Mass Culture and Everyday Life

Mass Culture and Everyday Lifeis a collection of lively work fromTabloid, a small but seminal journal that emerged during the first wave of cultural studies interest in North America. The book offers a clarifying overview of the development of critical practices in one of the most vital new academic fields--the study of mass culture as it transforms "everyday life." Contributors provide a detailed, concrete survey of a wide range of the mass culture phenomena that have defined our everyday lives in recent years: from baseball cards to college curricula; from Reagan's body and Hillary's hairdo to tampons, exercise fads and fashion trends; from soaps to opera to rythmn and blues; from horror movies to the inter-relation of cats, pigs and mothers inBabe. While many of the essays included are taken directly from the pages ofTabloid, there are also many updated and expanded versions of the journal's cutting edge work. Of special note are ground-breakingessays on: the boom of talk radio and talk TV and the implications of such "airwave dialogue" as a new forum for public discourse; shopping mall spaces adn new modes of shopping as cinematic spectacle; how "everday life" in the university community has become a key battleground in America's ongoing "culture wars." This anthology brings together work by many of the leading theorists in the field, whose writings over the past decade helped to inaugurate the development of cultural studies in North America and continue to set the terms for current debates. The direct, accessible, and refreshingly personal work speak not only to an academic audience, but to a wide general readership. Contributors include Rey Chow, Jean Franco, Tania Modleski, Dana Polan, Mary Louise Pratt and Renato Rosaldo.