From Yeah to Yo! our language bears traces of American influence. We can do little to escape the experience of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them, see America as still at cultural Cold War? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture's crisis? From blackface minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald's, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. George McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.

Author Biography

Dr George McKay is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English, and Subject Leader in American Studies at the University of Central Lancashire.