Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader

"This fine collection of perspectives and information will fill a major gap and help to push communication study in an urgently needed direction. Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike have much to gain from this text." --John Downing, Department of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas, Austin "This is a well-conceived and provocative collection that goes a long way toward filling a real void in available classroom textbooks. I have no doubt that it will provoke many hours of discussion and debate about the relations between contemporary media forms and the politics of identity and difference." --Larry Grossberg, Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "This is one of the few books that really attempts to take the topic of mass media seriously while demonstrating a range of languages and approaches that illustrate what doing cultural studies is actually about." --Henry Giroux, Waterbury Chair, The Pennsylvania State University "A terrific book--broad based in cultural and critical studies. Gender, Race, and Class in Media is an excellent text for courses in which multiple perspectives are represented." --Ellen Wartella, Dean, College of Communication, University of Texas, Austin An introductory text-reader, Gender, Race, and Class in Media critically examines the mass media as economic and cultural institutions that shape our social identities, especially in regard to gender, race, and class. Through an analysis of such popular genres as soap operas, talk shows, rap music, sitcoms, rock videos, pornography, made-for-TV movies, advertising, and romance novels, students are invited to engage in critical mass media scholarship. From a critical/cultural perspective, the comprehensive introduction delineates the major paradigms in media studies today. It outlines the text′s integrated approach to media studies, which incorporates three distinct but related areas of investigation within media studies: political economy of production textual analysis audience response/resistance Chapter introductions to the selected readings, which are drawn from original essays and influential previously published articles, provide a framework for understanding and analyzing how gender, race, and class are structural and experiential categories that inform the production, construction, and consumption of media representations. Gender, Race, and Class in Media is designed as a comprehensive critical introduction to mass media, but it can also be used as a supplement to a more standard text. This text-reader is also valuable for such courses as sociology of media, media criticism, cultural studies, popular culture, journalism, visual literacy, and especially where a critical approach is used.

Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, where she is also chair of the American studies department. She has been researching and writing about the pornography industry for over twenty years. She has written numerous articles on pornography, media images of women, and representations of race in pop culture. Her latest book is PORNLAND: How Pornography has Hijacked our Sexuality. She is a cofounder of the activist group Stop Porn Culture!

Jean M. Humez is a professor emerita of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she has taught courses in both women’s studies and American studies and chaired the women’s studies department. She designed and taught an undergraduate women and the media course early in her career, and came to collaborate with Gail Dines through her interest in media text analysis. She has also published books and articles on African American women’s spiritual and secular autobiographies, and on women and gender in Shaker religion. Her most recent book is Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories.