Communities of the air : radio century, radio culture

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Communities of the air : radio century, radio culture

edited by Susan Merrill Squier

Duke University Press, 2003

  • : pbk

Available at  / 14 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

A pioneering analysis of radio as both a cultural and material production, Communities of the Air explores radio's powerful role in shaping Anglo-American culture and society since the early twentieth century. Scholars and radio writers, producers, and critics look at the many ways radio generates multiple communities over the air-from elite to popular, dominant to resistant, canonical to transgressive. The contributors approach radio not only in its own right, but also as a set of practices-both technological and social-illuminating broader issues such as race relations, gender politics, and the construction of regional and national identities. Drawing on the perspectives of literary and cultural studies, science studies and feminist theory, radio history, and the new field of radio studies, these essays consider the development of radio as technology: how it was modeled on the telephone, early conflicts between for-profit and public uses of radio, and amateur radio (HAMS), local programming, and low-power radio. Some pieces discuss how radio gives voice to different cultural groups, focusing on the BBC and poetry programming in the West Indies, black radio, the history of alternative radio since the 1970s, and science and contemporary arts programming. Others look at radio's influence on gender (and gender's influence on radio) through examinations of Queen Elizabeth's broadcasts, Gracie Allen's comedy, and programming geared toward women. Together the contributors demonstrate how attention to the variety of ways radio is used and understood reveals the dynamic emergence and transformation of communities within the larger society. Contributors. Laurence A. Breiner, Bruce B. Campbell, Mary Desjardins, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Nina Hunteman, Leah Lowe, Adrienne Munich, Kathleen Newman, Martin Spinelli, Susan Merrill Squier, Donald Ulin, Mark Williams, Steve Wurzler

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix Communities of the Air: Introducing the Radio World / Susan M. Squier 1 Radio Technology across the Twentieth Century AT&T Invents Public Access Broadcasting in 1923: A Foreclosed Model for American Radio / Steven Wurtzler 39 Compromising Technologies: Government, the Radio Hobby, and the Discourse of Catastrophe in the Twentieth Century / Bruce Campbell 63 A Promise Diminished: The Politics of Low-Power Radio / Nina Huntemann 76 Radio Cultures Caribbean Voices on the Air: Radio, Poetry, and Nationalism in the Anglophone Caribbean / Laurence A. Breiner 93 The Forgotten Fifteen Million: Black Radio, Radicalism, and the Construction of the "Negro Market" / Kathy M. Newman 109 Packaged Alternatives: The Incorporation and Gendering of "Alternative" Radio / Lauren M. E. Goodlad 134 Science Literacies: The Mandate and Complicity of Popular Science on the Radio / Donald Ulin 164 Not Hearing Poetry on Public Radio / Martin Spinelli 195 Radio Ideologies In the Radio Way: Elizabeth II, the Female Voice-Over, and the Radio's Imperial Effects / Adrienne Munich 217 "If the Country's Going Gracie, So Can You": Gender Representation in Gracie Allen's Radio Comedy / Leah Lowe 237 "Are You Lonesome Tonight?": Gendered Address in The Lonesome Gal and The Continental / Mary Desjardins and Mark Williams 251 Wireless Possibilities, Posthuman Possibilities: Brain Radio, Community Radio, Radio Lazarus / Susan M. Squier 275 Contributors 305 Index 307

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