The Future Of High Culture In America

This book brings together the proceedings of the inaugural conference of the University of Arizona Center for American Culture and Ideas (CACI), an institution dedicated to studying and promoting the arts, particularly investigating the relationship between the high arts and culture in America. The conference was titled “The Future of (High) Culture in America,” and was held in March 2014. Presenters and respondents included practicing artists, critics, educators and academics, curators, and art purveyors, all at the top of their game. Papers were presented, followed by comments from a panel of respondents and an audience question and answer period. The conference title can be read as both a statement and a question: Is there high culture in America, and if so, is it in jeopardy? This suggests an opportunity to consider what “culture” or “high culture” means. This book explores a range of subjects, including music, dance, the visual arts (particularly photography), and more general philosophical and psychological matters. As such, it offers a fascinating and provocative kaleidoscope of the position of arts and culture in America.

This book brings together the collected writings of Daniel Asia from the last 10 years. The articles, reviews, and essays gathered here originally appeared in noted publications such as The New Criterion and Academic Questions, and as blog entries with the Huffington Post. Topics discussed include classical music, universities, Judaism, politics, and American culture. All essays are presented in clear and elegant non-academic prose, and are often imbued with a wry and delicate sense of humor. This book is a fine introduction to the current state of high culture in America, with an emphasis on classical music and its recent and current best composers. As such, it is perfect for the curious lay person seeking knowledge in these areas, and for academics and their students working in the areas of music composition, music history, introduction to music, sociology, politics, education, American studies and Jewish studies.

In 1958, Shepard Stone, then directing the Ford Foundation's International Affairs program, suggested that his staff "measure" America's cultural impact in Europe. He wanted to determine whether efforts to improve opinions of American culture were yielding good returns. Taking Stone's career as a point of departure and frequent return, Volker Berghahn examines the triangular relationship between the producers of ideas and ideologies, corporate America, and Washington policymakers at a peculiar juncture of U.S. history. He also looks across the Atlantic, at the Western European intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen with whom these Americans were in frequent contact. While shattered materially and psychologically by World War II, educated Europeans did not shed their opinions about the inferiority, vulgarity, and commercialism of American culture. American elites--particularly the East Coast establishment--deeply resented this condescension. They believed that the United States had two culture wars to win: one against the Soviet Bloc as part of the larger struggle against communism and the other against deeply rooted negative views of America as a civilization. To triumph, they spent large sums of money on overt and covert activities, from tours of American orchestras to the often secret funding of European publications and intellectual congresses by the CIA. At the center of these activities were the Ford Foundation, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and Washington's agents of cultural diplomacy. This was a world of Ivy League academics and East Coast intellectuals, of American philanthropic organizations and their backers in big business, of U.S. government agencies and their counterparts across the Atlantic. This book uses Shepard Stone as a window to this world in which the European-American relationship was hammered out in cultural terms--an arena where many of the twentieth century's major intellectual trends and conflicts unfolded.

"This impressive anthology presents the reader with an introduction to a gallery of public intellectuals through the critical eyes of a wide array of contributing writers from various academic fields. Both the latter and the public intellectuals themselves are responding to the state of American higher education. Importantly, most of them (there are a few public intellectuals in the book who cling closer to the status quo) do not separate colleges and universities from the political, economic, and social currents of American society. They attack the realities of growing social inequality, the intractable presence of institutional racism, and the recurrent reliance on the free market as the arbiter of value. Public intellectuals assess the impact of these social factors on the organization and practices of contemporary American higher education. They force the reader to consider serious challenges to the current arrangement of higher learning and, as such, they ask us to assess the efficacy of their respective perspectives. Do they present the reader with insight or idealism, pathways or dead ends? This compendium provides an abundance of ideas for higher education leaders, policy makers, faculty members, trustees and governmental officials as well as social theorists and graduate students interested in higher education careers."—Richard Guarasci, President Emeritus of Wagner CollegeJust as our society is polarized, higher education is no less divided as to its mission and purpose, whether it should be preparing students for employment or for engagement as citizens, whether it should be corporatist and profit-driven or promote intellectual curiosity and independent thinking, and whether it should pursue a neoliberal agenda or promote a liberal education. Whose scholarship, culture and epistemologies should be validated? Should it be a private or a public good? Preserve tenure or erode it? What role should colleges and universities play in addressing economic inequality and systemic racism? The answers to these questions are critical for the future of our society as our universities and colleges are the nurseries of the values and philosophies that shape it.The chapters in this book review the contributions of seventeen public intellectuals who have been at the forefront of these issues and significantly contributed to these debates. Each describes the genesis of each scholar’s ideas and presents and critiques his or her core insights and arguments. The seventeen public intellectuals represent a spectrum of opinion, from the conservative to the progressive.At this pivotal moment when much of higher education is in economic crisis, and public trust in it has been eroded, this book offers a robust entry point for considering the options and directions ahead for anyone in a leadership position. The book will also be valuable for higher education courses to stimulate debate about these critical issues and introduce readers to the seminal thinkers in the field.Public Intellectuals PresentedStanley AronowitzMichael BérubéMarc BousquetPatricia Hill CollinsLori Patton DavisWilliam DeresiewiczStanley Fish Marybeth GasmanHenry GirouxSara Goldrick-RabbAmy GutmannRussell JacobyRandall KennedyDavid KirpDavid F. LabareeChristopher NewfieldMichael Roth

Looks at modern American art that makes use of such themes as flags, cities, freeways, television, and baseball

Are the arts good for us? This book questions our taken-for-granted assumptions about the transformational powers of high culture by critiquing an instrumental American heritage of beliefs about the arts. Jensen argues that faith in high culture's unproven ability to transform people and society allows social critics to keep faith with the idea of a democratic society while deploring popular culture. Employing perspectives from Tocqueville and Dewey, she argues that the arts are good, but they don't do good. Instead of expecting the arts to improve things (and blaming the media for ruining them) we need to recognize that it is up to us, not "the arts" to make the world a better place.

Former congressman Browder is worried that the current trends of American democracy might result in a "Union of Socialist States of America" or worse. He suggests that we're suffering from a "cumulative distemper" in which we may be tiring of America's "historic Great Experiment." He offers vague prescriptions about embarking on a "National Democratic Renaissance" and rediscovering the "essence of our American nation." Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.