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About the Book
About Reading Culture
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The original cultural studies reader, this essay collection is widely used for its provocative readings and images on relevant cultural issues and for its outstanding pedagogy.
Written by two respected composition theorists, Reading Culture truly makes use of cultural studies methods—from analyzing texts and historical documents to conducting fieldwork and mini-ethnographies. The first cultural studies reader to also address visual literacy, the text includes more than 100 images of posters, advertisements, photos, and art to accompany and illustrate the readings or as "Visual Essays" and "Visual Culture" segments that stand on their own. The fifth edition enhances that coverage with an appealing new four-color format and full-color art throughout the text. Helping students gain the necessary critical thinking skills to observe and analyze cultural phenomena, the opening chapter introduces reading and writing strategies and features a case study—new to this edition—that shows students how to "read" culture. Always up-to-date, this edition represents a significant revision with several new readings, themes, and visual images.
Features
- Readings touch on timely, noteworthy cultural issues: teenage violence and youth culture; fashion, advertising, and body image issues; public space and the land of shopping malls; the overworked and underpaid American worker, and rethinking historical icons and heroes.
- "Visual Culture" segments and "Visual Essays" present examples of commercial and public service ads, film stills, photos, public health messages, and signs in public places along with strategies for interpreting these images.
- Superior pedagogy includes contextual headnotes, suggestions for reading, writing and discussion—often in small groups—for each selection.
- "Mining the Archives" activities send students to historical archives, museums, and special collections to examine old newspapers, comic strips, government documents, and textbooks.
- "Fieldwork" sections ask students to do primary research via interviews, participant observation, questionnaires, and oral histories, and other forms of site-research.
- "Checking Out the Web" assignments encourage students to use the Internet for further research.
New to This Edition
- Now featuring a striking new four-color design, this edition adds "Visual Culture" and "Visual Essays" segments; numerous new assignments ask students to create their own visual compositions.
- Fifty-five new pieces are featured in this revision, including Arlie Russell Hochschild, Barbara Kantrowitz, Keith Naughton, Richard Porch, Judith Williamson, Naomi Klein, Tibor Kalman, Murphy Davis, Patricia A. Turner, Michael Chabon, and Chinua Achebe.
- An all new Chapter 1, "Reading the News," shows students how to "read" culture by presenting a short case study on the news media and its coverage of the September 11th attacks (formerly daytime talk shows).
- Most chapters now feature a "Classic Reading" written by one of the enduring voices in the study of culture, such as James Agee, Roland Barthes, Margaret Mead, Jane Jacobs, Robert Warshow, W.E.B. DuBois, and Allen Ginsberg.
- A new Chapter 10, "Living in a Postcolonial World," examines America from a global perspective and includes a new case study, "The Politics of World English," which considers the prevalence of English in the world community. (Formerly "Multicultural America.")
- "Perspectives" paired readings in every chapter offer differing views on several new controversial topics, including school vouchers, sweatshop economies, designer brands, and "Ground Zero: Commerce and Commemoration."
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