Ghettoes, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down & Out on the Silver Screen explores how American movies have portrayed poor and homeless people from the silent era to today. It provides a novel kind of guide to social policy, exploring how ideas about poor and homeless people have been reflected in popular culture and evaluating those images against the historical and contemporary reality. Richly illustrated and examining nearly 300 American-made films released between 1902 and 2015, Ghettoes, Tramps, and Welfare Queens finds and describes representations of poor and homeless people and the places they have inhabited throughout the century-long history of U.S. cinema. It moves beyond the merely descriptive to deliberate whether cinematic representations of homelessness and poverty changed over time, and if there are patterns to be discerned. Ultimately, the text offers a preliminary response to a handful of harder questions about causation and consequence: Why are these portrayals as they are? Where do they come from? Are they a reflection of American attitudes and policies toward marginalized populations, or do they help create them? What does this all mean for politics and policymaking? Of interest to movie buffs and film scholars, cultural critics and historians, policy analysts, and those curious to know more about homelessness and American poverty, Ghettoes, Tramps, and Welfare Queens is a unique window into American politics, history, policy, and culture -- it is an entertaining and enlightening journey.

About the Author
Stephen Pimpare, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of two previous books, A People's History of Poverty in America (2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association, and The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics & Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (2004). After thirty years in New York City, he now lives in rural New Hampshire with his husband, two goats, two pigs, twelve chickens, and six turkeys.

Reviews
In utilizing film to challenge our understanding of poverty, Pimpare pro vides an accessible text for retraining our thinking about poverty and unraveling widespread fallacies. Threaded throughout the book is a discussion of how race and gender are intricately bound up with any true discussion of poverty. ... the reader will gain a much more thorough understanding of the role we all play in the cycles of poverty. * Melanie Lynn Carlson, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare *
Stephen Pimpare's Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens is a unique jaunt through Hollywood films that feature society's most marginalized and maligned, the homeless and the poor....his insightful examination of the way film (re)presents the poor and homeless is a valuable addition to both political science and cinema scholarship. Overall, Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens is a perceptive look at the intersections of popular imagery and public policy. * Debbie Olson, PhD, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy *
This solidly researched volume, well illustrated and jauntily written, is a work of great originality that should attract a large audience of film scholars, social historians, social scientists, and welfare policy specialists, as well as film aficionados. * Kenneth L. Kusmer, Professor of History at Temple University, Journal of American History *
. . . its greatest strength is the author's desire not to segregate films from their audiences or their makers. This makes for a book that reflects deeply held beliefs about those less fortunate. Pimpare's conclusion offers separate lessons for filmgoers, filmmakers, policy makers, and journalists - a strong way to end the volume . . . Highly recommended. All readers. * G. R. Butters Jr., CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190660727
Author Stephen Pimpare
Format Hardback
Page Count 372
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 676g
Dimensions(mm) 165mm * 239mm * 28mm