Meaghan Morris

Siu Leung Li

Stephen Ching-kiu Chan

Collection of essays that look at Hong Kong action films as a popular and global genre.

Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema

Hong Kong Connections

"Meticulously attentive to the complex nuances and intricacies of what is too easily glossed as 'cross-cultural communication', these essays offer us a unique, writerly perspective on what it takes, socially and textually, to reconcile the requirements of an effective shared discourse – cultural studies – with the intrinsic heterogeneity of our divergent glocal realities... an awesomely satisfying and enlightening read." - Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney How is identity produced in global 'textual environments'? What forms of narrative generate solidarity in a world in which globalization and trans-nationality can often appear to be a fait accompli? This brilliant, coruscating book, written by one of the most formidable and original thinkers in cultural studies, examines questions of nationality, identity, the use of anecdote to build solidarity and the role of institutions in shaping culture. Ranging across many fields, including film and media, gender, nationality, globalization and popular culture, it provides a mind-clearing exercise in recognizing what culture is, and how it works, today. Illustrated with a fund of relevant and insightful examples, it addresses the central questions in cultural studies today: identity, post-identity, the uses of narrative and textual analysis, the industrial organization of solidarity and the opportunities and dilemmas of globalization. Penetrating, arresting and inimitable, the book is a major contribution to the field of cultural studies. It is of interest to students of cultural studies, media, film and cultural sociology.

Translation and Media Culture

Identity Anecdotes

John Frow

Cultural studies has emerged as a major force in the analysis of cultural systems and their relation to social power. "Rather than being interested in television or architecture or pinball machines themselves - as industrial or aesthetic structures - cultural studies tends to be interested in the way such apparatuses work as points of concentration of social meaning, as 'media' (literally)", according to John Frow and Meaghan Morris. Here, two of Australia's leading cultural critics bring together work that represents a distinctive national tradition, moving between high theory and detailed readings of localized cultural practices. Ethnographic audience research, cultural policy studies, popular consumption, "bad" aboriginal art, landscape in feature films, style, form and history in TV miniseries, and the intersections of tourism with history and memory - these are among the topics addressed in a landmark volume that cuts across myriad traditional disciplines.

A Reader

Australian Cultural Studies

King Kong and the Human Fly

Great Moments in Social Climbing

Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism

The Pirate's Fiancée

Tony Bennett

Lawrence Grossberg

Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams’ Keywords: AVocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how weunderstand and use the language of culture and society. Now, threeluminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volumethat builds on and updates Williams’ classic, reflecting thetransformation in culture and society since its publication. NewKeywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is astate-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culturevultures everywhere. Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned andinterdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists Showcases 142 signed entries – from art,commodity, and fundamentalism to youth,utopia, the virtual, and the West– that capture the practices, institutions, and debates ofcontemporary society Builds on and updates Raymond Williams’s classicKeywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting thetransformation in culture and society over the last 25 years Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research andcross-referencing The book is supported by a website:www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.

A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society

New Keywords

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world's most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders? Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the uptake of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France and the US as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collective study examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema's popularity, and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema's influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.

Author Meaghan Morris asks how feminist culture critics can participate in political struggles about history. Questioning both contemporary cultural theory that imagines a world "beyond" history and feminist approaches to culture that minimize questions of economy, class, and nation, Morris argues that history created by popular culture is never truly "national" in scale or force. 11 photos.

History in Popular Culture

Too Soon Too Late

Brett De Bary

This book explores complex relations between violence, historical memory, and the production of "ethnicity" and "race." Some essays analyze the panicked "othering" that has led to violence against Chinese Indonesians, and to the little-known massacres of Hui Muslims in nineteenth century China and of Cheju Islanders in Korea in 1948.

"Race" Panic and the Memory of Migration

Traces 2

Mette Hjort

This work explores in detail how innovative academic activism can transform our everyday workplaces in contexts of considerable adversity. Personal essays by prominent scholars provide critical reflections on their institution-building triumphs and setbacks across a range of cultural institutions. Often adopting narrative approaches, the contributors examine how effective programmes and activities are built in varying local and national contexts within a common global regime of university management policy. Here they share experiences based on developing new undergraduate degrees, setting up research centers and postgraduate schools, editing field-shaping book series and journals, establishing international artist-in-residence programs and founding social activist networks. This book also investigates the impact of managerialism, marketization and globalization on university cultures, asking what critical cultural scholarship can do in such increasingly adversarial conditions. Experiments in Asian universities are emphasized as exemplary of what can or could be achieved in other contexts of globalized university policy. Contributors include Tony Bennett, Stephen Ching-Kiu Chan, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Douglas Crimp, Dai Jinhua, John Nguyet Erni, Josephine Ho, Koichi Iwabuchi, Tejaswini Niranjana, Wang Xiaoming, and Audrey Yue.

Meaghan Morris

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