LEADER 04515nam 2200685Ia 450 001 9910788307503321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-8122-0781-5 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812207811 035 $a(CKB)3170000000060342 035 $a(OCoLC)845032691 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10748365 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000885411 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11509438 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000885411 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10946812 035 $a(PQKB)10352483 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse24657 035 $a(DE-B1597)449673 035 $a(OCoLC)979631045 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812207811 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3442038 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10748365 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL682481 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3442038 035 $a(EXLCZ)993170000000060342 100 $a20120813d2013 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aInventing the egghead$b[electronic resource] $ethe battle over brainpower in American culture /$fAaron Lecklider 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2013 215 $a1 online resource (294 p.) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a1-322-51199-3 311 $a0-8122-4486-9 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tCONTENTS --$tIntroduction: Or, They Think We're Stupid --$t1. "Aren't We Educational Here Too?": Brainpower and the Emergence of Mass Culture --$t2. The Force of Complicated Mathematics: Einstein Enters American Culture --$t3. Knowledge Is Power: Women, Workers' Education, and Brainpower in the 1920's --$t4. "The Negro Genius": Black Intellectual Workers in the Harlem Renaissance --$t5. "We Have Only Words Against": Brainworkers and Books in the 1930's --$t6. Dangerous Minds: Spectacles of Science in the Postwar Atomic City --$t7. Inventing the Egghead: Brainpower in Cold War American Culture --$tEpilogue --$tNotes --$tIndex --$tAcknowledgments 330 $aThroughout the twentieth century, pop songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels in the United States represented intelligence alternately as empowering or threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, cultural historian Aaron Lecklider offers a sharp, entertaining narrative of these sources to reveal how Americans who were not part of the traditional intellectual class negotiated the complicated politics of intelligence within an accelerating mass culture. Central to the book is the concept of brainpower-a term used by Lecklider to capture the ways in which journalists, writers, artists, and others invoked intelligence to embolden the majority of Americans who did not have access to institutions of higher learning. Expressions of brainpower, Lecklider argues, challenged the deeply embedded assumptions in society that intellectual capacity was the province of an educated elite, and that the working class was unreservedly anti-intellectual. Amid changes in work, leisure, and domestic life, brainpower became a means for social transformation in the modern United States. The concept thus provides an exciting vantage point from which to make fresh assessments of ongoing debates over intelligence and access to quality education. Expressions of brainpower in the twentieth century engendered an uncomfortable paradox: they diminished the value of intellectuals (the hapless egghead, for example) while establishing claims to intellectual authority among ordinary women and men, including labor activists, women workers, and African Americans. Reading across historical, literary, and visual media, Lecklider mines popular culture as an arena where the brainpower of ordinary people was commonly invoked and frequently contested. 606 $aIntellectuals$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aPopular culture$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 607 $aUnited States$xIntellectual life$y20th century 610 $aAmerican History. 610 $aAmerican Studies. 610 $aCultural Studies. 610 $aHistory. 615 0$aIntellectuals$xHistory 615 0$aPopular culture$xHistory 676 $a306.0973 700 $aLecklider$b Aaron$01475959 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910788307503321 996 $aInventing the egghead$93690361 997 $aUNINA