ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book engages teachers in new forms of inquiry using the pedagogy of critical media literacy to integrate the new forms of visual and electronic "texts" across the curriculum in the multi-subject learning environments found in the United States. It shows that American schools can no longer continue to define literacy in terms of print or the classics alone. The book discusses the emerging discipline of cultural studies provides an interdisciplinary approach for the study of subjectivities that views popular culture as a site of social differences and struggle. It discusses critical media literacy within such a broad theoretical framework. The book engages the reader and challenges him or her to find a more sustainable analysis of popular culture and other media texts, and eventually make sense of examples of a classroom practice that is anchored in critical pedagogy.
