We are living in an era of renewed emphasis on purity, an inflamed return to essentialisms. It is a time of sometimes righteous and sometimes reductionist efforts (and sometimes both) to distinguish who gets to say and do what in the cultural domain. This is true in popular culture. It is also true in historical scholarship about popular culture. In place of an interest in the twisted hybrids, knotted weaves, and multicultural amalgamations of American history, there has been a dramatic turn toward separating out cultural forms, and the people who create them, from each other, so that systems of Read more