Author: Denning, Michael
Title: The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
Description: London, Verso, 1998. orig. boards. 24x15cm, xx,556 pp.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ The cultural front, that extraordinary upsurge of cultural activity and theory in America, was born in the Great Depression as communists sought to organize cultural workers against fascism and crisis-ridden capitalism. Spawned by the Popular Front of the Communist Party, the cultural front grew to encompass virtually every easpect of high and popular art in the US during the 1930s and beyond. Thoroughly infused with a radically popular and oppositional mentality, the cultural front informed one of the most culturally exciting and rich periods in American history - a vertiable "second American Renaissance", in the words of Michael Denning. This study examines a period which cracks open the great debate in contemporary cultural studies of "high" versus "low" culture - a period in which artists and intellectuals rubbed shoulders with activists and workers, all striving in various ways to create a genuinely democratic culture. From Disney animators to proletarian novelists, and encompassing the likes of Orson Welles, Duke Ellington, John dos Passos, C.L.R. James and Billie Holiday, Denning charts a scene which not only fused art and popular protest, but also left a deep imprint on American culture and society today...." - Publisher's description.

Keywords: American Political History, United States, Radical Politics, Culture, Cultural, Art History, , ,