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Popular Culture
A Reader

Edited by:


March 2005 | 560 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
"The selection of essays here is outstanding. The Reader is particularly strong in bridging between founding figures and cutting edge work by newer writers."
- Henry Jenkins, MIT

"An extraordinarily well considered selection of articles and essays, arranged with skill and style."
- Charlie Blake, University College Northampton

Popular Culture: A Reader
helps students understand the pervasive role of popular culture and the processes that constitute it as a product of industry, an intellectual object of inquiry and an integral component of all our lives.

The volume is divided into 7 thematic sections, and each section is preceded by an introduction which engages with, and critiques, the chapters that follow. The book contains:

  • Classic writings from all the 'big names' including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Frederic Jameson, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy and many more.
  • Contemporary cultural references throughout - this is not simply an historical account.
  • Pieces drawing on diverse national, disciplinary and subdisciplinary contexts.
  • Sensitivity to issues of gender, race and sexuality.

This reader is a key resource for students of media and communication studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of the media.

Omayra Cruz & Raiford Guins
Entangling the Popular: An Introduction to Popular Culture
 
Part I: Delineating: Culture-Mass-Popular
Raymond Williams
'Culture' and 'Masses'
F R Leavis
Mass Civilization and Minority Culture
Dwight Macdonald
A Theory of Mass Culture
Tania Modleski
Femininity as Mas[s]querade: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture
Morag Shiach
The Popular
Stuart Hall
Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'
Juan Flores
'Pueblo Pueblo': Popular Culture in Time
 
Part II: Commodifying: The Commodity, Culture and Social Life
Karl Marx
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof
Walter Benjamin
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Theodor W Adorno
Culture Industry Reconsidered
Guy Debord
The Commodity as Spectacle
Fredric Jameson
Reification And Utopia in Mass Culture
Lisa Lowe & David Lloyd
Introduction to The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Late Capital
 
Part III: Marketing: Socio-Economic Considerations of Popular Culture
Paul Smith
Tommy Hilfiger in the Age of Mass Customization
Ellis Cashmore
America's Paradox
Inderpal Grewal
Traveling Barbie: Indian Transnationality and New Consumer Culture
Janet Wasko
Corporate Disney in Action
Henry Yu
How Tiger Lost His Stripes: Post-Nationalist American Studies as a History of Race, Migration, and the Commodification of Culture
 
Part IV: Practicing: Popular Tastes & Ways of Consuming
John Fiske
Popular Discrimination
Laura Kipnis
(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler
Paul Willis
Symbolic Creativity
Henry Jenkins
Star Trek: Rerun, Reread, Rewritten - Fan Writing as Textual Poaching
Joan Hawkins
Sleaze Mania, Euro-Trash, and High Art: The Place of European Art Films in American Low Culture
 
Part V: Voicing: Identities and Articulation
Stuart Hall
What is this 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?
Gayatri Gopinath
Bombay, U.K., Yuba City: Bhangra Music and the Engendering of Diaspora
Lauren Berlant
The Face of America and the State of Emergency
Jose Esteban Munoz
Pedro Zamora's Real World of Counterpublicity: Performing an Ethics of the Self
Richard Fung
Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn
 
Part VI: Styling: Subculture and Popular Performance
Dick Hebdige
Subculture
Angela McRobbie
Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket
Sarah Thornton
The Media Development of 'Subcultures' (Or the Sensational Story of Acid House)
Tricia Rose
A Style Nobody Can Deal With: Politics, style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop
Cynthia Fuchs
If I Had a Dick: Queers, Punks, and Alternative Acts
Judith Halberstam
Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance
 
Part VII: Locating: Space, Place, and Power
Michel de Certeau
Walking in the City
Michael Nevin Willard
Seance, Tricknowlogy, Skateboarding, and the Space of Youth
Victor Hugo Viesca
Straight Out the Barrio: Ozomatli and the Importance of Place in the Formation of Chicano/a Popular Culture in Los Angeles
Paul Gilroy
Wearing Your Art on Your Sleeve: Notes Towards a Diaspora History of Black Ephemera
George Lipsitz
Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Post-Clonial Politics of Sound
Lisa Nakamura
Head-Hunting on the Internet: Identity Tourism, Avatars, and Racial Passing in Textual and Graphic Chat Spaces

The selection of essays here is outstanding. The Reader is particularly strong in bridging between founding figures and cutting edge work by newer writers.

Henry Jenkins
MIT

This is an especially comprehensive collection. It includes a wide range of essential readings and organizes them in a skill-focused and learning-focused way. The result is a lively, original and useful Reader.

George Lipsitz
University of California, Santa Cruz

An extraordinarily well considered selection of articles and essays, arranged with skill and style.

Charlie Blake
University College Northampton

This is an excellent and comprehensive text dealing with major issues and trends pertaining to Pop Culture. I recommend this text for a course dealing with a comprehensive analysis or survey of PC. I would also recommend the text for graduate courses in the same vein.

Dwight Radcliff
Anthropology & Sociology, Vanguard Univ Of S California
March 7, 2019

Excellent for any student or module focusing on pop culture. Good detail and interesting content.

Mr Lewis Simpson
Department of Health & Social Studies, Grimsby Institute of HE & FE
June 16, 2015

I used a different book for this class: American Popular Music by Starr & Waterman. The reader is very good though.

Professor Robert Drew
Communication Theatre Dept, Saginaw Valley State University
April 24, 2010

For instructors

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ISBN: 9780761974727
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