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The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century

Michael Denning

3.93 · Rating details · 208 ratings · 19 reviews

As garment workers, longshoremen, autoworkers, sharecroppers and clerks took to the streets, striking and organizing unions in the midst of the Depression, artists, writers and filmmakers joined the insurgent social movement by creating a cultural front. Disney cartoonists walked picket lines, and Billie Holiday sand ‘Strange Fruit’ at the left-wing cabaret, Café Society. ...more

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Paperback, 576 pages

Published July 17th 1998 by Verso/New Left Books (London/NYC) (first published 1997)

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Apr 09, 2012 Erik Graff rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Americans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: art

I bought this book at a neighborhood yard sale a few weeks ago, thinking to pass it on as a gift to my stepbrother whose fortieth birthday was nigh. Glancing at it, however, intrigued me enough to give it a try. I don't usually read much cultural criticism, but this treatment of the cultural aspects of the Popular Front, combining as it does the arts with progressive politics, wasn't disappointing.

Author Denning circumscribes that generational wave of radical populism in the United States associ I bought this book at a neighborhood yard sale a few weeks ago, thinking to pass it on as a gift to my stepbrother whose fortieth birthday was nigh. Glancing at it, however, intrigued me enough to give it a try. I don't usually read much cultural criticism, but this treatment of the cultural aspects of the Popular Front, combining as it does the arts with progressive politics, wasn't disappointing.

Author Denning circumscribes that generational wave of radical populism in the United States associated with the Popular Front to the period from the beginning of the Depression in 1929 through to the beginnings of the Cold War in 1948. While he amply acknowledges the influence of the Communist Party and its front organizations on progressive politics during those two decades, he rejects the notions that the CP was responsible for the movement or exercised much control over its many manifestations. If there is an organization he does lay emphasis on it is the C.I.O., Congress of Industrial Organizations, but even here he sees it primarily as a manifestation, not as a cause.

This book is not for everyone. Anyone who lived during the times covered could handle it, but younger people might find some of the references obscure since it's assumed that the general political history of the period is known to the reader. I, informed by older relatives, long-standing relations with the "old left" of the I.W.W. and Socialist Party and some considerable study of the period, had no trouble with the political background, but I still was somewhat intimidated by the hundreds of cultural figures mentioned, many of whom were just names to me. This humbling experience has, however, made me want to pay more attention to hitherto little-known artists and authors.

My greatest disappointment with this otherwise quite impressive work was with how little attention was paid to the "old left", its figures and organizations. I suppose it is justified in that they antedated in their origins the thirties, but the influence of the pre-Communist socialists and of such figures as Norman Thomas was considerable during this period and on the "new left" that followed. This book gives little sense of that. ...more

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Jul 02, 2009 Zach rated it it was amazing

Shelves: consumerism-mass-culture, history, cultural-studies-critical-theory, the-left

Denning argues that the popular front (the broad radical, social-democratic movement forged around anti-fascism, anti-lynching/racism, and the industrial unionism of the CIO)'s "cultural front" movement reshaped ("labored") American culture regarding:

- use of "labor" or synonyms thereof in rhetoric
- increased influence on and participation of working-class Americans in culture and arts (result of expansion of mass culture/higher education/entertainment industries)
- labor of cultural production ...more

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Oct 30, 2007 Cris rated it it was amazing

Shelves: empirereadinggroup

What an incredible book. It took the group a few months to work our way through it, though it was well worth the time spent. The author makes an argument that the "cultural front," or radical creative expression had influence beyond the 1930s that Denning characterizes as the "laboring" of American culture. Sometimes I felt I lost sight of that larger argument because I found myself lost in wide-ranging discussions about novels, plays and films. (I thought this was both a tremendous strength and ...more

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Apr 30, 2008 Billy rated it liked it

Shelves: 20th-century-u-s, 20th-century-cultural, 20th-century-great-depression

Denning argues “the cultural front reshaped American culture,” that the left, working-class or LABORING CLASS, had cultural hegemony in the 30s for the first time in U.S. history. The Popular front brought a “deep and lasting transformation of American modernism and mass culture.” (xvi) The “laboring” of American culture refers to
- the use of “labor” in the rhetoric of the period (i.e. labor movement, labor party, proletarian); in short, the language itself was “labored.”
- Proletarianization of
Denning argues “the cultural front reshaped American culture,” that the left, working-class or LABORING CLASS, had cultural hegemony in the 30s for the first time in U.S. history. The Popular front brought a “deep and lasting transformation of American modernism and mass culture.” (xvi) The “laboring” of American culture refers to
- the use of “labor” in the rhetoric of the period (i.e. labor movement, labor party, proletarian); in short, the language itself was “labored.”
- Proletarianization of American culture, or, the increasing influence on and participation of working-class Americans in making culture and the arts. Mass Culture allowed working-class artisans to influence greater American culture in new ways. Entertainment industries expanded alongside educational institutions. Children from working class families entered cultural industries.
- A new visibility of labor in cultural production. Musicians and actors were working class but creating high art. These workers unionized, including screenwriters, cartoonists, teachers and journalists.
- Popular Front culture were not simply New Deal liberalism. It fought for social democratization of American Culture.
- Laboring, as in birthing, of a second American renaissance. It was not a revolution, but a prolonged period of gradual influence.
Denning looks at the cultural response of Americans to Popular Front movements across the globe. The Popular Fronts were left-wing and centrist movements; they were communist leaning and anti-fascist. Denning does not view the popular front in a conventional way. Most scholars see the popular front as a manipulative strategy of the communist party. Instead, he views it as a broad, grassroots social movement that sparked and fueled a cultural renaissance in American culture. Denning argues for an alliance between mass culture of Jazz, Film and literature with working class individuals. Notable performers such as Orson Wells and Duke Ellington were for workers rights and socialist platforms. Denning blurs the usually clear distinctions between left-wing propaganda and criticism and American capitalist mass media and popular culture. Leftists permeated and dominated American mass culture. Educated critics and working class citizens alike engaged in this cultural front.

Artists such as writers, actors, musicians, recognized and endorsed working class ethos because they were working class. They performed high-brow and low-brow culture alke, but were unionizing at the same time. Intellectuals and Critics may have shunned popular culture, but they did so incorrectly. Denning argues that the cultural front was “laboring” to create an alternative model of popular culture, not simply high/intellectual culture, one that worked with leftist ideals. Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” is Denning’s best example of crossing leftist politics and popular culture. The song is a thinly veiled metaphor for a lynching. Denning examines this song, as well as Orson Well’s Citizen Kane, through a Gramscian lens. The laboring of American culture was appropriated by capitalism via Kane.

Denning’s analysis of the era is also different in that he views Jazz, and not folk (of Guthrie or Leadbelly) as the music of the popular front. In this analysis he is dead wrong. Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday are his examples, but few of these artists were communist sympathizers or anti-fascists in proactive ways. Their songs are better aligned with future movements in civil rights. Jazz blurred the racial barriers in many ways, beginning as an African American art forms and permeating into multi-racial music. Denning’s appraisal of Ellington or Diz as a communist sympathizers because they signed a petition at a gig is a stretch. Really, they was probably trying to secure another gig. They were, however, working class, but Denning appropriates their actions to support his own historical point of view. This is a critique Susman has made of most culture, and, arguably, by extension, cultural historians. In supporting black communist Ben Davis, then running for NYC city council, Ellington, Basie, Holiday, Tatum, and Fitzgerald were supporting the black part of the ticket, not the communist or working class.

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May 27, 2017 James rated it it was amazing

Denning argued that the Popular Front movement lead to a Gramscian hegemonic cultural shift in the “long” 1930s where left-wing laborism took over popular culture. While it has been popularly framed as either the Communist Party dominating the Popular Front and manipulating well-meaning liberals, or simply a result of New Deal liberalism, Denning reorients the history as the “fellow traveler” being at the core of the Popular Front, with the CPUSA sometimes leading and sometimes following. If any Denning argued that the Popular Front movement lead to a Gramscian hegemonic cultural shift in the “long” 1930s where left-wing laborism took over popular culture. While it has been popularly framed as either the Communist Party dominating the Popular Front and manipulating well-meaning liberals, or simply a result of New Deal liberalism, Denning reorients the history as the “fellow traveler” being at the core of the Popular Front, with the CPUSA sometimes leading and sometimes following. If anything, the CIO unionism which arose in 1935 in response to a series of explosive worker rebellions in 1934, was the vehicle for building Popular Front culture. Cultural workers brought the Popular Front movement into mass entertainment and education, “proletarianizing” American society before being crushed by the right-wing Cold War reaction in the 1950s, and efforts made to erase the history of the Popular Front. While the Popular Front was on the surface in response to the Great Depression and anti-fascist international solidarity (Spain, China, Ethiopia), it was also in support of CIO industrial unionism and the development of cultural arenas, from radical animators to jazz musicians to working class literary groups, as well as struggles of the New Deal left-wing. Therefore, cultural workers became radicalized and took over cultural arenas to aim its audience to working class people. The Cultural Front remade American Culture to what we know today, in places like music with jazz, blues, and country, film noire and gangster movies, and cultural renaissance in ethnic and solidarity politics.
Part one looks to the Cultural Front, which refers to both the alliance of the children of immigrants who became artists and intellectuals and the place of battle in culture by laborists, and its formation in the base of the CIO, political superstructures, and cultural formations. Part two places its aesthetics, or the imagery used in plays, novels, films, and music, and cultural politics, or allegiances and loyalties to organizational structures. Part three looks to cultural imagery and analysis, particularly to animators and jazz musicians.
Key Themes and Concepts:
-The Communist Party was the most influential group, but by far not the one driving the Popular Front movement. Instead, the fellow traveler, or sympathetic leftist not attached to any one political sect, was its core.
-The rise of the CIO helped bring about organizational apparatus to building social democracy, or industrial unionism, where all workers would belong to unions in order to participate in larger society.
-“Laboring” was the effort to bring proletarianization of American culture by mass entertainment culture workers.
...more

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Jun 05, 2008 Will rated it liked it

Shelves: culture-politics

Started reading this book because of research on the sociopolitical background of composer Aaron Copland. Became intrigued with how socially and politically liberal the decade of the 1930s really was (e.g., America's only serious flirtation with communism), especially compared with later decades (e.g., the 1960s). Although the author is decidedly leftist, it's a pretty good read if you're interested in politics. ...more

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May 14, 2009 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-studies, 20th-century

Great foundational book for 20C American Studies.

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Feb 14, 2014 Vicki rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction-etc

Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front: The Labouring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century presents a historical and cultural analysis of the Popular Front social movement of the 1930s in America. Through his multiple approaches, Denning is able to demonstrate an understanding of the Popular Front movement as not just a political movement but also a multi-ethnic, multi-centred social movement in a period of transition.

Denning clearly outlines his overarching argument in The Cultural Front Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front: The Labouring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century presents a historical and cultural analysis of the Popular Front social movement of the 1930s in America. Through his multiple approaches, Denning is able to demonstrate an understanding of the Popular Front movement as not just a political movement but also a multi-ethnic, multi-centred social movement in a period of transition.

Denning clearly outlines his overarching argument in The Cultural Front, stating that the Popular Front was more than a Communist inspired political movement, but was also a social movement, influencing the creation of the American cultural industry and leaving a lasting impact on American modernism and mass culture. In order to accomplish this, Denning divides his book into three sections, each with its own sub-argument. The first section, “The Left and American Culture” aims to display the Popular Front as a historical bloc which through its relations to the Congress/Committee of Industrial Organizations and other union organizations created a generation of artists who were both from and found an audience within the ethnic working classes and then carried on to become instigators of the cultural front. Here Denning does not hone in on any one specific individual or organization as a cornerstone of the movement, but instead provides a historical accounting of the movement as a whole, the reasoning behind it, how it began and why it ended.

Denning uses the second section, “Anatomy of the Cultural Front,” to overview cultural politics and the aesthetic ideologies of the cultural front, emphasizing the relationship between culture and politics. In this section, Denning explores the political motivations surrounding the culture that came out of the Popular Front. Here, he analyzes the politics of form as aesthetic ideologies through an exploration of agitprop, which is “a contraction of agitation and propaganda...the name for a variety of directly political art” (57). The final section, and largest of the book, “Formations of the Cultural Front,” explores various art forms, such as literature, music, theatre, and animation, that were also “social locations” of the movement. This is where Denning links to his overarching argument the most; through a study of how trends that emerged during the Popular Front movement became a part of the American narrative. One such trend he focuses on, for example, is the migrant tale; the narrative of Steinbeck’s widely known Grapes of Wrath, which emerged during this period due and worked its way into mass culture as “an emblem of depression era populism” (259) that represented the people. While he pursues largely literary conventions in this final section, Denning also explores music, film, and even the field of American cultural studies.
In order to pursue these arguments, Denning relies heavily on historical analysis and sources, especially in the first section of The Cultural Front. These historical sources used could almost be seen as a Who’s Who of the Popular Front era as he outlines the biography of many prominent artists, writers, musicians, and photographers who played a role in the movement; Denning also delves into the history of organizations, unions, committees, and magazines, among many others. While these are largely used to provide a historical backdrop and overview of the era, they are also employed to demonstrate the extensive spread of the Popular Front. Rather than chronologically chronicling this history though, Denning inserts and uses them based on the cultural viewpoint he is focusing on at any one time. This is especially useful for Denning, because, as he states, the American Popular Front was not a united movement, but took place in three major arenas across the country: New York, California, and the Midwest (CITE). While Denning relies largely on historical material to inform his analysis throughout the text as a whole, in the final section he focuses more on literary analysis and critique when studying specific primary texts such as John Dos Passos U.S.A. and literary movements like the “Ghetto Pastoral” (230) genre. Denning also applies similar methods unto other mediums and genres, such as film, theatre, music, and photography.
With The Cultural Front, Denning is successful in demonstrating the cultural movements of the Popular Front and their lasting impact on American culture. To provide a stand out and accurate cultural analysis of the Popular Front, Denning eschews a study of the economic and political factors of the movement, instead focussing on the union organizations, working class society, and artists of the period. By removing his analysis from the political sphere, Denning is able to highlight aspects of the movement that could otherwise be overlooked, such as the contributions by individuals and groups that were not affiliated with political parties like Lewis Corey/Louis Farina. However, Denning’s omission of the political sphere does also work against him. In the onset of the text, he states that most members of the movement viewed themselves as a communist in some manner, even those who were not affiliated with the Communist Party officially, and that previous studies of the period have focused on the political links, especially the communist ones, of individuals and organizations (xviii). While Denning is stressing this in order to differ his account from others and to note that he will not be examining these politics as deliberately, it does seem a disconnect for him to ignore these links near entirely and instead to briefly refer to political leanings as “left” or, a more focussed but still general, “Red” when they do crop up within the main text.

Denning’s main strength in The Cultural Front is his ability to approach the subject matter and the period from multiple angles. While I did not find that Denning succeeded in his argument as he had laid it out, I still found that based on the book as a whole he did succeed. For example, Denning intends to use the first section of his text to demonstrate an alternative view of the Popular Front movement. However, the first section of the text reads as an extensive historical background of the period that was necessitated so that the reader could follow his many of historical references later in the text rather than an argument. On the other hand though, this first section still, especially when combined with the rest of the text, conveys Denning’s intent. This was a trend that I noticed a few times throughout the text and have chalked it up to an issue on my part rather than Denning’s. Despite his argument being laid out clearly at the onset of the text, it was still open to some interpretation; meaning that I had expected Denning to approach his points in different manners than he did, yet both approaches still yielded the same results.
This is successful, I believe, based on Denning’s insistence on charting the Popular Front as four movements of culture: an avant garde movement, a social movement, a state movement, and a mass culture movement. By analyzing the Popular Front in this way, rather than chronologically, Denning is able to focus on the complexity and variety within the movement. As stated above, The Cultural Front makes it clear that this was not a singular movement located in a singular space; Denning highlights how these movements proceeded in the three main centres, New York, California, and the Midwest, and aspects of the movements that were central to each one more so than the others, such as California’s migrant narratives. This is important as Denning also examines the groups of individuals involved in the same manner. That is, he explores the history of the movements and impacts it had not through a black/white racial binary, but through an exploration of the multiple ethnicities of those involved. Aside from the general ethnic population of America he also makes a special note of émigrés, the artists and intellectuals who fled fascist regimes in Europe, Asia, and Latin America (60), and the Jewish members of the burgeoning film industry. By acknowledging the multitudes of peoples involved in the movement, Denning further highlights the diversity and complexity as the movement as a whole, rather than confining it to a singular united front.

While I believe that Denning clearly outlined his arguments and executed them, I did have trouble following his thought process in parts. This was due to a writing issue rather than a problem with his thoughts themselves; often throughout the text Denning would broach a point related to the current thought he is formulating. When he brought up these related points, Denning would begin to provide background information and lead into an argument involving them, but then, as they were off topic, state that he would continue the idea further in the text and return to his original point. This is perfectly reasonable, especially in a book of this size. However, I found that his lead in to the secondary argument was so well formulated that he often spent multiple pages on these tangential thoughts, causing the reader issue when returning to his original point. Then, when he later returned to the tangential argument within its own section of the text, it was often difficult to recall the points he had made previously since he did not repeat the earlier explanation and instead just continued from where he had stopped in the previous chapters. This switching of gears throughout the book made it difficult to follow his intended points and to connect parts of the argument across the book as a whole. Though, while it was frustrating to read, it did not affect the clarity of his arguments as a whole.

Overall, The Cultural Front, succeeds in demonstrating the cultural atmosphere of the Popular Front and the history of the people and organizations behind it through Denning’s use of history, literary criticism, and theoretical analysis. By using a variety of approaches, it challenges others to view the movement in a new and different way.
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Jun 27, 2019 Peter rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1914-1945, 1990s, 20th-century, american-history, american-writers, history, social-history, intellectual-history, socialism, cultural-history

More like the “be-laboring… of the point!” Just kidding- this book is pretty long and detailed but I wouldn’t call it belabored. It describes the titular “cultural front,” the loose coalition of artists — writers, filmmakers, painters, photographers, etc. — who attached themselves to the Popular Front in the 1930s and who had an outsized effect on American culture.

Like a lot of big books in American Studies, this one makes a big deal out of excavating lost Americana. I read this book over twenty More like the “be-laboring… of the point!” Just kidding- this book is pretty long and detailed but I wouldn’t call it belabored. It describes the titular “cultural front,” the loose coalition of artists — writers, filmmakers, painters, photographers, etc. — who attached themselves to the Popular Front in the 1930s and who had an outsized effect on American culture.

Like a lot of big books in American Studies, this one makes a big deal out of excavating lost Americana. I read this book over twenty years after it was published, so Denning’s posture that he’s recovering lost history is somewhat lost on me, but I can see what he means. Critics and artists in the decades after the thirties often pooh-poohed the period as one of stagnant politicization, the following of party lines. The liberals who created the midcentury critical establishment in America specifically snubbed any Popular Front writers who didn’t, at some point, turn on it (as John Dos Passos did) in favor of the less political modernism of the teens and twenties.

Denning argues gamefully both for his subject’s cultural creativity and its relevance. More than following a party line — either the Communist Party or the New Deal Democrats — most of the cultural front (and the Popular Front more generally; their relationship, and both’s relationship to the broader labor left and the New Deal, is foggy here) got involved for fairly straightforward reasons. They saw a coalition dedicated to carrying forward the labor militancy of the depression era, as well as fighting racism and fascism at home and abroad, and went for it. The sort of drama of sectarianism that fixated later critics was just that- mostly a thing for critics. As for relevance, such figures as Dorothea Lange, Billie Holiday, Orson Welles, and Dashiell Hammett were all involved, which on the one hand is a group of heavyweights but on the other hand largely worked in established genres and forms. Still, they and the thousands of other Popular Front cultural workers brought their own sensibility to things which was influential for a long time, and arguably still is.

Denning makes a larger point about the “laboring” of American culture, a movement from the thirties to the end of the fifties that put the concerns and expressions of working class Americans — many of them migrants or children of migrants, either from abroad or internal migration — at the center of culture and politics. I’m not sure about this claim, or rather think it seems a bit big and broad. I could buy it for the period of the CIO’s strength in the thirties and arguably during the war, but after the war, the Cold War and consumerism take over. In all, this is a big book full of fascinating detail (just enough to merit the “belaboring” joke) but that suffers from some overly-ambitious theoretical aims. Still, probably better to aim high. **** ...more

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Dec 09, 2020 Sam DiBella rated it really liked it · review of another edition

If you want one too-long, exuberant cultural history of leftist art in the 30s to ~50s, this is the one. Denning links together proletarian literature, Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, cabaret blues, and Disney animators into a long argument that the US popular front was both the product of a wide-ranging historical "formation" or bloc that was more marked by its ideals than by consistent Communist Party membership. Even though it was dismantled by McCarthyism, the collapse of the New Deal, and th ...more

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Oct 03, 2017 Dan Gorman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Marxist theory isn't for everyone, and I imagine that Denning's avowed support for anti-globalist and pro-union politics will discomfit many readers. The conclusion is all over the place; don't expect a tidy resolution of themes. Despite these caveats, I totally recommend the book. Denning proves the extent to which Marxist, or Marxist-derived, ideas permeated American culture in the 1930s. He provides great insight into the ethnic communities that supported labor organizers, socialist theat ...more

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May 21, 2021 Mesut Bostancı rated it really liked it

Was very lucky to have read the chapter on Orson Welles *before* I watched Mank

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Oct 19, 2011 Kaufmak rated it liked it

Shelves: old-comp-list

An interesting look at the popular front and its influence on American culture, especially the emphasis on making the working class/ethnic/immigrant people more a part of said culture. Cultural Front is best seen as an extension of Liz Cohen's New Deal book, both focus on the rise of the CIO, where Cohen was more of a macro examination focusing more on a specific location, Denning is also macro, but focusing on one aspect of culture, namely literary and middle to high brow pursuits. In this, Den ...more

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Jan 27, 2017 Owen Walsh rated it really liked it

Though in many senses an attempt at a "definitive", macroscopic look at the cultural left of the 30s and 40s, this is a book you ought to approach with some knowledge of the period, and a critical eye. Equipped with a critical perspective, though, this is very, very rewarding. Denning's knowledge of his subject is extraordinary, and his dozens of references to relevant works are made in an authoritative manner which makes each of his theses feel plausible - indeed, irresistible. His fundamental ...more

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Apr 03, 2008 sdw rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literarycriticism, mydissertation

A classic. An encyclopedia. Worth the read.

This book argues for the recognition of a “cultural front” that came along with the political front during the 1930s. American culture through film, movies, books, photographs, etc “labored” – became full of laboring bodies and stories of laboring people. These stories talked about production in both form and content and recognized even the production of creative pieces. The face of American culture changed.

The book’s breadth and number of artists and ...more

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Nov 01, 2013 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: school

A perhaps overly ambitious and inherently encyclopedic work that chimes in at more than 500 pages, The Cultural Front argues that while the political legacy of the popular front may have been limited in the United States, the impact of the culture that it produced was deep and long-lasting.

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Aug 28, 2015 Courtney rated it liked it

It provides a different perspective on the history of the 1930s, one that follows social movement and worker appartus over one revolving around the Communist party. But it's long and winding and I couldn't wait to be done with it. ...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Mark Middleton rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Popculture, American Culture Studies

Shelves: american-culture-studies, own-it

A very good book on the history and impact of the laboring of America in the 1930's ...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Joseph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Exhaustive and exhausting. It takes too long to reach the back of The Cultural Front, but like any scenic journey, that's often the point. ...more

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About Michael Denning

Michael Denning

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Michael Denning is an American cultural historian and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His work has been influential in shaping the field of American Studies by importing and interpreting the work of British Cultural Studies theorists. Although he received his Ph. D. from Yale University and studied with Fredric Jameson, perhaps the greatest influence on his ...more