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