Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book addresses the complexities of race, gender and sexuality in popular culture by using the influence of a cultural heroine to advance cultural theory.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Cultural Studies (p. iii)
• Acknowledgments (p. xi)
• Introduction Connections/Intersections (p. 1)
• Appendix A (p. 39)
• 10 Don't Go for Second Sex, Baby! (p. 213)
• Part 4 the Political Economy of Postmodernism: Madonna as Star-Commodity (p. 237)
• 11 Metatextual Girl: → Patriarchy → Postmodernism → Power → Money → Madonna (p. 239)
• 13 the Distance Between Me & You: Madonna & Celestial Navigation (or You Can Be My Lucky Star) (p. 291)
• About the Book and Editor (p. 319)
• Index (p. 323)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Coming hot on the spiked heels of the reputedly torrid title Sex (Warner, 1992) by Madonna herself, this weighty tome attempts to examine the performer's ``themes'' and their relationships with and within popular culture. Madonna's use of images in her works to ``sneak'' the agendas of subcultural groups (i.e., racial, feminist, gay/lesbian) into the mainstream is the major thrust of the 13 essays by various academicians, scholars, and filmmakers presented. They tackle such topics as religion, feminist politics, seduction, and the effacements of postmodern culture. Somewhat tedious and technical for the nonspecialist to enjoy, much less get anything out of, the book is already causing a minor flap in some corners of academia regarding its worth as a line of scholarly inquiry. With postmodernists and positivists the primary parties to this dispute, only academic libraries should consider this title, especially those with comprehensive popular culture collections.-- David M. Turkalo, Social Law Lib., Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

This hefty collection of Material Girl scholarship is enough to satisfy even the most insatiable and intellectual fan. The authors of these academic essays--professors in philosophy, rhetorical studies, marketing, cultural studies and the like--see the entertainer and her relationship to modern culture in interesting ways, but some of the connections they make are tenuous. Roseann M. Mandziuk's assertion that Madonna's inarticulate presence on Nightline ``spoke loudly for a feminist realist epistemology'' is backed up by scanty evidence, and it is hard to take seriously Melanie Morton's comparison of Madonna and Jean Genet. The strictly theoretical essays are less compelling than those that view popular culture through the lens of contemporary sociology, such as the observations of Laurie Schulze, Anne Barton White and Jane D. Brown on perceptions of Madonna as a bad role model, and Thomas K. Nakayama and Lisa N. Penaloza's survey of how members of different racial and ethnic groups interpret Madonna's attitudes toward race and ethnicity. Schwichtenberg, a professor of speech communication at the University of Georgia, provides a unifying introduction, in which she manages to draw parallels among the widely varied pieces without generalizing overmuch . (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

In recent years, few if any performers have so galvanized attention or polarized society as Madonna. Within a short span of time, she has achieved an iconical status and become the most significant woman performer since Mae West created havoc with her independent, flaunting pose and prose. And no performer, not even Elvis Presley or Muhammad Ali, has so tantalized the academic profession. As Schwichtenberg asserts, Madonna has forced the academy "to think seriously about the politics of popular culture." The result is this intriguing volume, a collection that delves into the Madonna phenomenon while it also grapples with the problem of how to approach the complexities of mass popular culture. This collection of 13 essays plus an introduction is divided into four sections, each of which focuses on a different cultural and theoretical dimension of the Madonna presentation: race and audiences; reception and interpretations within the gay community; conceptions of feminist theory and praxis; and the ideological power of commodity culture. Overall, the issues posed by the essays are provocative, wide-ranging in their design and approach, and varying in style and content. Although highly theoretical, the volume's strength lies in the construction of a cultural map of Madonna's connection to American society by a diverse group of scholarly topographers. General; advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty; professional. J. Boskin; Boston University