How do you teach cultural studies? Or, the uses of textbooks

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Notes

1. This unit, or at least a variant of it taught by Ruth Barcan, was discussed in her essay ‘The idleness of academics: Reflections on the usefulness of cultural studies’ (2003, 363–78). Ruth was particularly concerned with how students saw the usefulness of cultural studies – this was expressed in many ways by students, but they certainly affirmed the view that cultural studies gave them new conceptual understandings, a new way of thinking about the world.

2. There are two very good additions to the pile of cultural studies textbooks – Fran Martin's edited volume Interpreting Everyday Culture and the collection Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice, edited by Nicole Anderson and Katrina Schlunke (Martin 2004; Anderson and Schlunke 2008), but as a contributor to both I couldn't possibly mention these here!

3. See ‘High anxiety: Cultural studies and its uses’, a special issue of Continuum edited by Brett Farmer, Fran Martin and Audrey Yue (2003).

4. See Ruth Barcan, ‘Problems without solutions: Teaching theory and the politics of hope’ (2002, 343–56).