Rethinking Popular Culture selects some of the best and most important recent work analyzing popular culture. Drawing upon recent developments in cultural theory and the exciting new techniques of critical analysis, the essays in this volume break down disciplinary boundaries in a fresh and innovative fashion.

Eclectic and wide-ranging, Rethinking Popular Culture includes works by authors in the humanities and social sciences. The essays touch on a variety of features of popular culture, from photography to fashion, romance novels to television, jokes to food habits.

The editors' comprehensive introduction sets each essay in the context of intellectual developments in history, sociology, literature, and anthropology and in the study of popular culture as a whole. Arguing that recent scholarship has revolutionized our understanding of popular culture, the editors articulate what that new perspective is while introducing some of the most influential and important work that gave rise to it.