Lawrence Grossberg
Encyclopedia
Lawrence Grossberg is an internationally renowned scholar of cultural studies
and popular culture
whose work focuses primarily on popular music and the politics of youth in the United States. He is also widely known for his research in the philosophy of communication and culture. Though his scholarship focused significantly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s on the politics of postmodernism
, his more recent work explores the possibilities and limitations of alternative and emergent formations of modernity
.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Grossberg went to Stuyvesant High School
. In 1968 he graduated summa cum laude in history and philosophy from the University of Rochester
, where he studied with Hayden White
. Afterwards, he trained under Richard Hoggart
and Stuart Hall
at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
at the University of Birmingham, England.
After two years of traveling through Europe with Les Treteaux Libres, a French-speaking theater company, Grossberg returned to the USA for doctoral studies in communication research (with James W. Carey
) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. There, he received a Ph.D. in Speech Communication in 1976. His doctoral dissertation, which he now largely repudiates, was entitled, Dialectical Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Grossberg taught briefly at Purdue University
in West Lafayette, Indiana (1975-1976) before returning to the University of Illinois as Assistant Professor of Speech Communication in 1976. At the University of Illinois he supported founding the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1982, and in 1990 achieved the rank of Professor of Speech Communication.
In 1993, Grossberg was invited by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
to be one of four members of an "external review team" whose purpose was to evaluate the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures (RTVMP). At the request of Dean Stephen Birdsall, these four (including Roderick Hart, Joshua Meyrowitz
, and Lynn Spigel
) spent three days in early March "on the Chapel Hill campus talking to students, administrators and faculty members." On March 10th, the team produced a six page document, in which they recommended that RTVMP be "disestablished." This would be implemented by disbursing faculty and resources to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and to the Department of Speech Communication, which was to be renamed the Department of Communication Studies. Despite vigorous protests from students and alumni, Dean Birdsall accepted the team's recommendations and the RTVMP department was dissolved. The newly christened Department of Communication Studies was established in the fall of 1993. Grossberg remained at the University of Illinois until 1994, whereupon he was given a job in Chapel Hill at the same department that he had recommended be created. Currently, he is Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Executive Committee of the University Program in Cultural Studies at UNC.
He has not only published books, such as It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics and Culture (1988), We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (1992), Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays in Popular Culture (1997) and Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America’s Future (2005), but also over one hundred articles and essays. Grossberg is co-editor (with Della Pollock) of the journal Cultural Studies, which is one of the longest-running and most respected academic journals in its field. He has served in that capacity since 1990. He also serves on the editorial collective of Public Culture
among many other academic journals.
His work, including a number of collections, has been translated into ten languages. Future projects include an introduction to cultural studies, a work on the philosophical foundations of alternative modernities, and perhaps more on US political culture.
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
and popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
whose work focuses primarily on popular music and the politics of youth in the United States. He is also widely known for his research in the philosophy of communication and culture. Though his scholarship focused significantly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s on the politics of postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, his more recent work explores the possibilities and limitations of alternative and emergent formations of modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Grossberg went to Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...
. In 1968 he graduated summa cum laude in history and philosophy from the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, where he studied with Hayden White
Hayden White
Hayden White is a historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe...
. Afterwards, he trained under Richard Hoggart
Richard Hoggart
Herbert Richard Hoggart is a British academic and public figure, whose career has covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with a special concern for British popular culture.-Career:...
and Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...
at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director...
at the University of Birmingham, England.
After two years of traveling through Europe with Les Treteaux Libres, a French-speaking theater company, Grossberg returned to the USA for doctoral studies in communication research (with James W. Carey
James W. Carey
James Carey was a communications theorist, media critic and a journalism instructor at the University of Illinois, and later Columbia University. He died in 2006 at age 71.- Early career :...
) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. There, he received a Ph.D. in Speech Communication in 1976. His doctoral dissertation, which he now largely repudiates, was entitled, Dialectical Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Grossberg taught briefly at Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
in West Lafayette, Indiana (1975-1976) before returning to the University of Illinois as Assistant Professor of Speech Communication in 1976. At the University of Illinois he supported founding the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory is an interdisciplinary program developed within the Graduate College and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1982, and in 1990 achieved the rank of Professor of Speech Communication.
In 1993, Grossberg was invited by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
to be one of four members of an "external review team" whose purpose was to evaluate the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures (RTVMP). At the request of Dean Stephen Birdsall, these four (including Roderick Hart, Joshua Meyrowitz
Joshua Meyrowitz
Joshua Meyrowitz is a professor of communications at the department of Communication at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. He has published works regarding the effects of mass media, including No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour, an analysis of the effects...
, and Lynn Spigel
Lynn Spigel
Lynn Spigel is the Frances E. Willard Professor of Screen Cultures at the School of Communication at Northwestern University. She has written extensively on numerous topics including post war culture and popular media. She has also edited numerous anthologies including Television after TV and...
) spent three days in early March "on the Chapel Hill campus talking to students, administrators and faculty members." On March 10th, the team produced a six page document, in which they recommended that RTVMP be "disestablished." This would be implemented by disbursing faculty and resources to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and to the Department of Speech Communication, which was to be renamed the Department of Communication Studies. Despite vigorous protests from students and alumni, Dean Birdsall accepted the team's recommendations and the RTVMP department was dissolved. The newly christened Department of Communication Studies was established in the fall of 1993. Grossberg remained at the University of Illinois until 1994, whereupon he was given a job in Chapel Hill at the same department that he had recommended be created. Currently, he is Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Executive Committee of the University Program in Cultural Studies at UNC.
He has not only published books, such as It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics and Culture (1988), We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (1992)
We Gotta Get out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture by Lawrence Grossberg was published in 1992 and deals with several aspects of contemporary American culture: Lawrence Grossberg states that it is a book about “the political, economic and cultural forces which are...
: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (1992), Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays in Popular Culture (1997) and Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America’s Future (2005), but also over one hundred articles and essays. Grossberg is co-editor (with Della Pollock) of the journal Cultural Studies, which is one of the longest-running and most respected academic journals in its field. He has served in that capacity since 1990. He also serves on the editorial collective of Public Culture
Public Culture
Public Culture is a reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies, founded in 1988 by anthropologists Carol Breckenridge and Arjun Appadurai...
among many other academic journals.
His work, including a number of collections, has been translated into ten languages. Future projects include an introduction to cultural studies, a work on the philosophical foundations of alternative modernities, and perhaps more on US political culture.
Sources
- Louisville - Biographical information on Lawrence Grossberg
- Lawrence Grossberg faculty page at UNC-Chapel Hill