This volume brings together sixteen essays on key and intersecting topics in critical cultural studies from major scholars in the field. Taking into account the vicissitudes of political, social, and cultural issues, the contributors engage deeply with the evolving understanding of critical concepts such as history, community, culture, identity, politics, ethics, globalization, and technology. The essays address the extent to which these concepts have been useful to scholars, policy makers, and citizens, as well as the ways they must be rethought and reconsidered if they are to continue to be viable. Each essay considers what is known and understood about these concepts. The essays give particular attention to how relevant ideas, themes, and terms were developed, elaborated, and deployed in the work of James W. Carey, the "founding father" of cultural studies in the United States. The contributors map how these important concepts, including Carey's own work with them, have evolved over time and how these concepts intersect. The result is a coherent volume that redefines the still-emerging field of critical cultural studies. Contributors are Stuart Allan, Jack Zeljko Bratich, Clifford Christians, Norman Denzin, Mark Fackler, Robert Fortner, Lawrence Grossberg, Joli Jensen, Steve Jones, John Nerone, Lana Rakow, Quentin J. Schultze, Linda Steiner, Angharad N. Valdivia, Catherine Warren, Frederick Wasser, and Barbie Zelizer.| Cover Title Page Copyright Table of Contents Introduction: Working the Hyphen in Critical-Cultural Conversations Part I: Contexts History: Looking for the Subject of Communication History. Education: Critical Pedagogy Space: The Possibilities and Limits of the Conversation Model Religion: Faith in Cultural Studies Community: Community without Propinquity Part II: Culture Culture: James W. Carey and the Conversation of Culture Popular Culture: Asking the Right Questions Oral Culture: Oral Culture as Antidote to Terror and Ennui Ritual: The Dark Continent of Journalistic Ritual Identity: The Politics of Identity Work Part III: Consequences Professionalism: Journalism Without Professional Journalists? Politics: Media Power, Status Politics, and Partisanship Ethics: Communication Ethics in Postnarrative Terms The Public: Philosophical Foundations and Distortiaons in the Quest for Civitas Technology: The Digital Sublimation of the Electrical Sublime Globalization: Counterglobalization and Other Rituals Against Empire Epiloge: How Scholarship Matters Works Cited Editors and Contributors Index | "An unusually full and rich—and sometimes passionate—conversation on communication and culture, this volume offers a selection of illuminating and provocative responses to the life's work of James W. Carey."—Carolyn Kitch, author of Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines
"A creative approach to connecting key elements in a sometimes abstract field. Recommended for students and scholars of critical and cultural studies."—Lee Wilkins, coeditor of The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics
|Linda Steiner is a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland and the coauthor of Women and Journalism. Clifford Christians is Sandage Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and coauthor of Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies.