Signs of Life in the USA
Tenth Edition ©2021 Sonia Maasik; Jack Solomon Formats: Achieve, E-book, Print
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Authors
-
Sonia Maasik
Sonia Maasik, late of the UCLA Writing Programs, taught writing from developmental to advanced levels for over five decades. Along with Jack Solomon, she has co-authored the Bedford/St. Martin's textbooks Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers – now in its eleventh edition – and California Dreams and Realities.
-
Jack Solomon
Jack Solomon is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught literature, critical theory, and popular cultural semiotics, and directed the Office of Academic Assessment and Program Review. He is often interviewed by the California media for analysis of current events and trends. He is the author of Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age (1988) and The Signs of Our Time (1990). Along with Sonia Maasik, he has co-authored the Bedford/St. Martin's textbooks Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers – now in its eleventh edition – and California Dreams and Realities.
Table of Contents
[* Indicates material new to this edition]
Contents
Preface for Instructors
INTRODUCTION
Popular Signs: Or, Everything You Always Knew about American Culture (but Nobody Asked)
It’s the End of the World as We Know It
From Folk to For-Profit
Pop Culture Goes to College
The Semiotic Method
Abduction and Overdetermination
Interpreting Popular Signs: The Revolution will be Reiterated
The Classroom Connection
Cultural Mythologies
Getting Started
Writing about Popular Culture
Using Active Reading Strategies
Prewriting Strategies
Developing Strong Arguments about Popular Culture
Conducting a Semiotic Analysis
Reading Visual Images Actively
Reading Essays about Popular Culture
AMY LIN: Barbie: Queen of Dolls and Consumerism [STUDENT ESSAY]
*IRINA BODEA: Banks: Progressive or Traditional [STUDENT ESSAY]
*JEREMY CREEK: The Anglerfish in the Machine: Horror and Re-enchantment in Stranger Things [STUDENT ESSAY]
Conducting Research and Citing Sources
SCOTT JASCHIK: A Stand against Wikipedia
PATTI S. CARAVELLO: Judging Quality on the Web
TRIP GABRIEL: For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste
SECTION 1: FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1. American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.
BARBARA EHRENREICH: Bright-Sided
GEORGE PACKER: Celebrating Inequality
*MARK MANSON: The Disease of More
*MARK MURPHY: The Uncivil War: How Cultural Sorting of America Divides Us
ALFRED LUBRANO: The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts
MARIAH BURTON NELSON: I Won. I’m Sorry.
WADE GRAHAM: Are We Greening Our Cities, or Just Greenwashing Them?
Chapter 2. My Selfie, My Self: Identity and Ideology in the New Millennium
MICHAEL OMI: In Living Color: Race and American Culture
*RACHELLE HAMPTON: Which People?
*ZAHIR JANMOHAMED: Your Cultural Attire
AARON DEVOR: Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes
DEBORAH BLUM: The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?
MICHAEL HULSHOF-SCHMIDT: What’s in an Acronym? Parsing the LGBTQQIP2SAA Community
RACHEL LOWRY: Straddling Online and Offline Profiles, Millennials Search for Identity
*SOPHIE GILBERT: Millennial Burnout is Being Televised
*DAVE PATTERSON: Shame By a Thousand Looks
*KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: What Does It Mean to Look Like Me
SECTION 2: EVERYDAY LIFE
Chapter 3. Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption
LAURENCE SHAMES: The More Factor
MALCOLM GLADWELL: The Science of Shopping
*JORDYN HOLMAN: Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, But Gen Z Might Save It
MICHAEL POLLAN: Supermarket Pastoral
CHRIS ARNING, What Can Semiotics Contribute to Packaging Design?
TROY PATTERSON: The Politics of the Hoodie
THOMAS FRANK: Commodify Your Dissent
JAMES A. ROBERTS: The Treadmill of Consumption
Chapter 4. Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising
JACK SOLOMON: Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising
JAMES B. TWITCHELL: What We Are to Advertisers
STEVE CRAIG: Men’s Men and Women’s Women
JIA TOLENTINO: How "Empowerment" Became Something for Women to Buy
*DEREK THOMPSON: The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything
JULIET B. SCHOR: Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool
JULIA B. CORBETT: A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World
Portfolio of Advertisements
Spotify
Buffalo Exchange
California Walnuts
Shinola Detroit
The Shelter Pet Project
Society of Grownups
Chapter 5. The Cloud: Semiotics and the New Media
*JUDY ESTRIN: I Helped Create the Internet, and I’m Worried about What It’s Doing to Young People *ALICIA ELER: There’s a Lot More to a Selfie than Meets the Eye
*JUDITH SHULEVITZ: "Alexa, How Will You Change Us?"
*JESSE SELL: Gamer Identity
*DAVID COURTWRIGHT: How "Limbic Capitalism" Preys on Our Addicted Brains
NANCY JO SALES: From the Instamatic to Instagram: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers *JACOB SILVERMAN: "Pics or It Didn’t Happen"—The Mantra of the Instagram Era
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Influencing Machines: The Echo Chambers of the Internet
JOHN HERRMAN: Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine
SECTION 3: ENTERTAINMENT
Chapter 6. On the Air: Television and Cultural Forms
NEAL GABLER: The Social Networks
BRITTNEY LEVINE BECKMAN: Why We Binge-Watch Stuff We Hate
*SAMANTHA ALLEN: How Euphoria and Model Hunter Schafer Created the Most Interesting Trans Character on TV
CLAIRE MIYE STANFORD: You’ve Got the Wrong Song: Nashville and Country Music Feminism
EMILY NUSSBAUM: The Aristocrats: The Graphic Arts of Game of Thrones
MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, The One Paradigm to Rule Them All: Scientism and The Big Bang Theory *BRITTANY LEVINE BECKMAN, Why We Binge-Watch Stuff We Hate
Chapter 7. The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film
ROBERT B. RAY: The Thematic Paradigm
CHRISTINE FOLCH: Why the West Loves Sci-Fi and Fantasy: A Cultural Explanation
LINDA SEGER: Creating the Myth
*MAYA PHILLIPS: The Narrative Experiment That Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe
ABRAHAM RIESMAN: What We Talk about When We Talk about Batman and Superman
MATT ZOLLER SEITZ: The Offensive Movie Cliché That Won’t Die
*MIKHAIL LYUBANSKY: The Racial Politics of Black Panther
JESSICA HAGEDORN: Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck
MICHAEL PARENTI: Class and Virtue
DAVID DENBY: High-School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies
*WESLEY MORRIS: Rom-Coms Were Corny and Retrograde. Why Do I Miss Them so Much?
Chapter 8. Tangled Roots: The Cultural Politics of Popular Music
*NOLAN GLASER: Music Is Supposed to Unify Us. Is the Streaming Revolution Fragmenting Us Instead?
CLARA McNULTY-FINN: The Evolution of Rap
*NADRA NITTLE: Lil Nas X Isn’t an Anomaly
*JON MEACHAM and TIM MCGRAW: How Country Music Explains America’s Divided History
*CHRISTINA NEWLAND: A Cultural History of the Diva
*DJ LOUIE XIV: Has the Pop Star been Killed?
*DANIEL PERSON: When Did Pop Culture and Nature Part Ways?
*DANI DEAHL: Monsta X and Steve Aoki: How K-Pop Took Over YouTube
Glossary
Product Updates
New readings on today’s leading issues. Signs of Life in the USA helps promote lively teaching and high student interest—as well as strong student writing—by keeping up with the fast pace of popular culture, with new selections on the most current topics. The following are some highlights of the tenth edition:
- Judith Shulevitz asks, “Alexa, how will you change us?”
- Jacob Silverman examines that famous refrain, “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
- Wesley Morris believes that romantic comedies were “corny and retrograde,” but wonders, “Why do I miss them so much?”
A new chapter on music. Titled "Tangled Roots: The Cultural Politics of Popular Music," this new chapter explores the increasing role of music as a medium for the expression of our current political and cultural moment. Engaging readings on country, hip-hop, country-trap, K-Pop, and more provide multiple avenues for discussion and writing.
Vibrant art throughout the book. Nearly all of the art in the tenth edition is new, offering a visual perspective designed to enhance the critical understanding modeled by the text.
A practical and intuitive new organization. In response to instructor feedback, the tenth edition is now divided into three sections of related readings: Foundations, Everyday Life, and Entertainment. This new organization reinforces the text’s position, and the authors’ conviction, that American popular culture permeates almost everything we do—even as it reflects who we are and what we are becoming as a society.
Authors
-
Sonia Maasik
Sonia Maasik, late of the UCLA Writing Programs, taught writing from developmental to advanced levels for over five decades. Along with Jack Solomon, she has co-authored the Bedford/St. Martin's textbooks Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers – now in its eleventh edition – and California Dreams and Realities.
-
Jack Solomon
Jack Solomon is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught literature, critical theory, and popular cultural semiotics, and directed the Office of Academic Assessment and Program Review. He is often interviewed by the California media for analysis of current events and trends. He is the author of Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age (1988) and The Signs of Our Time (1990). Along with Sonia Maasik, he has co-authored the Bedford/St. Martin's textbooks Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers – now in its eleventh edition – and California Dreams and Realities.
Table of Contents
[* Indicates material new to this edition]
Contents
Preface for Instructors
INTRODUCTION
Popular Signs: Or, Everything You Always Knew about American Culture (but Nobody Asked)
It’s the End of the World as We Know It
From Folk to For-Profit
Pop Culture Goes to College
The Semiotic Method
Abduction and Overdetermination
Interpreting Popular Signs: The Revolution will be Reiterated
The Classroom Connection
Cultural Mythologies
Getting Started
Writing about Popular Culture
Using Active Reading Strategies
Prewriting Strategies
Developing Strong Arguments about Popular Culture
Conducting a Semiotic Analysis
Reading Visual Images Actively
Reading Essays about Popular Culture
AMY LIN: Barbie: Queen of Dolls and Consumerism [STUDENT ESSAY]
*IRINA BODEA: Banks: Progressive or Traditional [STUDENT ESSAY]
*JEREMY CREEK: The Anglerfish in the Machine: Horror and Re-enchantment in Stranger Things [STUDENT ESSAY]
Conducting Research and Citing Sources
SCOTT JASCHIK: A Stand against Wikipedia
PATTI S. CARAVELLO: Judging Quality on the Web
TRIP GABRIEL: For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste
SECTION 1: FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1. American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.
BARBARA EHRENREICH: Bright-Sided
GEORGE PACKER: Celebrating Inequality
*MARK MANSON: The Disease of More
*MARK MURPHY: The Uncivil War: How Cultural Sorting of America Divides Us
ALFRED LUBRANO: The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts
MARIAH BURTON NELSON: I Won. I’m Sorry.
WADE GRAHAM: Are We Greening Our Cities, or Just Greenwashing Them?
Chapter 2. My Selfie, My Self: Identity and Ideology in the New Millennium
MICHAEL OMI: In Living Color: Race and American Culture
*RACHELLE HAMPTON: Which People?
*ZAHIR JANMOHAMED: Your Cultural Attire
AARON DEVOR: Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes
DEBORAH BLUM: The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?
MICHAEL HULSHOF-SCHMIDT: What’s in an Acronym? Parsing the LGBTQQIP2SAA Community
RACHEL LOWRY: Straddling Online and Offline Profiles, Millennials Search for Identity
*SOPHIE GILBERT: Millennial Burnout is Being Televised
*DAVE PATTERSON: Shame By a Thousand Looks
*KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: What Does It Mean to Look Like Me
SECTION 2: EVERYDAY LIFE
Chapter 3. Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption
LAURENCE SHAMES: The More Factor
MALCOLM GLADWELL: The Science of Shopping
*JORDYN HOLMAN: Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, But Gen Z Might Save It
MICHAEL POLLAN: Supermarket Pastoral
CHRIS ARNING, What Can Semiotics Contribute to Packaging Design?
TROY PATTERSON: The Politics of the Hoodie
THOMAS FRANK: Commodify Your Dissent
JAMES A. ROBERTS: The Treadmill of Consumption
Chapter 4. Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising
JACK SOLOMON: Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising
JAMES B. TWITCHELL: What We Are to Advertisers
STEVE CRAIG: Men’s Men and Women’s Women
JIA TOLENTINO: How "Empowerment" Became Something for Women to Buy
*DEREK THOMPSON: The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything
JULIET B. SCHOR: Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool
JULIA B. CORBETT: A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World
Portfolio of Advertisements
Spotify
Buffalo Exchange
California Walnuts
Shinola Detroit
The Shelter Pet Project
Society of Grownups
Chapter 5. The Cloud: Semiotics and the New Media
*JUDY ESTRIN: I Helped Create the Internet, and I’m Worried about What It’s Doing to Young People *ALICIA ELER: There’s a Lot More to a Selfie than Meets the Eye
*JUDITH SHULEVITZ: "Alexa, How Will You Change Us?"
*JESSE SELL: Gamer Identity
*DAVID COURTWRIGHT: How "Limbic Capitalism" Preys on Our Addicted Brains
NANCY JO SALES: From the Instamatic to Instagram: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers *JACOB SILVERMAN: "Pics or It Didn’t Happen"—The Mantra of the Instagram Era
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Influencing Machines: The Echo Chambers of the Internet
JOHN HERRMAN: Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine
SECTION 3: ENTERTAINMENT
Chapter 6. On the Air: Television and Cultural Forms
NEAL GABLER: The Social Networks
BRITTNEY LEVINE BECKMAN: Why We Binge-Watch Stuff We Hate
*SAMANTHA ALLEN: How Euphoria and Model Hunter Schafer Created the Most Interesting Trans Character on TV
CLAIRE MIYE STANFORD: You’ve Got the Wrong Song: Nashville and Country Music Feminism
EMILY NUSSBAUM: The Aristocrats: The Graphic Arts of Game of Thrones
MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, The One Paradigm to Rule Them All: Scientism and The Big Bang Theory *BRITTANY LEVINE BECKMAN, Why We Binge-Watch Stuff We Hate
Chapter 7. The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film
ROBERT B. RAY: The Thematic Paradigm
CHRISTINE FOLCH: Why the West Loves Sci-Fi and Fantasy: A Cultural Explanation
LINDA SEGER: Creating the Myth
*MAYA PHILLIPS: The Narrative Experiment That Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe
ABRAHAM RIESMAN: What We Talk about When We Talk about Batman and Superman
MATT ZOLLER SEITZ: The Offensive Movie Cliché That Won’t Die
*MIKHAIL LYUBANSKY: The Racial Politics of Black Panther
JESSICA HAGEDORN: Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck
MICHAEL PARENTI: Class and Virtue
DAVID DENBY: High-School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies
*WESLEY MORRIS: Rom-Coms Were Corny and Retrograde. Why Do I Miss Them so Much?
Chapter 8. Tangled Roots: The Cultural Politics of Popular Music
*NOLAN GLASER: Music Is Supposed to Unify Us. Is the Streaming Revolution Fragmenting Us Instead?
CLARA McNULTY-FINN: The Evolution of Rap
*NADRA NITTLE: Lil Nas X Isn’t an Anomaly
*JON MEACHAM and TIM MCGRAW: How Country Music Explains America’s Divided History
*CHRISTINA NEWLAND: A Cultural History of the Diva
*DJ LOUIE XIV: Has the Pop Star been Killed?
*DANIEL PERSON: When Did Pop Culture and Nature Part Ways?
*DANI DEAHL: Monsta X and Steve Aoki: How K-Pop Took Over YouTube
Glossary
Product Updates
New readings on today’s leading issues. Signs of Life in the USA helps promote lively teaching and high student interest—as well as strong student writing—by keeping up with the fast pace of popular culture, with new selections on the most current topics. The following are some highlights of the tenth edition:
- Judith Shulevitz asks, “Alexa, how will you change us?”
- Jacob Silverman examines that famous refrain, “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
- Wesley Morris believes that romantic comedies were “corny and retrograde,” but wonders, “Why do I miss them so much?”
A new chapter on music. Titled "Tangled Roots: The Cultural Politics of Popular Music," this new chapter explores the increasing role of music as a medium for the expression of our current political and cultural moment. Engaging readings on country, hip-hop, country-trap, K-Pop, and more provide multiple avenues for discussion and writing.
Vibrant art throughout the book. Nearly all of the art in the tenth edition is new, offering a visual perspective designed to enhance the critical understanding modeled by the text.
A practical and intuitive new organization. In response to instructor feedback, the tenth edition is now divided into three sections of related readings: Foundations, Everyday Life, and Entertainment. This new organization reinforces the text’s position, and the authors’ conviction, that American popular culture permeates almost everything we do—even as it reflects who we are and what we are becoming as a society.
The only popular culture reader with a critical edge
Signs of Life in the USA works in the classroom because students love to talk and write about popular culture. Signs of Life teaches students to read and write critically about pop culture by providing them with a conceptual framework known as semiotics, a field of study developed specifically for the interpretation of culture and its signs.
Written by a prominent semiotician and an experienced writing instructor, the text has been extensively updated to account for the rapid evolution of contemporary trends and student interests. It features insightful themes with provocative and current reading selections that ask students to think analytically about America’s popular culture with questions such as: How have explicit and implicit signals about gender expectations affected our lives? How have television and the Internet shaped our current political climate? Signs of Life provides students with the academic language necessary to analyze the significance of our shared cultural experiences.
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Instructor's Resource Manual for Signs of Life in the USA (Online Only)
Sonia Maasik; Jack Solomon | Tenth Edition | ©2021 | ISBN:9781319322922
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MPS Order Search Tool (MOST) is a web-based purchase order tracking program that allows customers to view and track their purchases. No registration or special codes needed! Just enter your BILL-TO ACCT # and your ZIP CODE to track orders.
Canadian Stores: Please use only the first five digits/letters in your zip code on MOST.
Visit MOST, our online ordering system for booksellers: https://tracking.mpsvirginia.com/Login.aspx
Learn more about our Bookstore programs here: https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/contact-us/booksellers
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Our courses currently integrate with Canvas, Blackboard (Learn and Ultra), Brightspace, D2L, and Moodle. Click on the support documentation below to find out more details about the integration with each LMS.
Integrate Macmillan courses with Blackboard
Integrate Macmillan courses with Canvas
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If you’re a verified instructor, you can request a free sample of our courseware, e-book, or print textbook to consider for use in your courses. Only registered and verified instructors can receive free print and digital samples, and they should not be sold to bookstores or book resellers. If you don't yet have an existing account with Macmillan Learning, it can take up to two business days to verify your status as an instructor. You can request a free sample from the right side of this product page by clicking on the "Request Instructor Sample" button or by contacting your rep. Learn more.
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-
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Sometimes also referred to as a spiral-bound or binder-ready textbook, loose-leaf textbooks are available to purchase. This three-hole punched, unbound version of the book costs less than a hardcover or paperback book.
-
-
-
Achieve (full course) includes our complete e-book, as well as online quizzing tools, multimedia assets, and iClicker active classroom manager.
Most Achieve Essentials courses do not include our e-books and adaptive quizzing.
Visit our comparison table for details: https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/digital/achieve/compare
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Achieve (full course) includes our complete e-book, as well as online quizzing tools, multimedia assets, and iClicker active classroom manager.
Achieve Read & Practice only includes our e-book and adaptive quizzing, and does not include instructor resources and assignable assessments. Read & Practice does integrate with LMS.
Visit our comparison table for details: https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/digital/achieve/compare
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We can help! Contact your representative to discuss your specific needs for your course. If our off-the-shelf course materials don’t quite hit the mark, we also offer custom solutions made to fit your needs.
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Signs of Life in the USA
Signs of Life in the USA works in the classroom because students love to talk and write about popular culture. Signs of Life teaches students to read and write critically about pop culture by providing them with a conceptual framework known as semiotics, a field of study developed specifically for the interpretation of culture and its signs.
Written by a prominent semiotician and an experienced writing instructor, the text has been extensively updated to account for the rapid evolution of contemporary trends and student interests. It features insightful themes with provocative and current reading selections that ask students to think analytically about America’s popular culture with questions such as: How have explicit and implicit signals about gender expectations affected our lives? How have television and the Internet shaped our current political climate? Signs of Life provides students with the academic language necessary to analyze the significance of our shared cultural experiences.
Achieve for Readers & Writers
Combining diagnostics with formative and summative assessments, Achieve for Readers & Writers is a quick, flexible solution for targeting instruction on critical reading, the writing process, grammar, mechanics, style, and punctuation to each individual student. New Achieve Writing Tools allow instructors and peer reviewers to easily comment on student writing, while fully editable writing assignments pair with powerful analytics to track student progress.
Select a demo to view:
Sample Achieve