Saturday Forum | Peddling Pulp: The Industrial Production of Popular Culture

Industrially produced culture is ubiquitous; it is in our homes, on our airwaves, and around us at all times. Yet, we rarely think about what and how it means or even how we consume it. Does mass production limit what it can express? Can we think outside of its scope? Does it provide what we want or teach us how to want? Even our folk culture and local communities now echo pulp culture. This forum considers the structure and form of these materials in order to ask how we interact with pulp in daily life and whether mass production renders it interchangeable. We will draw examples from popular culture in a variety of media from the 20th century.

James Gifford, PhD, is Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and teaches Cultural Studies for Athabasca University.