Michael Ryan (ed.), Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Maiden, Ma And Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. ￡24.99.1352 Pp

摘要

doorstopper anthologies, but this one is twice the length of such predecessors as Simon During's The Cultural Studies Reader or Media and Cultural Studies Key works, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner. Yet what is puzzling about Michael Ryan's anthology is the reason for its existence. It certainly contains a wealth of material, and this will undoubtedly make it a widely used teaching resource, but quite why this material has been collected, and why it has been organized in the way it has, is simply not explained. We have sections covering such general categories as place and space, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, music, media and so on, but nowhere is any rationale offered for these. All we have at the start of this enormous collection of essays is a five-page preface by the editor, which reads as if it derives from a set of first year undergraduate introductory lecture notes.