Contemporary Collecting

Kevin M. Moist is associate professor of communications at Pennsylvania State University – Altoona College. He has written for numerous journals, including The Journal of Popular Culture, American Studies, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Studies in Popular Culture. David Banash is professor of English at Western Illinois University, where he teaches courses in contemporary American literature, film, and popular culture. His essays and reviews have appeared in Postmodern Culture, Reconstruction, Bad Subjects, American Book Review, and PopMatters. His book Collage Culture: Readymades, Meaning, and the Age of Consumption is forthcoming in 2013.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1Collecting in a Virtual World
1. Marcus Boon, “Meditations in an Emergency: On the Apparent Destruction of My mp3 Collection”
2. Matthew James Vechinski, “Collecting, Curating, and the Magic Circle of Ownership in a Postmaterial Culture”
3. Phillip Hutchison, “Searching for Cap’n Ernie’s Treasure Chest:
Collecting and Sharing the Lost History of Live Local Television Genres”
Part 2Changing Relationships with Things
4. David Banash, “Virtual Life and the Value of Objects: Nostalgia, Distinction, and Collecting in the Twenty-First Century”
5. Daniel DeChaine, “Memory, Desire, and the “Good Collector” in PEZhead Culture”
6. William Davies King, “Suited for Nothing: Collecting Second Hand”
7. Stanley Cavell, “The World As Things: Collecting Thoughts On Collecting”
Part 3Collecting and Identity, Personal and Political
8. Stephen A. Andon, “From the Attic to the Mallpark: A Collection’s Transition from Private to Public in a New Professional Baseball Stadium”
9. Mechtild Widrich, “Collecting ‘History in the Making’: The Privatization of Propaganda in National Socialist Cigarette Cards”
10. Terri Baker, “‘The record of a life’: Nation and Narrative
in Victorian Women’s Collections”
Part 4Collecting Practices and Cultural Hierarchies
11. Sophie Thomas, “Distraction and Display: the Curiosity Cabinet and the Romantic Museum.”
12. Mary Titus, “Collection and Parody: Taliesin and House on the Rock”
13. Kevin M. Moist, “Record Collecting as Cultural Anthropology”
Bibliography
Contributor Biographies