Brings together recent and new work on youth and youth cultures by social historians and American/cultural studies scholars. Chapters are arranged in chronological order within the 20th century. Subjects include youth and ethnicity in New York City high schools in the 1930s and 1940s, intercultural dance halls in post-WWII greater Los Angeles, art and activism in the Chicano Movement, the music of Public Enemy, the emergence of a lesbian, bisexual, and gay youth cyberculture, and zines and the making of underground community. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A history of comic books from the 1930s to 9/11.

Ten essays by British, US, and Canadian academics explore popular books, films, and television shows for clues to the meanings of youth representation in American culture. Drawing on a framework of ideas from cultural and social theory, they consider themes such as race, class, gender, power, and sexuality as well as the ideological nature of youth and its centrality to American popular culture. Originally published in 2000 as The Radiant Hour: Versions of Youth in American Culture (U. of Exeter Press). Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The authors collected here address youth street cultures in different cities from the Ibero-American world, bringing together contributions on Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Portugal, Spain, and beyond. This overseas approach bridging the European and American contexts is justified by the range of (complex) social, cultural and economic relationships that have shaped this transnational geographical space since the beginning of the colonial period. The chapters collected here focus on three key concepts—creativity, resistance and transgression—that form a threefold dispositive to locally and globally confront, contest and even fight against the hegemonic, punitive and oppressive powers (re)produced by (white, male) dominant classes of the city. The book ensures a high diversity of geographical and social/cultural research contexts by focusing on one, two or multiple spatial contexts (the public space, the street, the city) and, at the same time, by emphasizing the different economic, social, cultural, symbolic specificities of youth cultures (including gender, sexuality and race) in their particular urban contexts.

Mike Brake suggests that subcultures develop in response to social problems which a group experiences collectively, and shows how individuals draw on collective identities to define themselves.

"Adolescent culture is always changing, making it difficult for youth pastors to keep up. Even college students who are a few years out of high school find it challenging to stay current with the changing culture of teens. However, when equipped with tools that help them think critically about culture on a broad scale, youth ministry students can be prepared for a strategic ministry to teens that effectively addresses the youth cultural context. This academic resource uses a multi-disciplinary approach to understand culture by exploring the nature, theology, ecology, and ethnography of culture, then combining these different perspectives to develop a critical approach to youth culture."

The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel an American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. This interdisciplinary work explains how a complex matrix of cultures influences black youth.

Growing Up America brings together new scholarship that considers the role of children and teenagers in shaping American political life during the decades following the Second World War. Growing Up America places young people-and their representations-at the center of key political trends, illuminating the dynamic and complex roles played by youth in the midcentury rights revolutions, in constructing and challenging cultural norms, and in navigating the vicissitudes of American foreign policy and diplomatic relations. The authors featured here reveal how young people have served as both political actors and subjects from the early Cold War through the late twentieth-century Age of Fracture. At the same time, Growing Up America contends that the politics of childhood and youth extends far beyond organized activism and the ballot box. By unveiling how science fairs, breakfast nooks, Boy Scout meetings, home economics classrooms, and correspondence functioned as political spaces, this anthology encourages a reassessment of the scope and nature of modern politics itself.

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.