[ecrea] ‘A Passion for Cultural Studies’ and ‘Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City’, by Ben Highmore

Palgrave Macmillan publishes two books by popular cultural studies 
author Ben Highmore (author of The Great Indoors, Profile Books).



In A Passion for Cultural Studies, Ben Highmore uses the feelings, or 
‘passions’ provoked by everyday culture to explore the culture that 
surrounds us, and uses it as a basis to introduce and explain the key 
ideas, debates and theories that are central to cultural studies. 
Accessible and absorbing, this compact book is the ideal entry-point 
into cultural studies. The chapters draw on everyday examples to examine 
problematic and complex issues, looking at the experience of migration, 
the nature of the media, the lure of commodities, the world of taste and 
the culture of love.



'Modest in scope, persistent in pursuit of its topic, even avowedly 
personal and sentimental at times, this short book promises to be a long 
player: it will spark engagement in the animating debates and questions 
of cultural studies. In short: A Passion for Cultural Studies delivers 
on the promise of its title.' – Richard Stamp, Bath Spa University, UK



Find out more about A Passion for Cultural Studies: 
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=274383





The city is the most distinctive product of modernity, but it is also 
its most unruly. How do we approach a culture that is both physical and 
imaginary, that has moulded concrete and asphalt as well as movies and 
novels? Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City 
provides an innovative approach to the modern city. By arguing that the 
most distinctive aspect of urban life is the varied, and often 
conflicting, rhythms of the city, this book sets out to find ways of 
registering the dynamic complexity of the city. Using a range of 
cultural forms Cityscapes spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 
finding vivid examples of urban movements in Edgar Allan Poe's London, 
in Parisian department stores, in colonial and anti-colonial Algiers, in 
the North American cities of recent detective fiction, and in the 
virtual city of The Matrix.



'Cityscapes is itself complex and multilayered. The reader can re-enter 
it in different times and places to gain insights not only into the 
specific texts it discusses, but into ways of seeing the city. 
Highmore's attention to the power of dynamics of city spaces is 
particularly laudable.' - Susan Alice Fischer, Literary London: 
Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London



Find out more about Cityscapes: 
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=262905





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