; and social, economic, and everyday life.
R 909.82 GLE The 20th century: an illustrated history of our lives and times.
R 909.82 OUR Our times: the illustrated history of the 20th century. An illustrated chronicle of the
twentieth-century, offering an overivew of each decade; presenting a year-by-year account of happenings and people in sports, science, society, the arts, industry, and other areas; and featuring an essay that characterizes each decade as well as the top story for every year.
R 973 DIC American culture after World War II. A dictionary of people, places, terms, and art forms
associated with creative expression in the humanities and representative of American culture in the latter half of the 20th century.
R 973.9 GOR The Columbia chronicles of American life, 1910-1992. Text and photographs provide a panorama of American life from 1910 to 1992.
R 973.9 LIF Life sixty years: a 60th anniversary celebration, 1936-1996. Reviews the top stories and
photographs from sixty years of "Life" magazine, from 1936 through 1996, grouped by subject including the White House, Hollywood, fashion, disaster, protest, and other topics.
R 973.91 GOR American chronicle: year by year through the twentieth century. Highlights all of the major events that have taken place in America in the twentieth century, profiling developments in art, literature, politics, fashion, entertainment, sports, and technology.
R 973.91 WOO The 1900s. Discusses the political, economic, and cultural life of the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, including daily life, labor relations, the conservation movement, and transportation.
