Walk through any major or minor league park today and the sights, sounds, and smells of baseball overwhelm. Teams long ago figured out that this immersive quality is a powerful draw, and the "fan experience" has been a major force in their marketing plans. In recent years, advancing technology has altered not only that experience, which now includes LED video boards and blasts of digital music, but the marketing and revenue opportunities for the game. Fans all over the world can subscribe to video and audio streams, acquire credit cards emblazoned with team logos, and follow their favorite...

Young people have long used popular culture to explore, define and express who they are. For many, popular culture is also a tool of survival. Gone are the days when proscriptive programs were needed for young people to transition to adulthood. Today, youth culture is communicated through information technology, particularly social media, enabling young people to engage the world. Yet, as always, youth culture is often a cause of concern for adults and policy makers. This collection of new essays focuses on modern youth popular culture. There are such topics as social justice and youth...

More than half a century after the civil rights era of the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, American society is often characterized as postracial. In other words, that the country has moved away from prejudice based on skin color and we live in a colorblind society. The reality, however, is the opposite. African Americans continue to face both explicit and latent discriminations in housing, healthcare, education, and every facet of their lives. Recent cases involving law enforcement officers shooting unarmed Black men also attest to the reality: the problem of the twenty-first century is still...

Soccer Culture in America examines what world's favorite sport means in the U.S. Despite the common belief that it is only a women's sport, immigrants' sport, and small kids' sport, or that hating soccer is a very American thing to do, essays compiled in this volume attest that soccer indeed is very American. Although American football, basketball, ice hockey, and baseball are often considered to be prototypically American, the popularity of soccer is high in the U.S. both in participation and viewership. Essays will touch upon issues concerning: business of the game, meaning of...

The counterculture period represents a struggle over the legacy and the meaning of the U.S. in a turbulent time and continues to do so today. Films produced in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as films focusing on the era have reengaged and revisited the social, political, and cultural ideals of the time for generations of film audiences. The counterculture, however, was not monolithic. Studying the music used in countercultural and counterculture-focused films reveals the intricacy and complexity of the movement. Struggles to establish both collective and individual identities based on...

 Many fans loved Fifty Shades of Grey. Many others loved to hate it. E.L. James' trilogy of novels, and the film based on them, created a popular culture sensation, revealing much about a society that is both preoccupied with and scandalized by BDSM eroticism. Some critics argued that the franchise glorified kinky sex and normalized sexual abuse. Others praised it for illuminating consensual sexual practices that have long been marginalized in mainstream media. Yet behind their erotic content, James' novels explored not only everyday failures to identify questionable behaviors...

More than half a century after the civil rights era of the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, American society is often characterized as postracial. In other words, that the country has moved away from prejudice based on skin color and we live in a colorblind society. The reality, however, is the opposite. African Americans continue to face both explicit and latent discriminations in housing, healthcare, education, and every facet of their lives. Recent cases involving law enforcement officers shooting unarmed Black men also attest to the reality: the problem of the twenty-first century is still...