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Illuminating one of the most pervasive issues of our time, Popular Culture is the first book to link the importance and implications of popular culture with pedagogical practice. It shows how cultural forms such as Hollywood films, pop music, soap operas, and televangelism are organized by gender, age, class, race, and ethnicity, thus providing the contradictory text that both enables and disables emancipatory interest, so fundamental to the formation of self and society. What emerges is a redefinition of the very notion of popular culture.

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CHOICE Review

The editors have brought together leading radical sociologists, educators, and others to discuss working-class popular culture, critical pedagogy, and the possibilities of school-related social reconstruction. Whether the book succeeds in providing "the pedagogical grounds for radicalizing the emancipatory possibilities of teaching and learning," is "a discourse that represents a political as well as a pedagogical project." The overall tone is thoughtfully restrained, yet urgent--not stridently polemical as in conventional neo-Marxist tracts. This is a contribution to critical, normative, and interpretive educational scholarship. Interpretations of rock n' roll (e.g., Springsteen's work), television situation comedies ("The Honeymooners"), and, especially, Hollywood movies (Dirty Dancing) are most helpful in demonstrating the efficacy of popular culture. Quality of the writing ranges from jargonized critical theorizing to trenchant analyses of popular "art" (Paul Willis), televangelism (Peter McLaren and Richard Smith), "romance" programs on TV (Mimi White), and working-class life-style (Stanley Aronowitz). E.D. Hirsch Jr. (Cultural Literacy, CH, Jul'87) and Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind, CH, Sep'87) may have met their match in this strategically crafted case for the expansion of social democracy in postindustrial society. Copious chapter references and occasional photographs, and an index. Graduate level. S. W. Reitman California State University, Fresno

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Henry A. Giroux is the well-known author of numerous books and articles on society, education, and political culture. He is Waterbury Chair of Education at Pennsylvania State University and lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

(Bowker Author Biography)