HUSL 6304 American Popular Literature Reading Questions 

Reading Questions for "Paradigms for Studying the 'Popular'" (1/16)

**Hall, "Cultural Studies: 2 paradigms"

(1)     What is �culturalism?�

(2)     What is �structuralism?�

(3)     What are the limitations of each approach according to Hall?

(4)     Given these limitations, what direction(s) should the study of popular culture take?

**Hall, �Notes on Deconstructing the Popular�

(1)     What are the 3 different definitions of �popular� Hall offers?  Which definition does he prefer and why?

(2)     Why does Hall think the period from 1880 to 1920 is critical for studying popular culture?

**Jameson, �Reification and Utopia�

(1)     What is the distinction between high and low culture made by Frankfurt School theorists and others that Jameson wants to challenge?

(2)     How do modernist high art and mass culture engage with repetition differently?

(3)     What does Jameson mean by �reification� or �commodification?�

(4)     What does he mean by the �Utopian� or �transcendent� aspects of a text?

(5)     How are the �reified� and �Utopian� aspects of texts related?

**Denning, �The End of Mass Culture�

(1)     Why are the 2 1979 essays he discusses (Hall�s �Notes on Deconstructing the Popular� and Jameson�s �Reification and Utopia�) important?

(2)     Given the groundwork these essays did for pop culture scholars, what are the current directions in scholarship?

**Bennett, �Introduction�

(1)     What is �hegemony?�

(2)     Why have scholars of popular culture found it to be a useful concept?  

Reading Questions for "On Popular Reading" (1/23)

**De Certeau, �Reading as Poaching�

1.  How is reading or cultural consumption active or creative vs. passive? 

2.  What follows from this, i.e. why does it matter to reconceptualize reading this way?

 **Chartier, �Communities of Readers�

1.        Chartier presents the study of the history of reading as involving a triangle of the text, book, and reader.  Early methods of study, which built off of quantitative data like book inventory and literacy rates, were problematic.  What are the three problems he sees with this old paradigm?

2.        What are the three examples Chartier gives of relationships between text, book and reader?  Give some original (preferably American) examples for each.

3.        What are the 3 binaries in the study of reading Chartier would like to call into question?

4.        How is the image of the reader in this article different from the reader in Hall�s or Jameson�s? 

**Darnton, �Communications Networks�

1.        How can we devise a strategy to get around our inadequate knowledge of reader response?  Are you convinced by this?

2.        How is Darnton�s reader different from de Certeau�s?  Hall�s or Jameson�s?

**Bourdieu, �Aristocracy of Culture�

This is the first chapter of a book based on surveys about �taste� carried out in France in the 1960s.  We are not concerned with the tastes of French people in the 1960s (Well--I�m not, anyway).  We are interested in the fundamentally different world-views which arise from having been raised in conditions of relative poverty or plenty, and on which �tastes� are based.  Use the examples to help you get the larger conceptual points, but don�t get too caught up in the details.

1.        What are the 3 different kinds of tastes that emerge from Bourdieu�s survey research?  Try to give an American example/equivalent for each.  Are they translatable across national boundaries?

2.        What is the �aesthetic disposition� (�pure aesthetic� or �pure gaze�)?

3.        What is the popular aesthetic or ethos and how is it different from the aesthetic disposition?

4.        Bourdieu insists that the popular aesthetic is always �pluralistic and conditional� (244).  What does he mean by this?

5.        What are the economic and social conditions that make the aesthetic disposition possible?

6.        How are these two aesthetics related to the Book-of-the Month club readers and reading?

**Radway, �The Book-of-the-Month Club and the General Reader� in Reading in America

1.        What are the different kinds of books/reading BOMC editors use in categorizing/evaluating texts?  How does this complicate the high culture/low culture model Jameson uses?

2.        How are BOMC books and the kinds of reading they privilege different from elite or high-cultural ways of reading?  From �popular� ways of reading?