As long as we both shall love [electronic resource] : the white wedding in postwar America / Karen M. Dunak.

ISBN:

9780814764763

Title:

Author:

Dunak, Karen M.

Personal Author:

Dunak, Karen M.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 244 pages)

General Note:

Revision of the author's doctoral thesis.

Contents:

Introduction -- "Linking the past with the future" : origins of the postwar white wedding -- "The same thing happens to all brides" : Luci Johnson, the American public, and the white wedding -- "Getting married should be fun" : hippie weddings and alternative celebrations -- "Lots of young people today are doing this" : the white wedding revived -- "It matters not who we love, only that we love" : same-sex weddings -- Conclusion.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Weddings -- United States -- History.

Marriage customs and rites -- United States -- History.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Social life and customs -- 1945-1970.

United States -- Social life and customs -- 1971-

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2013

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
392.50973 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In As Long as We Both Shall Love, Karen M. Dunak provides a nuanced history of the American wedding and its celebrants. Blending an analysis of film, fiction, advertising, and prescriptive literature with personal views from letters, diaries, essays, and oral histories, Dunak demonstrates the ways in which the modern wedding epitomizes a diverse and consumerist culture and aims to reveal an ongoing debate about the power of peer culture, media, and the marketplace in America.

Author Notes

Dunak Karen M. :

Karen M. Dunak is Professor and Arthur G. and Eloise Barnes Cole Chair of American History in the Department of History at Muskingum University. She is the author of As Long As We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America. Karen M. Dunak is Professor and Arthur G. and Eloise Barnes Cole Chair of American History in the Department of History at Muskingum University. She is the author of As Long As We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In this well-researched and often entertaining examination of the symbolic meaning of the wedding ceremony in the post-WW II US, historian Dunak (Muskingum Univ.) argues that the evolution of the marriage ceremony mirrors national cultural changes over the past several decades. The author brackets her discussion of the "white wedding" by contrasting the royal weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Diana with that of their son, Prince William, and Kate Middleton, and the US "royal weddings" of first daughters Luci Johnson and Tricia Nixon. Dunak also relies heavily on popular culture sources such as movies to make clear how US women, and increasingly, men, changed over time. From the happy days of the 1950s when the Cold War US celebrated the centrality of the family to the impact of the counterculture of the 1960s and so-called hippie weddings, the marriage ceremony--and, by extension, the wedding industry that supplied the goods--reflected social change. But political changes also had an impact. As Dunak makes clear, the modern women's movement and the rise of gay and lesbian politics have also had a lasting impact on the white wedding. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. K. B. Nutter Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College