I've moved some of the links here to pages devoted to the relevant readings.
I've recently discovered the joys of reading the works of Tony Hoagland. Adding to the literary merits is the way many of our discussions of ideology, culture, and hegemony are given poetic expression in pieces like "America" (which I read in class) and "Commercial for a Summer Night" (the first poem on this page of wonderful samples).
The late Richard Rorty's "The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses" is a piece that I find inspirational when the phenomena we examine in media and cultural studies start getting me down and depressed.
And while the Rorty piece is a classic pop song in its immediacy and concision, Stuart Hall's "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies" is an extended jam session that is just as intellectually inspiring in facing questions regarding the purpose of all our scholarship.
You may read the Stuart Hall piece from the screen here, but you should use this if you're printing it out.
There are many examples that demonstrate the postmodern blending of cultures high and low, but one that I'm UNdying to know more about is the following "collaboration" between Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.
