CELEBRITY CULTURE READINGS

The rise of contemporary celebrity culture. For Thursday, read:

1) David Samuels: Shooting Britney. From The Atlantic, April 2008.

2) Andrew Lavalee: The Rise of the 'Citizen Paparazzi'. From The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2008.

3) Rebecca Traister: Who the hell are Heidi and Spencer?. From Salon.com, March 20, 2008.

The impact on society. For next Tuesday, read:

TBA

READING FOR SATC

For our discussion of SATC, I'm assigning this reading by Diane Negra: "Quality Postfeminism?" . Please have it read by class on Thursday.

TWO NEW READINGS: ONE FOR CLASS, ONE OPTIONAL

1) For week 12, the reading assigned is Everett Rogers' "Elements of Diffusion."

2) That reading on changing malls is here.

FIRST WEEK RESOURCES

1) For the syllabus, click here.

2) For Thursday, please read the following:

Cullen: Introduction to Popular Culture

Harrington and Bielby: Constructing the Popular

3) Please remember that all students wishing to take this course need to fill out, print and turn in the Academic Honesty Contract.

UPCOMING READINGS, WEEKS 8-10

These readings cover material for the next three weeks of class:

• Starr and Waterman: "The Minstrel Show"
  
• Cullen: "Moving Images"
  
• Strinati: "Film Noir"

LEBLANC AND BEST READINGS

I re-upped the LeBlanc reading and tried to DL it myself; should be no problems.

Here is the Amy Best article, "Cruising Slow and Low."

This reading is from both the Best and LeBlanc readings - the two selections focus on the research methods used by both authors.

BECKER AND GLADWELL READINGS

These are the two readings for week 5:
Howard Becker: Art as Collective Action
Malcolm Gladwell: Rumors, Sneakers and the Power of Translation

KELLEY AND LEBLANC READINGS

These are the readings for next Thursday and the Tuesday after that, respectively:

Robin Kelley: Kickin' Ballistics, Kickin' Reality

Lauraine LeBlanc: "I'll Put On My Lipstick Then Kick Their Ass."

CURRENT READINGS

For some reason, the documents I uploaded to E-Reserves (and which were approved) are not showing up in the system.

For the sake of making things simpler, I'll upload documents to both there and here so you will always be able to find them here.

Adorno: On Popular Music

Henslin: On Becoming Male

Sivulka: Targeting Women

ADORNO READING

The reading for next Tuesday, Adorno's "On Popular Music" is available through the Erserves system for the class. The password is "soc490".

Questions to keep in mind:

1) What does Adorno think is the relationship b/t the culture industry and the consumer?

2) What do you think he gets "right" and what he gets "wrong"?

3) How can Adorno's ideas apply to contemporary times, more than half a century later?