Voices of the Down and Out
The Dust Bowl Migration and the Great Depression in the Songs of Woody Guthrie
by Martin Butler
Hardback (Published)
(January 2008)
ISBN: 9783825353674
5.28 x 8.27 inches
Price: $47.00
On back order
Woody Guthrie’s songs about the Dust Bowl Migration and the Great Depression give expression to one of the bleakest periods in the history of the United States, bearing witness both to the economic and political turmoil and to the human erosion of the 1930s. Following a New Historicist approach, this study, incorporating a variety of previously unpublished materials, sets out to reconstruct the social and cultural potential of Guthrie’s songs by exploring their manifold and intricate relationships with the cultural environment in which they were composed and performed. As a result, Guthrie’s songs are shown to be deeply ingrained in the decade’s culture: they criticize the deplorable social and political situation at the time, make sense of the incomprehensible and hint at those responsible for the disaster, thus amplifying the unheard voices of the down and out. By revealing that Guthrie’s oeuvre was not only culturally produced, but also culturally productive in that it took an active part in shaping, perpetuating or undermining elements and patterns of the decade’s cultural knowledge, the study also sheds new light on the social and cultural significance of the sung word.
- By (author) Martin Butler
Other Titles in this Series
Deliberately Out of Bounds
Women's Work on Classical Myth in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
Volume 282
Transnational Mediations
Negotiating Popular Culture between Europe and the United States
Volume 261
John F. Kennedy and the ‘Thousand Days’
New Perspectives on the Foreign and Domestic Policies of the Kennedy Administration
Volume 144
Performing America Abroad
Transnational Cultural Politics in the Age of Neoliberal Capitalism
Volume 297
Medical Humanities in American Studies
Life Writing, Narrative Medicine, and the Power of Autobiography
Volume 292
Entgrenzung der Geschichte
Eine Untersuchung zum historischen Denken der amerikanischen Postmoderne
Volume 122
Schauspiele des Sehens
Die Figur der Flaneurin, Voyeurin und Stalkerin im U.S.-amerikanischen Essay
Volume 239
Similar Books
![Book cover: Transitive Media [Philosophy]](https://isd.stisonbooks.com/images/books/native/9781804132326.jpg?asset_id=66970)
Writing of Women as Cultural Resistance
Deconstructing Memory Legacies in the Afro-Luso-Brazilian Atlantic
Tools of Control or Seeds of Liberation?
Reformed Evangelism and Slavery in the Ante-Bellum American South
Argumentation, Persuasion und Manipulation in Medientexten und -diskursen
Beiträge zur kontrastiven Medienlinguistik
Buchblogs zwischen Passion und Profession
Zur Diskursivierung digitaler literaturbezogener Anschlusskommunikation als Arbeit
Das Bild des Flüchtlings im Deutschen und im Polnischen
Lexikographische Erfassung und Presseberichterstattung 2016–2017
Die Erinnerung der Hydra
Das Quilombo von Palmares in Geschichte und Gedächtnis (ca. 1595–1995): Sklaverei, Rassismus und Freiheit in Brasilien und entlang des Atlantiks
Digitale Medien und Religionsunterricht
Ein domänenspezifischer Beitrag zu einer kritischen Medienbildung unter Berücksichtigung medien-, bildungs- und lerntheoretischer Perspektiven
Jugend im Film
Die Konstruktion einer transformativen Lebensphase als Spiegel kultureller Entwicklungen
Transmedia Festivals
Audiosoziale Gemeinschaften zwischen künstlerischem Experiment und Ökonomisierung
Literature, Translation, and the Politics of Meaning
Polish, American, and German Literary Traditions
