Review by Choice Review
This collection of articles clearly encompasses subjects that are currently the rage in academic circles. Such compilations are notoriously uneven, and Barker's volume is no exception. Part of the problem stems from the effort to find a unified approach in the methodologies employed by such diverse disciplines as history, political science, language and literature, "cultural studies," sociology, and art history. A larger part, however, is a result of the unrelenting postmodernism of many of the contributions. Intellectual faddishness aside, some are interesting and even thought-provoking, but others strike one as marginal and of transitory value. Among the former are the three pieces by the editor and those of Bushnell, Condee, Edelman, Kornblat, Larsen, and Sabonis-Chafee. Touching, inter alia, on nationalist graffiti, tatooing, reborn Russian Orthodoxy, kitsch, pets, and the postcommunist cinema, these nine are the strongest of the lot. The remainder are unequally divided between a broad group that, although mildly interesting, really do not reach for the reader's attention and a smaller group of rather questionable academic value. General readers; undergraduates. G. E. Snow; Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
