American popular magazines play a role in our culture similar to
that of public historians, Carolyn Kitch contends. Drawing on
evidence from the pages of more than sixty magazines, including
Newsweek,
Rolling Stone,
Black Enterprise,
Ladies' Home Journal, and
Reader's Digest, Kitch
examines the role of journalism in creating collective memory and
identity for Americans.
Editorial perspectives, visual and narrative content, and the
tangibility and keepsake qualities of magazines make them key
repositories of American memory, Kitch argues. She discusses
anniversary celebrations that assess the passage of time; the role
of race in counter-memory; the lasting meaning of celebrities who
are mourned in the media; cyclical representations of generational
identity, from the Greatest Generation to Generation X; and
anticipated memory in commemoration after crisis events such as
those of September 11, 2001.
Bringing a critically neglected form of journalism to the
forefront, Kitch demonstrates that magazines play a special role in
creating narratives of the past that reflect and inform who we are
now.