Jay Mechling
Biographic Data
| ID | 219685 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jay Mechling |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jay |
| FAMILY NAME | Mechling |
| SIGNATURE | MECHLING J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 105 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
From Chico to Caesar, Why Chimps Are Good to Think
Americans since Darwin have projected onto chimpanzees, the primates closest to us in evolutionary history, their anxieties about race, sex, family, and questions regarding the relationship between nature and nurture, questions basic to understanding what it means to be human. The history of scientific discourse and discourse in American popular culture about chimpanzees since the middle of the nineteenth century show patterns responsive to speci…
Soldier Snapshots: Masculinity, Play, and Friendship in the Everyday Photographs of Men in the American Military
Folklore: The Basics
Book Review| July 01 2018 Folklore: The Basics Folklore: The Basics. By Simon J. Bronner. (London: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xi + 228, list of figures, introduction, references, index.). Jay Mechling Jay Mechling University of California, Davis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2018) 131 (521): 347–349. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.131.521.0347 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter…
Children in Scouting and Other Organizations
Boy Scouts, the National Rifle Association, and the Domestication of Rifle Shooting
Boy Scouts, the National Rifle Association, and the Domestication of Rifle Shooting Jay Mechling (bio) In the action film, Spy Game (2001), the CIA agent played by Robert Redford asks Brad Pitt's character where he learned to shoot so well. "In the Boy Scouts," replies Pitt's character, dead serious. And so did I, and so did tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of other boys. In Tim O'Brien's first memoir of the Vietnam War-If I Die …
The photographed cat
Boy Scouts and the Manly Art of Cooking
Since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has socialized tens of millions of boys in what it means to be masculine, but a paradoxical aspect of this gender socialization has been the instruction of boys (ages 11 through 17) in cooking and serving meals to others and cleaning up the mess. This article examines Boy Scout handbooks, pamphlets, commercial publications, the material culture of campout cookery, photographic evidence, and et…
Performing Imaginary Rhetoric
The Ambiguity of Play. By Brian Sutton-Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. 276 + x pp. Bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth). Is there a word used in the American studies community more often and with less shared meaning than "interdisciplinary"? Here is a topic--"play"--that demands an interdisciplinary approach, and for that reason alone the American studies audience ought to be intrigued by its study. Once we can get beyond …
Reading what Robert Coles thinks about what children see
The Enduring Seminoles: From Alligator Wrestling to Ecotourism
Folklore and the Civil Sphere. The 1997 Archer Taylor Memorial Lecture
Cet article se penche sur la rencontre des valeurs privees ou domestiques et des valeurs de la sphere publique au sein de « structures mediatrices » americaines. Pour l'A., ces structures - notamment au sein de l'universite - sont porteuses de democratie et de citoyennete et les eventuelles tensions avec les traditions n'ont pas encore fait l'objet d'une attention suffisante de la part des folkloristes. L'A. situe son etude dans le cadre du debat…
Children's Folklore: A Source Book
The atom according to Disney
The broadcast of Disney's 1957 film, “Our Friend the Atom,” a Tomorrow land segment for the Disneyland television show, was a significant moment in the rhetorical history of the naturalization of atomic energy. Disney's interpretation of the peaceful atom, both in the televisual text and in the theme park narratives, had much in common with other mid‐century texts, from world's fairs to popular science books, but the particular contribution of Di…
On Sharing Folklore and American Identity in a Multicultural Society
Afin de voir la possibilite d'une collaboration entre les etudes folkloristes et les etudes culturelles, l'A. definit ce qui permettrait de « partager » un folklore dans une societe americaine multiculturelle. Il fait un parallele entre la « audience reception theory » et les etudes des medias. A partir d'exemples d'emissions televisees, il montre comment les etudes folkloriques et les etudes culturelles convergent vers un seul et meme paradigme …
Hot pacifism and cold war: The American friends service committee's witness for peace in 1950s America
The 1955 pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power, written by a working party of the American Friends Service Committee, stands as one of the most important pacifist statements of the twentieth century. The authors of the pamphlet faced rhetorical dilemmas particular to an American audience in the mid‐1950s, which led them to adopt rhetorical strategies that have come to be characteristic of the discourse of New Class social movements
City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports
Homo Narrans across the Disciplines
The Failure of Folklore in Richard Wright's Black Boy
A close, critical reading ofBlack Boy (1945) shows the extent to which Richard Wright drew upon African-American folklore for the content and aesthetic style of his autobiographical narrative. But the close reading also discovers ways in which the folk traditions failed Wright, especially in the intercultural encounter. These instances of the failure offolklore draw our attention to larger issues about the double bind as a structural instrument o…
American Children's Folklore
Theory and the Other; or, Is This Session the Text
Misbegotten Muses: History and Anti-History
Contents: Misbegotten Muses is, quite literally, alone in its field. It compares not only differing views of history and folklore, but offers interpretive possibilities in a wide range of cultural problems
"Banana Cannon" and Other Folk Traditions between Human and Nonhuman Animals
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
Toys as Culture
"Banana Cannon" and Other Folk Traditions between Human and Nonhuman Animals
Advice to Historians on Advice to Mothers
Children's Folklore: A Source Book
Boy Scouts, the National Rifle Association, and the Domestication of Rifle Shooting
Boy Scouts, the National Rifle Association, and the Domestication of Rifle Shooting Jay Mechling (bio) In the action film, Spy Game (2001), the CIA agent played by Robert Redford asks Brad Pitt's character where he learned to shoot so well. "In the Boy Scouts," replies Pitt's character, dead serious. And so did I, and so did tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of other boys. In Tim O'Brien's first memoir of the Vietnam War-If I Die …
Folklore and the Civil Sphere. The 1997 Archer Taylor Memorial Lecture
Cet article se penche sur la rencontre des valeurs privees ou domestiques et des valeurs de la sphere publique au sein de « structures mediatrices » americaines. Pour l'A., ces structures - notamment au sein de l'universite - sont porteuses de democratie et de citoyennete et les eventuelles tensions avec les traditions n'ont pas encore fait l'objet d'une attention suffisante de la part des folkloristes. L'A. situe son etude dans le cadre du debat…
Boy Scouts and the Manly Art of Cooking
Since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has socialized tens of millions of boys in what it means to be masculine, but a paradoxical aspect of this gender socialization has been the instruction of boys (ages 11 through 17) in cooking and serving meals to others and cleaning up the mess. This article examines Boy Scout handbooks, pamphlets, commercial publications, the material culture of campout cookery, photographic evidence, and et…
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
The Magic of the Boy Scout Campfire
IT IS A COMMON COMPLAINT among anthropologists and historians that rituals and other cultural genres of moderns, especially bourgeoisie, are humanly impoverished relative to those of pastoral or of traditional urban groups. Turner speaks of the dismemberment of ritual in contemporary American society and Bettelheim is troubled by fact that fewer and fewer American parents are reading fairy tales to their children.' Forced to make their own ritual…
Oral Evidence and the History of American Children's Lives
Journal Article Oral Evidence and the History of American Children's Lives Get access Jay Mechling Jay Mechling professor and director of American Studies University of California, Davis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 2, September 1987, Pages 579–586, https://doi.org/10.2307/1900140 Published: 01 September 1987
The Sale of Two Cities: A Semiotic Comparison of Disneyland with Marriott's Great America
This essay compares Disneyland and Marriott's Great America through a semiotic lens, contrasting their representations of American culture and values. Using a Marxist reading of semiotics inspired by Louis Marin, the authors analyze the "stories" each park tells, exploring how these narratives shape visitors' perceptions and reinforce societal ideologies. While both parks operate within a capitalist framework, they present distinct visions of Ame…
The atom according to Disney
The broadcast of Disney's 1957 film, “Our Friend the Atom,” a Tomorrow land segment for the Disneyland television show, was a significant moment in the rhetorical history of the naturalization of atomic energy. Disney's interpretation of the peaceful atom, both in the televisual text and in the theme park narratives, had much in common with other mid‐century texts, from world's fairs to popular science books, but the particular contribution of Di…
Hot pacifism and cold war: The American friends service committee's witness for peace in 1950s America
The 1955 pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power, written by a working party of the American Friends Service Committee, stands as one of the most important pacifist statements of the twentieth century. The authors of the pamphlet faced rhetorical dilemmas particular to an American audience in the mid‐1950s, which led them to adopt rhetorical strategies that have come to be characteristic of the discourse of New Class social movements
Shock Talk: From Consensual to Contractual Joking Relationships in the Bureaucratic Workplace
Elizabeth Walker Mechling is Associate Professor and Chair of Marketing in the School of Business and Economics, California State University, Hayward, California 94542. Jay Mechling is Professor and Director of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, California 95616. This is the revised version of a paper presented at the Organizational Folklore Conference, sponsored by UCLA, the Skaggs Foundation, and the National Endowment for…
On Sharing Folklore and American Identity in a Multicultural Society
Afin de voir la possibilite d'une collaboration entre les etudes folkloristes et les etudes culturelles, l'A. definit ce qui permettrait de « partager » un folklore dans une societe americaine multiculturelle. Il fait un parallele entre la « audience reception theory » et les etudes des medias. A partir d'exemples d'emissions televisees, il montre comment les etudes folkloriques et les etudes culturelles convergent vers un seul et meme paradigme …
Homo Narrans across the Disciplines
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
Peter L. Berger's Novels of Precarious Vision
Peter L. Berger's two novels, The Enclaves (1965) and Protocol of a Damnation (1975), are more than mere diversions from his discursive sociological writing. An examination of both his fiction and nonfiction reveals the homology Berger sees between sociology and literature as forms of consciousness, as complementary versions of 'the precarious vision.' Berger uses his fiction to experiment with the cracks that reveal an 'other condition' lying be…
American Culture Studies: The Discipline and the Curriculum
THERE IS A VAST SLOUGH OF GENIAL IGNORANCE ABOUT AMERICAN STUDIES. Consider the stock questions anyone moving to establish it on any given campus will be asked: has it been around long? what other universities have American Studies? are graduate degrees given? where can a faculty be found? who can know everything about America? is it intellectually sound? shouldn't we really conduct a feasibility study first? As this essay is being written and re…
American Culture Studies: The Discipline and the Curriculum
THERE IS A VAST SLOUGH OF GENIAL IGNORANCE ABOUT AMERICAN STUDIES. Consider the stock questions anyone moving to establish it on any given campus will be asked: has it been around long? what other universities have American Studies? are graduate degrees given? where can a faculty be found? who can know everything about America? is it intellectually sound? shouldn't we really conduct a feasibility study first? As this essay is being written and re…
Advice to Historians on Advice to Mothers
Author's Response to comments on Advice to Historians on Advice to Mothers
Journal Article Author's Response to comments on Advice to Historians on Advice to Mothers Get access Jay Mechling Jay Mechling National Humanities Institute Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 10, Issue 1, Fall 1976, Pages 125–128, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/10.1.125 Published: 01 October 1976
The Magic of the Boy Scout Campfire
IT IS A COMMON COMPLAINT among anthropologists and historians that rituals and other cultural genres of moderns, especially bourgeoisie, are humanly impoverished relative to those of pastoral or of traditional urban groups. Turner speaks of the dismemberment of ritual in contemporary American society and Bettelheim is troubled by fact that fewer and fewer American parents are reading fairy tales to their children.' Forced to make their own ritual…
The Good Society: A Personal Account of Its Struggle with the World of Social Planning and a Dialectical Inquiry into the Roots of Radical Practice . John Friedmann
The Sale of Two Cities: A Semiotic Comparison of Disneyland with Marriott's Great America
This essay compares Disneyland and Marriott's Great America through a semiotic lens, contrasting their representations of American culture and values. Using a Marxist reading of semiotics inspired by Louis Marin, the authors analyze the "stories" each park tells, exploring how these narratives shape visitors' perceptions and reinforce societal ideologies. While both parks operate within a capitalist framework, they present distinct visions of Ame…
Affluence and Discontent: The Anatomy of Consumer Societies . Eugene Linden
Patois and Paradox in a Boy Scout Treasure Hunt
BOY SCOUTS, RECITING THEIR OATH, pledge their honor that they will keep themselves physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. They do not pledge that they will learn the cultural formulae of American bourgeois capitalism, but they might as well, since most of those structures of relations are precisely what the boys are performing when they play their games at summer camp. This essay looks at one game played by a troop of Boy Scouts…
Peter L. Berger's Novels of Precarious Vision
Peter L. Berger's two novels, The Enclaves (1965) and Protocol of a Damnation (1975), are more than mere diversions from his discursive sociological writing. An examination of both his fiction and nonfiction reveals the homology Berger sees between sociology and literature as forms of consciousness, as complementary versions of 'the precarious vision.' Berger uses his fiction to experiment with the cracks that reveal an 'other condition' lying be…
Shock Talk: From Consensual to Contractual Joking Relationships in the Bureaucratic Workplace
Elizabeth Walker Mechling is Associate Professor and Chair of Marketing in the School of Business and Economics, California State University, Hayward, California 94542. Jay Mechling is Professor and Director of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, California 95616. This is the revised version of a paper presented at the Organizational Folklore Conference, sponsored by UCLA, the Skaggs Foundation, and the National Endowment for…
The World of Play
Dress right, dress: The Boy Scout uniform as a folk costume
Oral Evidence and the History of American Children's Lives
Journal Article Oral Evidence and the History of American Children's Lives Get access Jay Mechling Jay Mechling professor and director of American Studies University of California, Davis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 2, September 1987, Pages 579–586, https://doi.org/10.2307/1900140 Published: 01 September 1987
Toys as Culture
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
"Banana Cannon" and Other Folk Traditions between Human and Nonhuman Animals
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
American Wildlife in Symbol and Story
Theory and the Other; or, Is This Session the Text
Misbegotten Muses: History and Anti-History
Contents: Misbegotten Muses is, quite literally, alone in its field. It compares not only differing views of history and folklore, but offers interpretive possibilities in a wide range of cultural problems
Homo Narrans across the Disciplines
The Failure of Folklore in Richard Wright's Black Boy
A close, critical reading ofBlack Boy (1945) shows the extent to which Richard Wright drew upon African-American folklore for the content and aesthetic style of his autobiographical narrative. But the close reading also discovers ways in which the folk traditions failed Wright, especially in the intercultural encounter. These instances of the failure offolklore draw our attention to larger issues about the double bind as a structural instrument o…
American Children's Folklore
Hot pacifism and cold war: The American friends service committee's witness for peace in 1950s America
The 1955 pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power, written by a working party of the American Friends Service Committee, stands as one of the most important pacifist statements of the twentieth century. The authors of the pamphlet faced rhetorical dilemmas particular to an American audience in the mid‐1950s, which led them to adopt rhetorical strategies that have come to be characteristic of the discourse of New Class social movements
City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports
History (18 works) · Art (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Literature (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works)