bell hooks: A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory

bell hooks’ writings have been touchstones for major debates in the «culture wars», fostering insight into many central questions in communication studies. Her work is vital to students and scholars who explore the ways in which media shape our sense of our selves, our roles, and those with whom we interact. This book provides readers with a measured, contextualized introduction to how hooks’ writings on media and culture enhance our understanding of key concepts in communication. hooks’ insistence on focusing our attention on the workings of power and the impact of history and her willingness to explore connections between individual and group experiences have produced provocative, fruitful conjectures about media and culture.

Catherine R. Squires (PhD, Northwestern University) is the inaugural John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity, and Equality at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Dispatches from the Color Line (2007) and African Americans and the Media (2009) and co-editor of The Obama Effect: Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008 Campaign (2010). She has published articles on media and identity in many journals, including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Theory, and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics