In her book, Roeder explores McCay’s interest in dream imagery in relation to the larger societal preoccupation with fantasy that dominated the popular culture of early twentieth century urban America. The book connects McCay's work to relevant children's literature, advertising, architecture, and motion pictures in order to demonstrate the artist’s sophisticated blending and remixing of multiple mass cultural forms.
Studying this interconnection in McCay's work and, by extension, the work of other early twentieth-century cartoonists, Roeder traces the web of relationships connecting fantasy, leisure, and consumption. Readings of McCay's drawings and the eighty-one black and white and color illustrations reveal a man who was both a ready participant and an incisive critic of the rising culture of fantasy and consumerism.
The Rollins Award serves to recognize leaders of emergent trends and innovative scholarship in the fields of popular and American culture.
Last year, Hip Hop on Film: Performance Culture,Urban Space, and Genre Transformation in the 1980s, written by Kimberley Monteyne was recognized in the category of Film and Television. And Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature, written by Philip Nel was the winning volume in the Sequential Art/Comics and Animation Studies category. In 2010, A Comics Studies Reader was named the Rollins Award winner by the SWPACA.
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