Since its birth in the 1960s, the study of popular culture has come a long way in defining its object, its purpose, and its place in academe. Emerging along the margins of a scholarly establishment that initially dismissed anything popular as unworthy of serious study-trivial, formulaic, easily digestible, escapist-early practitioners of the discipline stubbornly set about creating the theoretical and methodological framework upon which a deeper understanding could be founded. Through seminal essays that document the maturation of the field as it gradually made headway toward legitimacy,...

Since its birth in the 1960s, the study of popular culture has come a long way in defining its object, its purpose, and its place in academe. Emerging along the margins of a scholarly establishment that initially dismissed anything popular as unworthy of serious study-trivial, formulaic, easily digestible, escapist-early practitioners of the discipline stubbornly set about creating the theoretical and methodological framework upon which a deeper understanding could be founded. Through seminal essays that document the maturation of the field as it gradually made headway toward legitimacy,...