In the introduction to Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, (ed. Mukerji and Schudson, 1991, Berkeley) the editors state: "In this period of rethinking, 'popular culture' is a difficult term to define. We will sidestep a great many terminological disputes with the inclusive claim that popular culture refers to the beliefs and practices, and the objects through which they are organized, that are widely shared among a population. This includes folk beliefs, practices and objects rooted in local traditions, and mass beliefs, practices and objects generated in political and commercial centers. It includes elite cultural forms that have been popularized as well as popular forms that have been elevated to the museum tradition. In this way, we capture some of the subtleties of new cultural theories and can help convey the array of studies that have made traditional conceptions of popular culture untenable" (3). While the editors go on to explain that "studies of popular culture today are creating a truly intercisciplinary literature" (and this was published 17 years ago) the editors suggest that "no single discipline has or will ever have a monopoly on the study of popular culture; no discipline represents the 'best approach.' Each sees a different part of the elephant" (4). What caught my eye in this text's introduction was the editors' query as to how one determines what "qualifies." They offer this... "our questions are not about what human phenomena merit study but about the theoretical sophistiation of the approach to their study. Some may ask if baseball cards are as valuable for study as The Scarlet Letter....which students are to be judged more culturally literature - those who can identify Hester Prynne but not Babe Ruth or those who can identify Jackie Robinson but not Arthur Dimmesdale....What matters...is that a student pf popular culture, as opposed to an enthusiastic fan of it or a hands-over-the-ears critic of it, should have good questions to ask. To date, the most sophisticated and fruitful questions have come from scholars using theoretical positions developed in anthropology, sociology, history, and literary studies" (6).
This little example made me chuckle. When I returned to the h.s. classroom after over a dozen years of post-secondary teaching, I began pulling terms from Hirsch's cultural literary list and teaching them to students (as they applied to whatever unit of study we happened to be covering.) I knew that the list was criticized for being non-inclusive, but I found I could be selective and make adaptations. In 2005, when Hirsch came to the T.C. to speak at a college graduation which I attended, imagine my surprise! While I can honor the complaints about the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, I can also speak from firsthand classroom experience about the inability of high school students in American classrooms to recognize many of the allusions which they encounter in the writings of "popular culture." Am I off subject? I hope not.
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This text includes an essay by Bourdieu entitled "Sport and Social Class," and an essay by Foucault entitled "What Is an Author?" In addition, it includes essays about cockfighting,
jokes, the "movie of the week," and "William Shakespeare and the American people," - all of which I'd like to return to later - if time permits.
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Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Mukerji, Chandra and Michael Schudson, editors. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
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