DICTIONARY: M-R

M

Medicaid - a health plan for welfare recipients

Medicare - founded through Social Security payroll taxes. It is a health plan for workers over 65, whether retired or still unemployed

Megalith is a very large upright stone put in place by people in ancient times (e.g. Stonehenge)

Mercury - a project in 1962 by which John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the

Metafiction - self-conscious or reflexive fiction that calls attention to its own technique (“Fiction about fiction”). It emphasizes language and style, and departs from the conventions of realism. In metafiction, the writer's style attracts the reader's attention. The true subject is not the characters, but rather the writer's own consciousness

Misogyny - hatred or strong prejudice against women

Modern art - (the late 19th century – 1970s) refers to the then new approach to art which placed emphasis on representing emotions, themes, and various abstractions. The artists of the period started using unusual methods of painting as well as modern materials

Motown - a record label specializing in the musical genres of R&B, pop, soul music, and hip-hop music; the first record label owned by an African-American to become a widespread international success, played an important role in the integration of popular music

Mound Builder - a general term referring to the Native North American peoples who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential, and ceremonial purposes

N

National Organization for Women - an American feminist group founded in 1966 in Washington, working to achieve "full equality for women in truly equal partnership with men"

Native Americans -  had the worst housing, disease rates and education levels of any group in American society

New Frontier -  a term given to the Kennedy's program of domestic legislation. The program consisted of aid to public schools, federal investment in mass transportation, and medical insurance for elderly

New Journalism - volumes of nonfiction that combined journalism with techniques of fiction, or that frequently played with the facts, reshaping them to add to the drama and immediacy of the story being reported

New Left - A manifestation of the new sensibility of a group of young men and women who were civil rights and anti-war activists during the 1960s

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - the prohibition of  atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but not on the underground

P

Peace Corps - designed to assist developing countries in meeting their own needs

Projective verse - a verse which insists on an open form based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in writing

Psychedelic rock - a musical style that emerged in the 1960s; rock music inspired by or related to drug-induced experience

Psychedelics - drugs whose primary action is that of enhancing or amplifying the thought processes of the brain, such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin

R

Readymade - an object (produced in large quantities) ready to be used immediately (referring to Marcel Duschamp’s works of art)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - a museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, dedicated, as the name suggests, to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential rock and roll performers, producers, and other people who have influenced the industry in some major way

Roe vs. Wade - the Supreme Court case in 1973 that legalized abortion in the US