Race/Gender/Class/Media

Book excerpt: Race/Gender/Class/Media considers diversity in the mass media in three main settings: Audiences, Content, and Production. It brings together 53 readings—most are newly commissioned for this edition—by scholars representing a variety of social science and humanities disciplines. Together, these readings provide a multifaceted and often intersectional look at how race, gender, and class relate to the creation and use of media texts as well as the media texts themselves. Designed to be flexible in the classroom, the book begins with a detailed introduction to key concepts and presents a contextualizing introduction to each of the three main sections. Each reading contains multiple It’s Your Turn activities to foster student engagement and which can serve as the basis for assignments. The book offers a list of resources—books, articles, films, and websites—that are of value to students and instructors. Several alternate Tables of Contents are provided as options for reorganizing the material and maximizing the flexibility of the readings: by site of struggle (gender, race, class), by medium (television, print, digital, etc.), and by arena (journalism, entertainment). This volume is an essential introduction to interdisciplinary studies of gender, race, and class across mass media.