Reading into Cultural Studies Book

Reading Into Cultural Studies presents an essential overview of a selection of texts crucial to the formation and development of cultural studies as a discipline. Each of the eleven essays in this collection renews an early study of one area of cultural investigation, bringing such seminal texts as Subculture by Dick Hebdige, Loving With a Vengence by Tania Modleski and Bond and Beyond by Tony Bennett back to the center of attention. The essays included are not simply celebratory. Each study is critically examined in a number of ways, for its research strategy, the implicit theories of power and ideology, for the empirical evidence it draws on and its conceptual framework. But most importantly, the contributors draw attention to the potential for action and change contained within these studies which was, until now, in danger of being forgotten. Reading Into Cultural Studies challenges a new ``tradition'' in the teaching of cultural studies in which issues of audience power and the celebration of ordinary culture are in danger of marginalizing those of power and ideology: issues such as youth and the politics of subcultures, television and its power over audiences, news as ideology and romance and its relation to gender. This collection re-addresses these texts in the context of contemporary cultural studies teaching, and provides students with an essential grounding in the theory of cultural studies.Read More