DISC 1313 Roudabush: Overview

Tracing the history of the "American Dream" in popular culture, the author gives readers a field guide to the evolution of our national identity over the last eighty years. No other idea or mythology has as much influence on our individual and collective lives.

Examines the American Dream historically, socially, and economically and consider its intersection with politics, religion, race, gender, and generation.

To understand visual communications one has to first understand by seeing. To develop this discipline or visual sense is similar to learning a new language with its own unique alphabet, lexicon (vocabulary), and syntax (sentence structure).

Explores the show's popularity; its controversial representations of race, class, and gender; its powerful influence on aesthetics and style; and its unique use of period historicism and advertising as a way of speaking to our neoliberal moment.

In this book, four media psychologists who also just happen to be dedicated Mad Men fans explore how the show's viewers make meaning from fictional drama. The authors also interviewed several contemporary advertising industry professionals, getting their inside view of the business in its modern guise and what they make of the show's vision of their past.