ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors' analyze literary and cultural constructions. They consider the representational practices at work in society and how such codes frame our lives. These texts have points where the authors are in agreement with one another and other areas that seem to provoke different interpretations about representation and meaning. McCarthy et al., for example, point out the importance of interrogating popular culture, and Shannon and Crawford extend the point by de-coding images in popular textbooks for readers. Christian-Smith combines both ideas by writing about one vein of popular culture—Nancy Drew mysteries—and ties it to the construction of cultural politics and the classroom. Christian-Smith's text is helpful in pointing out how textual readings change over time. A fifteen-year-old girl in 1940 may well have had a reading of a text different from that of her counterpart today. Shannon and Crawford's text exhibits a schizophrenia that one also finds in the McCarthy et al.
