Originally published in 1992. This book captures the dynamic confluence of feminist and communication scholarship by setting out some of the provocative questions that mark this intersection. Several of the essays in the book are theoretical in nature, and consider the changing complexion of the field in view of this cross-fertilization; other contributors tackle those individual forms of communication that pose certain challenges for women such as verbal harassment and pornography. The final section of the book, more ethnographic in nature, presents a number of case studies, written primarily by women of colour, which recount the various ways that communication forms such as television, journalism and spoken discourse construct and perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes.

This book explores how women make meaning at various health flashpoints in their lives, overcoming fear, anxiety, and anger to draw upon self-advocacy, research, and crucial decision-making. Combining focus group research, content analysis, autoethnography, and textual inquiry, the book argues that the making and remaking of what we call “patient epistemologies” is a continual process wherein a health flashpoint—sometimes a new diagnosis, sometimes a reoccurrence or worsening of an existing condition or the progression of a natural process—can cause an individual to be thrust into a discourse community that was not of their own choosing. This study will interest students and scholars of health communication, rhetoric of health and medicine, women’s studies, public health, healthcare policy, philosophy of medicine, medical sociology, and medical humanities.

The sixth volume in this series provides: guides for doing qualitative research; analysis of several autobiographies; hints on how to interpret what is not said in narrative interviews; discussion on how cultural meanings and values are transmitted across generations; and illustrations of the transformational power of stories.

This volume is the firstborn of the Annals of Cultural Psychology-- a yearly edited book series in the field of Cultural Psychology. It came into being as there is a need for reflection on “where and what” the discipline needs to further develop, in such a way, the current frontiers and to foster the elaboration of new fruitful ideas. The topic chosen for the first volume is perhaps the most fundamental of all- motherhood. We are all here because at some unspecifiable time in the past, different women labored hard to bring each of us into this World. These women were not thinking of culture, but were just giving birth. Yet by their reproductive success—and years of worry about our growing up—we are now, thankfully to them, in a position to discuss the general notion of motherhood from the angle of cultural psychology. Each person who is born needs a mother—first the real one, and then possibly a myriad of symbolic ones—from “my mother” to “mother superior” to “my motherland”. Thus, it is not by coincidence if the first volume of the series is about motherhood. We the editors feel it is the topic that links our existence with one of the universals of human survival as a species. In very general terms what this book aims to do is to question the ontology of Motherhood in favor of an ontogenetic approach to Life’s Course, where having a child represents a big transition in a woman’s trajectory and where becoming (or not becoming) mother is heuristically more interesting than being a mother. We here present a reticulated work that digs into a cultural phenomenon giving to the readers the clear idea of making motherhood (and not taking for granted motherhood). By looking at absences, shadows and ruptures rather than the normativeness of motherhood, cultural psychology can provide a theoretical model in explaining the cultural multifaceted nature of human activity.

Mountains bear the imprint of human activity. Scars from logging and surface mining sit alongside national parks and ski lodges. Although the environmental effects of extractive industries are well known, skiing is more likely to bring to mind images of luxury, wealth, and health. Drawing on interviews, field observations, and media analysis, Stoddart reveals the multiple, often conflicting meanings attached to skiing by skiers, mass media, First Nations, industry leaders, and environmentalists in British Columbia. Stoddart challenges us to reflect on skiing’s negative effects as he exposes how certain groups came to be viewed as the “natural” inhabitants and legitimate managers of mountain environments.

This book documents those first links that students make between content they learn in their classrooms and their prior experiences. Through six late-elementary school case studies these knowledge construction links are brought to life. The links of the students are often rich in describing who these individuals are, where they are in their learning process, and what is meaningful to them. Many times, these links point to what has been learned, both in and out of school, and the contexts when and where that learning took place. The mind as rhizome metaphor was used to guide the development and interpretation of the studies while the lens of Peircian semiotics provides an interpretation for these initial links. The resulting grounded theory is presented through a rich and extensive presentation of excerpts from classroom observations, student interviews, and a student writing activity and describes the varying types of student links, how the links were prompted, the relationships between what the students were learning and what they already knew, and specific types of in-school links. The narrative includes how these links were supported or inhibited in the classroom drawing on the roles of the teachers in the classrooms and what constituted authority sources of information in those classrooms. Before exploring the students’ linking as a process of ongoing semiosis and how this process is part of a dynamic system, a study of the relationship between student knowledge links and achievement is shared. This rich narrative will be of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, and includes an extensive appendix documenting the research methods.

As communicative, cultural, and political spaces, cities present a vast array of racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and socioeconomic experiences around which human communities take shape. This shaping forms a germinal point of mass cultural life. City planners decide where buildings and neighborhoods are developed, which ultimately affects who residents interact with, how they get there, and why they choose city life. From these experiences, boundaries and possibilities arise that define cultures of “the city.” In Separately Together: Ethnographic Engagements of the City, contributors focus on theorizing the notion of “the city” as a communicatively constituted cultural space, drawing on situated, reflexive ethnographic examinations of “the city” to show the complex and varied ways in which cities produce social meaning.

Winner, ASA (American Society for Aesthetics) 2023 Outstanding Monograph Prize For Theodore Gracyk meaning in popular music depends as much on the context of reception and performer's intentions as on established musical and semantic practices. Songs are structures that serve as the scaffolding for meaning production, influenced by the performance decisions of the performer and their intentions. Arguing against prevailing theories of meaning that ignore the power of the performance, Gracyk champions the contextual relevance of the performer as well as novel messaging through creative repurposing of recordings. Extending the philosophical insight that meaning is a function of use, Gracyk explains how both the performance persona and the personal life of a song's performer can contribute to (or undercut) ethical and political aspects of a performance or recording. Using Carly Simon's “You're So Vain”, Pink Floyd, the emergence of the musical genre of post-punk and the practice of “cover” versions, Gracyk explores the multiple, sometimes contradictory, notions of authenticity applied to popular music and the conditions for meaningful communication. He places popular music within larger cultural contexts and examines how assigning a performance or recording to one music genre rather than another has implications for what it communicates. Informed by a mix of philosophy of art and philosophy of language, Gracyk's entertaining study of popular music constructs a theoretical basis for a philosophy of meaning for songs.

Describes the decision of several white student teachers to create teaching strategies that eliminate white privilege in schools, and analyzes the role of racial identity in the creation and use of teaching practices.

Women Making News tells two stories: first, it examines alternative print-based political cultures that women developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and second, it explores how British female subjects themselves forged a wide range of new political identities through the pages of "their press."Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, a rising cohort of female editors and journalists created a new genre of political journal they proclaimed to be both "for and by women," which continued until the 1930s. The development of new specialized periodicals, such as Women's Penny Paper, Votes for Women, Women's Gazette, and Shafts, fostered the proliferation of diverse political agendas aimed at re-imagining women's status in society. At the same time, the institutional infrastructure of the women's press provided new opportunities for women in nontraditional employments.Tusan's approach employs social and cultural historical analysis in the reading of popular printed texts, as well as rare and previously unpublished personal correspondence and business records from archives throughout Britain. Women Making News is the first book-length study to uncover the important relationship between print culture and the gender politics that provided a vehicle for women's mobilization in the political culture of modern Britain.Michelle Tusan is an assistant professor of British history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.A volume in The History of Communication series, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone