New Directions in American Reception Study

by Philip Goldstein, James L. Machor

Overview

Contemporary reception study has developed a diversity of approaches and methods, including the institutional, textual, historical, authorial, and reader-response, which, to a greater or lesser extent, acknowledge the various ways in which readers have found texts-- literature, television shows, movies, and newspapers--meaningful. This collection emphasizes that new diversity, examining movies, newspapers, fans, television shows, and traditional American as well as modern Hispanic, Black, and Women's literature. The essays on literature include James Machor on Melville's short fiction, Kenneth Roemer on Edward Bellamy's utopian work Looking Backward, Amy Blair on the popularity of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, Marcial Gonzalez on Danny Santiago and his Hispanic novel Famous All Over Town, and Leonard Diepeveen on modernist fiction and criticism. The theoretical essays on reader-oriented criticism include Patsy Schweickart on interpretation and the ethics of careand Jack Bratich on active audiences. Media versions of response criticism include Andrea Press and Camille Johnson's ethnographic analysis of fans of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Janet Staiger on Robert Aldrich's film version of Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly, and Rhiannon Bury on the fans of the HBO television show Six Feet Under. History-of-the-book versions include Barbara Hochman on the popularity of the 1890s editions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ellen Garvey on nineteenth-century scrapbooks of newspaper, and David Nord on early twentieth-century newspapers' relations to audience charges of bias and unfairness. Poststructuralist studies include Philip Goldstein on Richard Wright's Native Son, Steve Mailloux on Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Tony Bennett on the cultural analyses of Pierre Bourdieu. The collection concludes with essays by Janice Radway on the limits of these methods and on the possibility of new forms of sociological and anthropological reception study and byToby Miller on the "reception deception" in relation to the worldwide distribution and reception of movies and television shows.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190295691
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/30/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reception Study: Achievements and New Directions   Philip Goldstein   James L. Machor     xi
(Re)Theorizing Reception Study
Understanding an Other: Reading as a Receptive Form of Communicative Action   Patrocinio Schweickart     3
Judging and Hoping: Rhetorical Effects of Reading about Reading   Steven Mailloux     23
Activating the Multitude: Audience Powers and Cultural Studies   Jack Bratich     33
Habitus Clive: Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu   Tony Bennett     57
Texts, Authors, and the Receptions of Literature
The American Reception of Melville's Short Fiction in the 1850s   James L. Machor     87
Placing Readers at the Forefront of Nowhere: Reception Studies and Utopian Literature   Kenneth M. Roemer     99
Richard Wright's Native Son: From Naturalist Protest to Modernist Liberation and Beyond   Philip Goldstein     119
Main Street Reading Main Street   Amy L. Blair     139
Learning from Philistines: Suspicion, Refusing to Read, and the Rise of Dubious Modernism   Leonard Diepeveen     159
Reception and Authenticity: Danny Santiago's Famous All over Town   Marcial Gonzalez     179
Discourses in Dialogue: The Reception of Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-PromQueen   Charlotte Templin     195
Books, Print Culture, and Historical Sites of Reception
The Power of Recirculation: Scrapbooks and the Reception of the Nineteenth-Century Press   Ellen Gruber Garvey     211
Accuracy or Fair Play? Complaining about the Newspaper in Early Twentieth-Century New York   David Paul Nord     233
Sentiment without Tears: Uncle Tom's Cabin as History in the 1890s   Barbara Hochman     255
Audiences, Fans, and Viewers in Media and Cultural Studies
Kiss Me Deadly: Cold War Threats from Spillane to Aldrich, New York to Los Angeles, and the Mafia to the H-Bomb   Janet Staiger     279
Textual Poaching or Gamekeeping? A Comparative Study of Two Six Feet Under Internet Fan Forums   Rhiannon Bury     289
Political Talk and the Flow of Ambient Television: Women Watching Oprah in an African American Hair Salon   Andrea Press   Camille Johnson-Yale     307
Retrospective Prospects
What's the Matter with Reception Study? Some Thoughts on the Disciplinary Origins, Conceptual Constraints, and Persistent Viability of a Paradigm   Janice Radway     327
The Reception Deception   Toby Miller     353
Notes on Contributors     371
Index     375