Reading Culture, 8th edition
Published by Pearson (November 1, 2011) © 2012
- Diana George
- John Trimbur Emerson College
Price Reduced From: $139.99
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A print text
Acclaimed for its compelling readings and provocative images, Reading Culture provides students with outstanding instruction on how to read and write critically about the culture that surrounds them.
Written by two highly respected composition theorists, Reading Culture asks students to examine how culture organizes social experiences and shapes our identities. From analyzing texts and historical documents to conducting fieldwork and mini-ethnographies, students are invited actively investigate culture using cultural studies methods. The first cultural studies reader to also address visual literacy, Reading Culture features a striking four-color format and includes visual and verbal texts of diverse genres, including more than 100 images of posters, advertisements, photos, and art. Always up-to-date, this edition represents a significant revision with new readings, features, and visual images to help students gain the necessary critical thinking skills to observe and analyze a broad range of cultural phenomena.
Chapter 1: From Page to Screen: Are New Media Rewiring Us?
Gunther Kress, from “Literacy in the New Media Age”
Exploratory Writing
Visual Essay: Word, Image, and the Design of the Page
Case Study: Are New Media Rewiring Us?
Andrew Lam, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am’“
Working with Texts: Using Lam’s Words
N. Katherine Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”
Underline/Highlight, Annotate, Summarize
Working with Texts: Framing the Issue
Making Connections: What Has Changed?
Sherry Turkle, “Always On”
Allison Gropnik, “Diagnosing the Digital Revolution: Why It’s So Hard to Tell Whether It’s Really Changing Us”
Looking Ahead
Sample Student Paper
Adam Horowitz, “TBD”
Chapter 2: Generations
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity”
The Pew Research Center Project on Social and Demographic Trends, “Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change”
David Sedaris, “Giant Dreams, Midget Abilities”
Nick Hornby, “Patti Smith: Pissing in a River”
Making Connections: Games People Play
Ethan Gilsdorf, “How ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Changed My Life”
Mary Elizabeth Williams, “’Dead Space 2: Your Mom Doesn’t Want You To Play This Video Game”
Visual Essay: Hollywood Icons: Brando, Monroe, and Dean
Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Casa”
Margaret Mead, “We Are All Third Generation”
Researching Generations
Fieldwork. Making Sense of My Music: Ethnographic Interviews - Susan D. Craft, Daniel Cavicchi, and Charles Keil, “My Music”
Looking Through Time: Designing a Print Photo Essay or Digital Video Essay on Life Magazine
Chapter 3: Schooling
Theodore R. Sizer, “What High School Is”
Diane Ravitch, “The Myth of Charter Schools”
Making Connections: The Value of a Higher Education
Rebekah Nathan, “Lessons from My Year as a Freshman”
Stanley Fish, “The Value of Higher Education Made Literal”
Visual Essay: Analyzing College Viewbooks
Min-Zhan Lu, “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle”
June Jordan, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan”
Researching Schooling
Fieldwork. Investigating Classroom Life: Participant Observation - Worth Anderson, Cynthia Best, Alycia Black, John Hurst, Brandt Miller, and Susan Miller, “Observations and Conclusions from ‘Cross-Curricular Underlife: A Collaborative Report on Ways with Academic Words’”
Student Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: Combining Word and Image in an Illustrated Essay
Chapter 4: Images
Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, “In the Shadow of the Image”
Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, “When You Meet Estella Smart, You Been Met!”
Khaled Mattawa, “History of My Face”
Making Connections: Images of Gender
John Berger, “Ways of Seeing”
Richard Leppert, “The Female Nude: Surfaces of Desire”
Visual Essay: Reading the Gaze: Gender Roles in Advertising
Visual Essay: Turning the Tables: Women in the Ring
Delilah Montoya, “Women Boxers: The New Warriors”
Visual Essay: Rewriting the Image
Researching Images
Public Health Messages: Creating a Public Service Announcement - Visual Essay: Posters from the Past and Present
Advertising through the Ages: Preparing a Digital Visual Presentation
Chapter 5: Style
Dick Hebdige, “Style in Revolt: Revolting Style”
Douglas Haddow, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization”
Bakari Kitwana, “Rap and the Cotton Club”
Visual Essay: Hip-Hop Styles
Ariel Levy, “Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture”
Visual Essay: Reading Labels, Selling Water
Mark Greif, “Against Exercise”
Visual Essay: Timeline on Fitness from Jack LaLanne to Michelle Obama
Making Connections: Geek Culture
David Brooks, “The Alpha Geeks”
Benjamin Nugent, “Who’s a Nerd, Anyway”
Adam Rogers, “Geek Love”
Researching Style
Race and Branding: Writing a Wikipedia Entry
Music Anthologies: Making a Mix and Writing Liner Notes
Chapter 6: Public Space
Tina McElroy Ansa, “The Center of the Universe”
Barry Lopez, “Caring for the Woods”
John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power, and Resistance”
Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Public Space”
Jay Walljasper, “From Middle East to Madison, Justice Depends on Public Spaces: What happens when people have no place to gather as citizens?”
Making Connections: Free to All — Public Libraries and the Question of Access
Marc Fisher, “D.C. Libraries: Homeless Shelters No More?”
Kathryn Baer, “D.C. Public Library Moves to Restrict Access by Homeless People”
Eva Sperling Cockroft and Holly Barnet Sánchez, “Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals,”
Visual Essay: Banksy — “The Most Honest Artform Available”
Visual Essay: “Cancer Alley: The Poisoning of the American South,” Jason Berry, with photographs by Richard Misrach
Researching Public Space
Fieldwork. Examining How People Use Public Space: Observation and Mapping
Walking Tours: Making a Brochure and Audio Guide
Chapter 7: Storytelling
Nikki Giovanni, “On the Edge of Comfort”
Michael Chabon, “Amateur Family”
Making Connections: Urban Legends
Jan Harold Brunvand, “’The Hook’ and Other Teenage Horrors”
Patricia A. Turner, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”
Making Connections: Film Reviews — The Case of Social Network
Roger Ebert, “The Social Network: Calls Him an Asshole, Makes Him a Billionaire”
David Denby, “Influencing People”
Visual Essay: The Graphic Novel
Marjane Satrapi, “The Veil”
Researching Storytelling
Fieldwork. Understanding Fandom and Fan Fiction: Semi-Structured Interviews and Audio Stories
Searching for Other Heroes: Proposing a New Comic Book Character and Storyline - John Jennings and Damian Duffy, “Finding Other Heroes”
Chapter 8: Work
Sandra Cisneros, “The First Job”
Tillie Olson, “I Stand Here Ironing”
Martín Espad,a “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100”
Visual Essay: Working-Class Heroes
Dulce Pinzón, “The Real Story of Superheroes”
Bob Hicok, “Calling Him Back from Layoff”
Making Connections: Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector
Paul Krugman, “Wisconsin Power Play”
David Brooks, “Make Everybody Hurt”
Steven Greenhouse, “Worked and Overworked”
Researching Work
Fieldwork. Reconstructing the Network of a Workplace
James P. Spradley and Brenda J. Mann, “The Cocktail Waitress”
Designing a Website: The Triangle Factory Fire
Chapter 9: History
Mary Gordon, “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island”
Visual Essay: Mary Gordon, “The History of Labor in the State of Maine”
Jane Tompkins “’Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History”
Christopher Phillips, “Necessary Fiction: Warren Neidich’s Early American Cover-Ups”
Visual Essay: Warren Neidich, “Contra Curtis: Early American Cover-Ups”
Making Connections: Two Speeches on Racism in the United States
Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union”
Researching History
Fieldwork. Writing History from Below: Oral History - Studs Turkel, “The Good War”
Photographing American History: Designing a Museum Exhibit and Writing the Catalog - Alan Trachtenberg, “Reading American Photographs”, Visual Essay: American Photographs
Chapter 10: Living in a Transnational World
Making Connections: Colonized and Colonizer
Jamaica Kincaid, “Columbus in Chains”
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”
Jeff Chang, “News from Nowhere”
Visual Essay: M.I.A.’s Graphic Style
Amitava Kumar, “Passport Photos”
Kennedy Odede, “Slumdog Tourism”
Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”
Visual Essay: Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Pena’s “Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West.” Samuel Fosso’s “Le chef qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons.” Wang Quingson’s “Requesting Buddha Series No. 1.”
Researching Life in a Transnational World
Banning Burqas and Headscarves in France: Planning a Roundtable Discussion
Global Justice Movements: Designing Your Own Research Project
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