The organizers of this proposed session are looking for papers from scholars, artists, and activists that will develop a greater interest in and discussion of 1980s American Urban Culture. (Full description follows.)

Here is a link to the ASA: http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/AmericanStudiesAssn/annualmeeting/ASA2007/CFP2007.htm

In his January 1989 farewell address, Ronald Reagan returned once more to John Winthrop's image of the United States as a shining city on a hill. This was not only an idealized America, but also the country he found standing on that “winter night.” And yet the “city streets” Reagan said he would “walk off into” hardly matched the departing President's lofty language. Urban poverty and homelessness rose dramatically in the 1980s, fueled by the austere policies of the Reagan Revolution. Meanwhile, the President spun tales of “welfare queens,” the spread of AIDS was met with overwhelming silence, and a supply of crack cocaine with shadowy Cold War ties ravaged urban neighborhoods.

These and other narratives have become part of our collective memory (or amnesia), set off from and yet frequently compared to a new geopolitical moment. As such, they are ripe for examination from historical scholars, particularly those working with the cultural productions that rest emphatically between and beyond the dreams and nightmares offered up by Reagan and his supporters. As with earlier episodes of urban suffering, many of the most insightful accounts of the era can be found in cultural movements rooted firmly, if diversely, in city spaces, from the explosive allusions and extravagant aspirations of hip-hop to the troubled literary and cinematic satires of life on Wall Street. We seek papers that work with these and other texts and performances to illuminate urban culture in 80s America, and which seek to ground the often-bewildering cultural trends of the decade in geographic terrain. Given the proximity to the present, we are also interested in examining the relationship between the historicization of urban culture and its critical contemporary possibilities.

Possible topics might include (but should not be limited to):