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Author Meaghan Morris asks how feminist culture critics can participate in political struggles about history. Questioning both contemporary cultural theory that imagines a world "beyond" history and feminist approaches to culture that minimize questions of economy, class, and nation, Morris argues that history created by popular culture is never truly "national" in scale or force. 11 photos.
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Cultural studies has emerged as a major force in the analysis of cultural systems and their relation to social power. "Rather than being interested in television or architecture or pinball machines themselves - as industrial or aesthetic structures - cultural studies tends to be interested in the way such apparatuses work as points of concentration of social meaning, as 'media' (literally)", according to John Frow and Meaghan Morris. Here, two of Australia's leading cultural critics bring together work that represents a distinctive national tradition, moving between high theory and detailed readings of localized cultural practices. Ethnographic audience research, cultural policy studies, popular consumption, "bad" aboriginal art, landscape in feature films, style, form and history in TV miniseries, and the intersections of tourism with history and memory - these are among the topics addressed in a landmark volume that cuts across myriad traditional disciplines.
Trajectories brings together cultural theorists not only from countries with a known historical critical tradition such as America, Canada and Australia but from the East-Asia locations of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, India and Thailand. It constitutes a critical confrontation between the imperial and colonial co-ordinates of north and south, east and west. Without rejecting the Anglo-American practices of cultural studies, the contributors present critical cultural studies as an internationalist and decolonized project. Trajectories links critical energies together and charts future directions of the discipline. The contributors discuss subjects such as Japanese colonial discourse, cultural studies out of Europe, Chinese nationalism in the context of global capitalism, white panic, stories from East Timor, queer life in Taiwan and new social movements in Korea. The book ends with an interview with Stuart Hall.
"Meticulously attentive to the complex nuances and intricacies of what is too easily glossed as ′cross-cultural communication′, these essays offer us a unique, writerly perspective on what it takes, socially and textually, to reconcile the requirements of an effective shared discourse – cultural studies – with the intrinsic heterogeneity of our divergent glocal realities... an awesomely satisfying and enlightening read." - Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney How is identity produced in global ′textual environments′? What forms of narrative generate solidarity in a world in which globalization and trans-nationality can often appear to be a fait accompli? This brilliant, coruscat...
Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world's most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders? Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the uptake of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France and the US as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collective study examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema's popularity, and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema's influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.
Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society. Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams’ classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culture vultures everywhere. Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned and interdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists Showcases 142 signed entries – from art, commodity, and fundamentalism to youth, utopia, the virtual, and the West – that capture the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society Builds on and updates Raymond Williams’s classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last 25 years Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research and cross-referencing The book is supported by a website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.
Key Frames examines the encounter between film studies and cultural studies, and offers new ways of reading popular film.
Representation, subjectivity and sexuality continue to be central to scholarly inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Deciphering Culture explores their relationship, each author taking a distinct approach to the concept of 'curiosity' as a way of deciphering the working of particular cultural formations. In the process they address a variety of topics including: * the historical formation of subjectivities, identities and differences * cultural conduct and habits of the self * everyday cultures and negotiation * consumption and the body * memory, history and autobiography * the ethics of critical and textual inquiry. This fascinating book will appeal to students and academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences and cultural studies.
Nation, Culture, Text: Australian Cultural and Media Studies is the first collection of cultural studies from Australia, selected and introduced for an international readership. Participating in the `de-centring' of cultural studies - considering what perspectives other than the European and the American have to offer - the contributors raise important issues about the role of a national tradition of critical theory, and about the cultural specificity of theory itself. A key theme is the place of the postcolonial nation within contemporary cultural theory - particularly those aspects of contemporary theory which see the category of contemporary theory which see the category of the nation as either outdated or suspect. The writers tackle subjects ranging from the televising of the Bicentennial to the role of policy in film, television and the heritage industry, from the use of video technologies with remote Aboriginal communities to the role of ethnography in cultural studies.