Overview

Since the show's debut in 2007, Mad Men has invited viewers to immerse themselves in the lush period settings, ruthless Madison Avenue advertising culture, and arresting characters at the center of its 1960s fictional world. Mad Men, Mad World is a comprehensive analysis of this groundbreaking TV series. Scholars from across the humanities consider the AMC drama from a fascinating array of perspectives, including fashion, history, architecture, civil rights, feminism, consumerism, art, cinema, and the serial format, as well as through theoretical frames such as critical race theory, gender, queer theory, global studies, and psychoanalysis. In the introduction, the editors explore 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. Mad Men, Mad World also includes an interview with Phil Abraham, an award-winning Mad Men director and cinematographer. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that understanding Mad Men means engaging the show not only as a reflection of the 1960s but also as a commentary on the present day. Contributors. Michael Berube, Alexander Doty, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Jim Hansen, Dianne Harris, Lynne Joyrich, Lilya Kaganovsky, Clarence Lang, Caroline Levine, Kent Ono, Dana Polan, Leslie Reagan, Mabel Rosenheck, Robert A. Rushing, Irene Small, Michael Szalay, Jeremy Varon

Full Product Details

Author:   Lauren M. E. Goodlad ,  Lilya Kaganovsky ,  Robert A. Rushing
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.70cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.640kg
ISBN:  

9780822354185

ISBN 10:   0822354187
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   11 March 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments ix Introduction / Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky, Robert A. Rushing 1 Part I. Mad Worlds 1. Maddening Times: Mad Men in Its History / Dana Polan 35 2. Mad Space / Dianne Harris 53 3. Representing the Mad Margins of the Early 1960s: Northern Civil Rights and the Blues Idiom / Clarence Lange 73 4. After the Sex, What? A Feminist Reading of Reproductive History in Mad Men / Leslie J. Reagan 92 5. The Writer as Producer; or, The Hip Figure after HBO / Michael Szalay 111 Part II.Mad Aesthetics 6. The Shock of the Banal: Mad Men's Progressive Realism / Caroline Levine 133 7. Mod Men / Jim Hansen 145 8. Swing Skirts and Swinging Singles: Mad Men, Fashion, and Cultural Memory / Mabel Rosenheck 161 9. Against Depth: Looking at Surface through the Kodak Carousel / Irene V. Small 181 10. ""It Will Shock You How Much This Never Happened"": Antonioni and Mad Men / Robert A. Rushing 192 Part III. Made Men 11. Media Madness: Multiple Identity (Dis)Orders in Mad Men / Lynne Joyrich 213 12. ""Maidenform"": Masculinity as Masquerade / Lilya Kaganovsky 238 13. History Gets in Your Eyes: Mad Men, Misrecognition, and the Masculine Mystique / Jeremy Varon 257 14. The Homosexual and the Single Girl / Alexander Doty 279 15. Mad Men's Postracial Figuration of a Racial Past / Kent Ono 300 16. The Mad Men in the Attic: Seriality and Identity in the Modern Bablyon / Lauren M. E. Goodlad 320 Afterword. A Change Is Gonna Come, Same as It Ever Was / Michael Bérubé 345 Appendix A. A Conversation with Phil Abraham, Director and Cinematographer / Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Jeremy Varon, and Carl Lehnen 361 Appendix B. List of Mad Men Episodes 381 Contributors 411 Index 415"

Reviews

I read this collection with enormous pleasure. The essays are smart, creative, and original. Writing on matters from TV technology to the history of advertising, and from the early civil rights movement to analogies between Jews and nineteenth-century dandies, the contributors illuminate what turns out to be a very rich and charismatic cultural object. I think that Mad Men, Mad World will make a real splash. - Bruce Robbins, author of Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence The essays assembled in this collection pay careful, astute analytical attention to one of American television's most significant contemporary series. Deepening its approach far beyond that of standard appreciations of 'quality TV,' this book illuminates Mad Men's complex, powerful engagement with capitalism, national identity, race, and gender at a time when these categories are so evidently in flux. - Diane Negra, coeditor of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture What a treat for me to delve into this work with so much academic and intellectual rigor - I love it! - Phil Abraham, director, Mad Men One of the most critically acclaimed and culturally fetishized television shows of the past decade receives an intellectual deconstruction in this collection of academic essays... Throughout the book are intelligent discussions dissecting the central themes addressed in the show, such as masculinity and feminism, identity, and race relations and representations. Publishers Weekly, January 2013

What a treat for me to delve into this work with so much academic and intellectual rigor--I love it! --Phil Abraham, director, Mad Men

I read this collection with enormous pleasure. The essays are smart, creative, and original. Writing on matters from TV technology to the history of advertising, and from the early civil rights movement to analogies between Jews and nineteenth-century dandies, the contributors illuminate what turns out to be a very rich and charismatic cultural object. I think that Mad Men, Mad World will make a real splash. - Bruce Robbins, author of Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence The essays assembled in this collection pay careful, astute analytical attention to one of American television's most significant contemporary series. Deepening its approach far beyond that of standard appreciations of 'quality TV,' this book illuminates Mad Men's complex, powerful engagement with capitalism, national identity, race, and gender at a time when these categories are so evidently in flux. - Diane Negra, coeditor of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture What a treat for me to delve into this work with so much academic and intellectual rigor - I love it! - Phil Abraham, director, Mad Men

I read this collection with enormous pleasure. The essays are smart, creative, and original. Writing on matters from TV technology to the history of advertising, and from the early civil rights movement to analogies between Jews and nineteenth-century dandies, the contributors illuminate what turns out to be a very rich and charismatic cultural object. I think that Mad Men, Mad World will make a real splash. - Bruce Robbins, author of Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence The essays assembled in this collection pay careful, astute analytical attention to one of American television's most significant contemporary series. Deepening its approach far beyond that of standard appreciations of 'quality TV,' this book illuminates Mad Men's complex, powerful engagement with capitalism, national identity, race, and gender at a time when these categories are so evidently in flux. - Diane Negra, coeditor of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture What a treat for me to delve into this work with so much academic and intellectual rigor - I love it! - Phil Abraham, director, Mad Men One of the most critically acclaimed and culturally fetishized television shows of the past decade receives an intellectual deconstruction in this collection of academic essays... Throughout the book are intelligent discussions dissecting the central themes addressed in the show, such as masculinity and feminism, identity, and race relations and representations. --Publishers Weekly, January 2013 The collection is intended for superfans, TV enthusiasts, or people enrolled in undergraduate media-studies courses... The core tension binding these 16 essays is Mad Men's representation of history. Some contributors believe the show instills within its viewers the illusion of moral superiority; others feel it opens a compelling dialogue around history, experience, and interpretation. --Bitch Magazine, Spring 2013 Mad Men, Mad World's brilliance is that it analyzes storylines and characters from completely unexpected angles... These are deeply considered pieces that truly spark intellectual discussion. It's a mad world, indeed, but this book helps to bring some order to the chaos. - Natalie Papailiou, Shelf Awareness for Readers The varying perspectives presented make this work useful supplemental reading for television critics, scholars, and researchers interested in deeper analysis of the show's portrayal of 1960s culture. - Kimberley Bugg, Library Journal

Author Information

Lauren M. E. Goodlad is University Scholar, Associate Professor of English, and Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic: Realism, Sovereignty, and Transnational Experience (forthcoming) and a coeditor of Goth: Undead Subculture, also published by Duke University Press. Lilya Kaganovsky is Associate Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of How the Soviet Man Was Unmade. Robert A. Rushing is Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Resisting Arrest: Detective Fiction and Popular Culture.

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