Arthur Asa Berger

This book provides a cultural studies analysis of Millennials and their impact on American culture and society. Beginning with an introduction that touches upon which part of the population is described as Millennial, the book also explores the Millennial psyche, marketing to Millennials, Millennials’ purchasing preferences, gender and sexuality among Millennials, and Millennials and their relation to postmodernism, among other things. Cultural Perspectives on Millennials is designed for students taking courses in cultural studies, sociology, American studies and related fields. It is written in an accessible style and makes use of numerous quotations from writers and thinkers who have written about Millennials. It is illustrated by the author.

This book offers a cultural studies approach to marketing and advertising and shows readers how scholars from different academic disciplines make sense of marketing’s role in American culture and society. It is written in an accessible style and has numerous drawings by the author to give it more visual interest.

This book, written in an accessible style and illustrated with drawings by the author and with many other images, discusses the basic principles of discourse theory and applies them to various aspects of popular culture, media and everyday life. Among the topics it analyzes are speed dating, advertising, jokes, language use, myths, fairy tales and material culture.

This book is both an analysis of the cruise industry and a report on a sixteen day cruise that the author and his wife took on the Holland America EURODAM. It offers insights into the cruise industry and the experience of being on a cruise and will be of interest to people who have never cruised and are considering taking a cruise and to people thinking of taking a cruise on a Holland America cruise ship. It is illustrated with drawing and photos by the author.

This book provides a cultural studies analysis of Millennials and their impact on American culture and society. Beginning with an introduction that touches upon which part of the population is described as Millennial, the book also explores the Millennial psyche, marketing to Millennials, Millennials’ purchasing preferences, gender and sexuality among Millennials, and Millennials and their relation to postmodernism, among other things. Cultural Perspectives on Millennials is designed for students taking courses in cultural studies, sociology, American studies and related fields. It is written in an accessible style and makes use of numerous quotations from writers and thinkers who have written about Millennials. It is illustrated by the author.

The Academy in Crisis is a provocative contribution to an important debate....The costs of goverment support for American universities are not negligible. They include stress on some of the core values of universities and of science-vaules like openness, collaboration, and collegiality-and pressure, too, on other central institutional responsibilities, such as the education of undergradutes. Robert M. Rosenzweig, former president, Association of American Universities

From their inception, video games quickly became a major new arena of popular entertainment. Beginning with very primitive games, they quickly evolved into interactive animated works, many of which now approach film in terms of their visual excitement. But there are important differences, as Arthur Asa Berger makes clear in this important new work. Films are purely to be viewed, but video involves the player, moving from empathy to immersion, from being spectators to being actively involved in texts. Berger, a renowned scholar of popular culture, explores the cultural significance of the expanding popularity and sophistication of video games and considers the biological and psychoanalytic aspects of this phenomenon.Berger begins by tracing the evolution of video games from simple games like Pong to new, powerfully involving and complex ones like Myst and Half-Life. He notes how this evolution has built the video industry, which includes the hardware (game-playing consoles) and the software (the games themselves), to revenues comparable to the American film industry. Building on this comparison, Berger focuses on action-adventure games which, like film and fiction, tell stories but which also involve culturally important departures in the conventions of narrative. After defining a set of bipolar oppositions between print and electronic narratives, Berger considers the question of whether video games are truly interactive or only superficially so, and whether they have the potential to replace print narratives in the culture at large.A unique dimension of the book is its bio-psycho-social analysis of the video game phenomenon. Berger considers the impact of these games on their players, from physical changes (everything from neurological problems to obesity) to psychological consequences, with reference to violence and sexual attitudes. He takes these questions further by examining three enormously popular games-Myst/Riven, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life-for their attitudes toward power, gender, violence, and guilt. In his conclusion, Berger concentrates on the role of violence in video games and whether they generate a sense of alienation in certain addicted players who become estranged from family and friends. Accessibly written and broad-ranging in approach, Video Games offers a way to interpret a major popular phenomenon.

The average person in America watches four hours of television per day and spends the equivalent of nine years of his or her life in front of the television set. If the attention most people devote to popular culture - listening to the news, watching soap operas, reading the comics-were added up, it would reveal that most people spend an enormous amount of time with popular culture which becomes in large measure, their culture. "Manufacturing Desire" is a study of how the mass media broadcast or spread various popular arts; further how the media and popular arts play a major role in shaping our everyday lives.The television shows we watch, the movies we see, the radio programs we listen to, and all the comic strips we read influence social behavior. They give us ideas about what is good and evil, about how to solve problems, and about how we should relate to others. If we understand this, says Berger, then the way we think about our media-influenced culture will be far different than if we see popular culture as mindless entertainment. Berger provides an analysis of the way popular culture and the mass media simultaneously reflect and affect various aspects of American culture and society. He examines commercials, television shows, comics, film, humor, and everyday life in terms of what beliefs and values are found in them, what attitudes toward ourselves, and our societies are contained in them, how they achieve their effects, and what they reflect about present-day American culture and society.This book is analysis of the impact mass media have across America, cross-culturally, and internationally. "Manufacturing Desire" will provide the general reader as well as specialists in communication and information, sociology, and psychology with a better understanding of the effects of mass media and popular culture on contemporary society.

Is television a cultural wasteland, or a medium that has brought people more great art, music, dance, and drama than any previous media? How do we study and interpret television? What are the effects of television on individuals and society, and how do we measure them? What is the role of television in our political and economic life? Television in Society explores these issues in considering how television both reflects and affects society.The book is divided into two sections. The first focuses on programming and deals with commercials, ceremonial events, important series (such as "MASH" and "Lou Grant"), significant programs (a production of Brave New World on television), and the images of police on the medium. The second part of the book deals with important issues and topics related to the medium: the impact of television violence, values found on television, the impact of television on education, the significance of new technological developments, and the always thorny issue of freedom of the press. The articles are drawn together by a brilliant introductory essay by Arthur Asa Berger, who examines television as culture.

Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique. Playwrights, television writers, novelists, cartoonists, and film scriptwriters use many special technical devices to create humor. Just as dramatic writers and novelists use specific devices to craft their work, creators of humorous materials from the ancient Greeks to today's stand-up comics have continued to use certain techniques in order to generate humor.In The Art of Comedy Writing, Arthur Asa Berger argues that there are a relatively limited number of techniques forty-five in all that humorists employ. Elaborating upon his prior, in-depth study of humor, An Anatomy of Humor, in which Berger provides a content analysis of humor in all forms joke books, plays, comic books, novels, short stories, comic verse, and essaysThe Art of Comedy Writing goes further. Berger groups each technique into four basic categories: humor involving identity such as burlesque, caricature, mimicry, and stereotype; humor involving logic such as analogy, comparison, and reversal; humor involving language such as puns, wordplay, sarcasm, and satire; and finally, chase, slapstick, and speed, or humor involving action.Berger claims that if you want to know how writers or comedians create humor study and analysis of their humorous works can be immensely insightful. This book is a unique analytical offering for those interested in humor. It provides writers and critics with a sizable repertoire of techniques for use in their own future comic creations. As such, this book will be of interest to people inspired by humor and the creative process professionals in the comedy field and students of creative writing, comedy, literary humor, communications, broadcast/media, and the humanities.

This volume explores the vast and endlessly growing subject of popular culture, mass culture, the public arts, and mass-mediated culture. They cover such varied forms of mass communication as television, the comics, advertising, humor, and fads, foods, and artifacts. Some of the essays have been published in such periodicals as Society magazine. Berger, widely recognized as a leading scholar in the field, continues to shape the thinking of today's scholars.

In 1946, William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, U.S. Ambassador to France at the outbreak of the Second World War, and onetime close advisor to FDR, wrote the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the emerging Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the war, as the book's new introduction by Francis P. Sempa points out, Bullitt had repeatedly urged President Roosevelt to wage war with a view toward the postwar balance of power. Bullitt recounted in this volume how the United States missed opportunities to block Soviet geopolitical gains during the war due to a fundamental misreading of the nature of the Soviet political system.Bullitt wrote The Great Globe Itself from the perspective of a key advisor to President Roosevelt who evolved into a strident critic of the president's wartime diplomacy toward the Soviet Union. When Soviet Russia became a wartime ally of the United States, Bullitt understood that the alliance would last only until the common enemy (Hitler's Germany) was defeated.Bullitt's discussion and analysis of fundamental global geopolitical realities and his prudent counsel to couple diplomacy with force in international relations are as relevant today as when he wrote the book, nearly sixty years ago.

The Genius of the Jewish Joke focuses on what is distinctive and unusual about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. Jewish humor is humor by Jews and about Jews, in whatever medium this humor is found. Jokes are defined as short stories, meant to amuse, with a punch line, though Jewish humor exists in many other forms riddles, comic definitions, parodies as well. The book makes a "radical" suggestion about the origin of Jewish humor namely, that Sarah and Abraham's relation to God, and the name of their son Isaac (which, in Hebrew, means laughter), recognizes a special affinity in Jews for humor. Abraham does not sacrifice Isaac (humor) and, thus, humor and the Jews are linked early in Jewish history.Berger discusses techniques of humor and how they can be used to analyze jokes. He also compares "Old World Jewish Humor" the humor of the shtetl, with its fabulous schlemiels, schlimazels, schnorrers, and other characters and "New World Humor" the humor of Jewish doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professional types living mostly in the suburbs nowadays. Jewish humor is contrasted with other forms of ethnic humor, such as Polish jokes and Italian American jokes.This humor, in addition to providing pleasure, reveals a great deal about Jewish character and culture and, in addition, the human condition. Now available with a new introduction by the author, The Genius of the Jewish Joke is an entertaining and informative inquiry into Jewish humor that explores its distinctiveness, its unique spirit, and its role in Jewish identity.

This book offers a semiotically informed ethnographic study of contemporary culture in Rajasthan and in India generally. It adapts the methodology of analyzing cultures found in Roland Barthes' semiotic portrait of Japanese culture, Empire of Signs, but adds an analysis of lifestyles as explicated in the work of social anthropologist Mary Douglas, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, and a number of other social scientists. This manuscript is, at first, a guide to Rajasthan and India, and it is that but it is also more in that it considers tourism from both an anthropological and sociological level.Berger begins with statistics on tourism and other aspects of life in Rajasthan and India, and then considers how tourism in India compares with tourism in other important tourism destinations. He refers to the "Imaginary India" as the picture created in tourists' minds with the help of guidebooks, media, and the Internet before they actually travel to India. He then discusses these representations and how they are actually different from the country itself. The trip itself then becomes the search for the authentic India--the goal is to find places before they are discovered. He calls this "Semiotic Rajasthan," where the representations are compared to actuality. After offering a discussion of semiotic theory, it interprets and analyzes a number of important aspects of Rajasthani and Indian culture such as: the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Winds in Jaipur, the notorious rat temple in Deshnok, and sacred cows. Lastly, he discusses his own trip and how the impact of Rajasthan did not fully register until he returned home.This volume's strength lies in the author's ability to write in an accessible manner, assemble the project in an interesting way, and include only that information which will guide the reader along the narrative trail. While this manuscript really is a guidebook to Rajasthan, it could also serve as a good introduction to ethnography for beginning students and an interested general audience. It moves from basic explanations, such as that of semiotics, to complex applications all with the grace of good story telling.

When the cold war ended, many hoped it signified enhanced prospects for a more stable world. However, despite favorable political developments, the post-cold war period has been marked by turbulence, uncertainty, and challenge. The actions of rogue states such as Iraq and North Korea have made nuclear proliferation more unpredictable. Violence in Somalia and Bosnia has cast doubt on the viability of international peacekeeping arrangements. Hopes for expanding democratization have been dimmed by assertions that the values of liberal democracy and human rights are incompatible with non-Western cultures. The Adaptive Military describes how military security policies and practices have adapted to these new times and explains why such changes are necessary.The central argument is that current conflicts have been shaped by long-term trends, which increased the number and complexity of threats that the developed world is supposed to meet, and correspondingly decreased the stock of social and political options available to meet them.Although the authors differ in their assessments about the current prospects for peace and ways to maintain security, the issues they address are as critical as they were at the end of the Cold War. Mobilizing resources and political support for remote and difficult enterprises will always remain contentious, but if we recognize the hazard of letting violence run unopposed throughout the world, then we bear some responsibility to consider how it might be checked. This volume is an exercise of that responsibility. It will be of great interest to experts in military studies and international relations.

Where did you see it that perfect quotation from Foucault or Kristeva to use in your upcoming keynote address? Stop the search and pick up Arthur Berger‘s handy book of over 300 concise quotations from the vast literature in cultural theory. This compilation will give you just the right snappy quote to help prepare that lecture, write that paper, fill that Power Point, or drop a few bon mots at a university reception. Organized by theoretical model (semiotic, Marxist, psychoanalytic, gender, postmodernist), Berger pulls together the most succinct, meaningful passages of the key theorists of our time for those wanting to distill cultural theory to its essence.

This book, written in an accessible style and illustrated with drawings by the author and with many other images, discusses the basic principles of discourse theory and applies them to various aspects of popular culture, media and everyday life. Among the topics it analyzes are speed dating, advertising, jokes, language use, myths, fairy tales and material culture.

This book offers a cultural studies approach to marketing and advertising and shows readers how scholars from different academic disciplines make sense of marketing’s role in American culture and society. It is written in an accessible style and has numerous drawings by the author to give it more visual interest.