Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing, 6/E
Diana George, Virginia Tech University
John Trimbur, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

ISBN-10: 0321391691
ISBN-13: 9780321391698

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2007
Format: Paper; 608 pp
Published: 02/06/2006

Suggested retail price: $68.67
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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  From analyzing texts and historical documents to conducting fieldwork and mini-ethnographies, students are invited actively investigate culture using cultural studies methods.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 more than 100 images of posters, advertisements, photos, and art to accompany and illustrate the readings or as “Visual Essays” and “Visual Culture” segments that stand on their own. 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.

  • Readings examine timely, noteworthy cultural issues: the news media, youth culture, gender, films,, fashion and advertising, race and ethnicity, theme parties, public spaces, memoir and storytelling, the evils of PowerPoint, the overworked and underpaid American worker, and  working in a global economy..
  • “Visual Culture” and “Visual Essay” segments present a wide variety of topics including examples of commercial and public service ads,, America’s car culture, public health messages, posters, photos of a  troubled landscape, youth culture in movies, and graphic design in rock culture.  Numerous new assignments ask students to create their own visual compositions.
  • Superior pedagogy gives students analytical tools to think and write critically about the readings, images, and ideas presented in the text.  Through the chapter introductions, contextual headnotes, suggestions for reading, writing, and discussion, students are asked to identify the purposes and assumptions writers bring to their works and the rhetorical patterns they use to enact those aims.
  • “Reading the News” (Ch. 1) gives students techniques and strategies for analyzing the news and visual media by examining the front pages of newspapers, scripts of television newscasts as well as by examining a case study on the news media and its coverage of the Iraq invasion and occupation.
  • “Perspectives” are  paired readings in every chapter that  offer differing views on controversial topics such as the “new momism,” the gender gap in science education, sweatshop economies, designer brands, the themes in  George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, and the influence of Bob Marley, reggae, and rastas.
  • “Mining the Archives” activities send students to historical archives, museums, and special collections to examine old newspapers, comic strips, government documents, and textbooks.
  • “Fieldwork sections” ask students to do primary research via interviews, participant observation, questionnaires, and oral histories, and other forms of site-research.
  •  “Classic Reading” sections in most chapters give students a perspective on how the issues raised in the chapter has been written about in the past by men and women whose thinking continues to be influential  including James Agee, Roland Barthes, Margaret Mead, Jane Jacobs, Robert Warshow, W.E.B. DuBois, and Tillie Olson.

  • Over fifty (50) new selections are featured in this revision, including authors like Frank Rich, Susan J. Douglas, Edward R. Tufte, Katha Pollitt, Christina Hoff Sommers, Rudolfo Anaya, Thomas J. Friedman, Patricia Hempl, Martin Espada, Robert Palmer, and Anthony Bogues, as well as graphic novelists Joe Sacco and Marjane Satrapi.
  • A Guide to Visual Analysis has been added to provide a brief introduction to the kinds of questions students and teachers can bring to the analysis of visual communication and offers a comprehensive list of the concepts and tools of analysis for the study of visual culture.
  • A new Wired Culture feature focuses on digital media and how new means of communication such as blogs, instant messaging, cell phones, iPods, and video games are changing the way people work and play.  Each chapter now includes a reading about digital culture to investigate the immediacy, interactivity, and connectivity of new media, the increasingly blurry distinction between the virtual and the real, and the use of electronic communication in outsourcing jobs and forming anti-globalization networks.
  • Anew Film Clips feature has been designed to help teachers and students examine films in detail, providing discussion of several film genres such as documentary, Western, and Bollywood movies.  Many aspects of the film-making industry are explored, including storyboarding, set design, costumes, screenplays and the Hollywood star system.
  • “Living in a Postcolonial World” (CH. 10) has been thoroughly revised to help students think about culture in an age of globalization.

Readings and content new to this edition are marked with an *

 

Introduction: Reading Culture

Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary” 

            * A Guide to Visual Analysis

            * Reading Images

            * Reading Film

 

1. Reading the News

Where Do People Get their News?

* ”Young America’s News Source: Jon Stewart”

            Audience Survey

* Reading Visual Displays of Information

Reading Television News 

            Terms to Keep in Mind as you Read Television News 

Analyzing Content and Audience In Television News 

            Analyzing Visual and Verbal Codes 

Reading Newspapers 

            The Look of the Front Page: Analyzing Visual Design 

            Continuing News: Covering a Story 

Reading About the News–Reporting War 

            * The New York Times Editors, “The Times and Iraq”

            * Amy Goodman and David Goodman, “Un-Embed the Media” 

            * Aaron Barnhart, “Embedded Journalists offer Riveting Reporting”

            * Joe Sacco, Complacency Kills

            * WIRED CULTURE: Reporting War in the Blogosphere

* Reading Websites

* Frank Rich, “The Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun”        

Writing About the News 

Conclusion 

2. Generations

Gloria Naylor, “Kiswana Browne” 

Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity”

Thomas Hine, “Goths in Tomorrowland”   

* Sharon Jayson, “It’s Time to Grow Up–Later”

* Margaret Morganroth Gullette, “Trapped in Decline Culture”

* WIRED CULTURE: Instant Messaging

* Conor Boyland, “Confessions of an Instant Messenger” 

* Perspectives:

            * The New Momism: An Interview with Susan J. Douglas by Amy Reiter

* Mommy Madness: An Interview with Judith Warner by Katy Read 

* Classic Reading

Margaret Mead, “We are All Third Generation” 

Visual Culture: Representations of Youth Culture in Movies 

            James Gilbert, “Juvenile Delinquency Films”

* FILM CLIP: Hollywood Stars: Brando, Dean, and Monroe

Fieldwork: Ethnographic Interviews 

            Susan D. Craft, Daniel Cavicchi, and Charles Keil, “My Music”

            Fieldwork Project 

            A Note on Interviewing 

Mining the Archive: Life Magazine 

3. Schooling   

Theodore R. Sizer, “What High School Is” 

Leon Botstein, “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood” 

Mike Rose, “Crossing Boundaries”

* Thinking About Textbooks: Sex Education

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”

* WIRED CULTURE: Powerpoint

            * Edward R. Tufte, “PowerPoint Is Evil”

Perspectives: Gender Gap 

            * Lawrence Summers’ Remarks at the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce (Web link)

            * Katha Pollitt, “Summers of Our Discontent” 

            * Christina Hoff Sommers, “Where Do Boys Fit In?” 

Classic Reading

            Lisa Delpit, “Skills and Other Dilemmas of a Progressive Black Educator” 

Visual Culture: Picturing Schooldays 

FILM CLIP: Reading and Writing About Film: Reviews, Histories, Criticism

Fieldwork: Classroom Observation 

            Field Log  

            Analysis 

            Writing the Report 

            Worth Anderson, et al., Observations and Conclusions from “Cross-Curricular Underlife: A Collaborative Report on Ways with Academic Words” 

Mining the Archives: Textbooks from the Past

4. Images        

Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen, “In the Shadow of the Image”

            * Suggestions for Reading Advertising

* Michael Jacobson and Laurie Anne Mazur, “The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women”

* Visual Essay: Reading the Gaze: Gender in Advertising

* Visual Essay: Rewriting the Image 

Visual Essay: Public Health Messages 

            * Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, “When you Meet Estella Smart, You Been Met!”

* WIRED CULTURE: Photographic Truth in a Digital Age

            * Brian Bergstein “Digital Photography Poses Thorny Issues for Justice System

Classic Reading

            James Agee, “A Way of Seeing: An Introduction to the Photographs of Helen Levitt”

* FILM CLIP: Storyboarding: Editing and Camera Work

* Fieldwork: Taking Inventory 

Mining the Archive: Advertising Through the Ages 

5. Style           

Dick Hebdige, “Style in Revolt: Revolting Style” 

* Visual Essay: Graphic Design in Rock Culture 

* Theme Parties

            * Mark Lawson, “The Very Nasty Party”

            * Shana Pearlman, “Mistaken Identity: The Peril of Theme Parties”

            * Gregg Easterbrook, “The Axle of Evil”

* Visual Essay: American Car Culture

Visual Essay: Tibor Kalman, “Sweet-Talking Spaghetti Sauce: How to Read a Label”

* WIRED CULTURE: iPods

* Rob Walker, “Aura”

* Andrew Sullivan, “Society Is Dead: We Have Retreated into the iWorld”

Perspectives: Branding 

            Naomi Klein, “No Logo”

The Economist, “Who’s Wearing the Trousers?” 

Classic Reading

            * Roland Barthes, “The Face of Garbo”

* FILM CLIP: Makeup and Costumes: Monsters and the Middle Ages

Mining the Archive: Race and Branding 

6. Public Space          

* Tina McElroy Ansa, “The Center of the Universe”

John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power, and Resistance” 

Murphy Davis, “Woodruff Park and the Search for Common Ground” 

Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sánchez, “Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals”

* WIRED CULTURE: Cell Phone Spaces

            * Annie Nakao, “Cell Phone Etiquette: Shut up, Already!” 

* Perspectives: Public Roadsides. Private Grief–Roadside memorials and Public Policy 

            * L. Anne Newell, “Roadside Crosses: Centuries-Old Tradition Can Stir Controversy”

            * Jeff Burlew, “Memorials Cause Controversy” 

Classic Reading

            Jane Jacobs, “The Uses of Sidewalks–Safety” 

* Visual Culture:The Troubled Landscape            

            * Jason Berry and Richard Misrach, “Cancer Alley”

* FILM CLIP: Filming Dystopia

Fieldwork:Uses of Public Space: A Place to Rest 

            Mapping the Space 

            Watching People 

Mining the Archives: Take a Walking Tour 

7. Storytelling 

* Patricia Hampl, “Red Sky in the Morning”

Jan Harold Brunvand, “‘The Hook’ and Other Teenage Horrors”

Patricia A. Turner, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

Michael Chabon, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” 

* WIRED CULTURE: Video Games and Storytelling

* Tom Loftus, “Bringing Emotions to Video Games”

* Perspectives: Film Reviews: The Case of Spider-Man 2 

* Todd Gilchrist, “Spider-Man 2” from FilmStew.com

* Roger Ebert, “Spider-Man 2 

Classic Reading

            Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”

* Visual Culture: The Graphic Novel–Reader Participation 

            * Marjane Satrapi, “The Veil,” from Persepone

* FILM CLIP: Book to Film–The Adaptation

Fieldwork:Writing a Questionnaire 

            Suggestions for Designing a Questionnaire 

            Sample Questionnaire 

            Report on Your Findings 

Mining the Archive:Comic Strips and Comic Books 

8. Work           

Sandra Cisneros, “The First Job

* Martín Espada, “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 400”

Scott Adams, “The Dilbert Principle”

Barbara Ehrenreich, “Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” 

* WIRED CULTURE: Business in Bangalore

* Thomas L. Friedman, “The Great Indian Dream”

* David Moberg, “Hi-Tech Hijack: Corporations Ramp up Offshoring of IT Service Jobs”

Perspectives:Sweatshop Economy 

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops” 

            Tom Hayden and Charles Kernaghan, “Pennies an Hour and No Way Up”

Classic Reading

            Tillie Olson, “I Stand Here Ironing” 

* Visual Culture: Reading Documentary Photography

            * Charles Bowden, “Cameras of Dirt”

* FILM CLIP: Film Documentary and the Narrator 

Fieldwork: Reconstructing the Network of a Workplace 

James P. Spradley and Brenda J. Mann, “The Cocktail Waitress”

            Fieldwork Project 

            Background 

            Analysis: Reconstructing the Social Network of the Workplace 

            Conclusion 

Mining the Archive:Lewis Hine and the Social Uses of Photography 

9. History

Mary Gordon, “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island” 

* Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “October 12, 1492”

Jane Tompkins, “‘Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” 

Christopher Phillips, “Necessary Fictions: Warren Neidich’s Early American Cover-Ups” 

Visual Essay: Warren Neidich, “Contra Curtis: Early American Cover-Ups”

Loren Baritz, “God’s Country and American Know-How” 

* Niall Ferguson, “The Empire Slinks Back”

* WIRED CULTURE: Virtual and Real

* Marita Sturken, “The Television Image: The Immediate and the Virtual”

* Perspectives: George W. Bush’s Second Inaugural Address

            * The Inaugural Address

            * Peggy Noonan, “Way Too Much God: Was the President’s Speech a Case of ‘Mission Inebriation’?”

            * Tristram Hunt, “Historians in Cahoots”

Classic Reading

            * Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” 

Visual Culture: Photographing History 

            Alan Trachtenberg, “Reading American Photographs” 

* Visual Essay: Iraq Invasion and Occupation 

* FILM CLIP: Film Genres, The Western

Fieldwork: Oral History 

            * Studs Terkel, “Dennis Keagan,” “Yuriko Hohri,” and “Paul Piscano” from “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two

            Considerations in Doing an Oral History 

Mining the Archive: Local Museums and Historical Societies 

10. Living in a Postcolonial World

Classroom Scenes

* Jamaica Kincaid, “Columbus in Chains”

* Suresh Canagarajah, “An English Lesson in Sri Lanka”

* Visual Essay: Samuel Fosso, Self Portraits

Amitava Kumar, “Passport Photos” 

Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” 

* Laura Auricchio, “Works in Translation: Ghada Amer’s Hybrid Pleasures””

* WIRED CULTURE: Transnational Networks 

            * World Social Forum, “Call From Social Movements” 

* Perspectives: Bob Marley, Reggae, and Rasats 

            * Anthony Bogues, “Get Up, Stand Up: The Redemptive Poetics of Bob Marley”

            * Robert Palmer, “One Love”

Classic Reading

            W.E.B. DuBois, “The Souls of Our Striving”

* FILM CLIP: Film Genres--Bollywood

Visual Culture: Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Postcolonial Representation

Mining the Archive: Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Painting

For First-Year Composition - Reader


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