Introducing Cultural Studies

"An outstanding entry level text aimed at those with little or no cultural studies knowledge... Innovative, creative and clever."
- Times Higher Education 

"The ideal textbook for FE and first year HE cultural studies students. Its quality and character allow the reader to ‘feel’ the enthusiasm of its author which in turn becomes infectious, instilling in the reader a genuine sense of ebullient perturbation."
- Art/Design/Media, The Higher Education Authority

An introduction to the practice of cultural studies, this book is ideal for undergraduate courses. Full of practical exercises that will get students thinking and writing about the issues they encounter, this book offers its readers the conceptual tools to practice cultural analysis for themselves. There are heuristics to help students prepare and write projects, and the book provides plenty of examples to help students develop their own ideas.  

Written in a creative, playful and witty style, this book: 

• Links key concepts to the key theorists of cultural studies.
• Includes a wide range of references of popular cultural forms.
• Emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of cultural studies.
• Includes pedagogical features, such as dialogues, graphs, images and recommended readings.
• The book′s skills-based approach enables students to develop their creative skills, and shows students how to improve their powers of analysis generally.

David Walton has a degree in English Literature (University of Wales 1985) an M.Phil (University of Oxford 1987), a Certificate in Education (University of Greenwich, London 1988), and a TEFL qualification (University of Aston, Birmingham 1987). He was awarded his doctorate in 1992 by the University of Murcia. He began his teaching career in further education in Britain before being contracted as an associate lecturer in the English Department of the University of Murcia in 1989. He became Senior Lecturer in the area of Cultural Studies in 2001 and has promoted the area in Spain for more than ten years. He is one of the founder members of the Culture and Power group which has organized annual conferences in Spain and Portugal every year since 1995 and has contributed to most of the publications to come out of these conferences. He is a founder member and President of the Iberian Association of Cultural Studies (IBACS). He has co-organized conferences on English-speaking cultures and co-organized two International Conferences on cultural studies for IBACS, both held at the Universidad de Murcia. Apart from his undergraduate teaching, he has taught audiovisual translation at M.A. level and has given doctorate courses on the construction of national identity and given many conference papers. He currently teaches cultural studies at undergraduate level and postmodern theory and culture at M.A. level. He has published widely, his publications reflecting his research interests which include literary and cultural theory, cultural studies, popular culture, visual culture and postmodern theories of culture. His latest books are ′Introducing Cultural Studies: Learning Through Practice′ (SAGE, 2008) and ′Doing Cultural Theory′ (SAGE, 2012). He has a chapter on Chris Morris′ satire which will appear in ′No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris′ (edited by James Leggott & Jamie Sexton (Palgrave Macmilan, 2003), and has a number of other chapters which are in print on the interfaces between philosophy and cultural studies and graffiti and popular culture.