Jeremy: thanks for starting the list. I've dropped in on the tv list in the
past and didn't find the discussion focussed enough for my interests. there
are two topics I'd be interested in hearing reactions to. The first is the
issue of the critique of the loose way the concept of "resistance" has been
used in recent audience response studies e.g. fiske, morely, hobson, etc.
David Scholle has an interesting article in the first issue of the Journal of
Urban and Cultural Studies that attempts to re-insert the primacy of a
political economic notion of resistance back into cultural studies which he
sees as lapsing to far into a concern with an a political semiosis....or
rather treating semiotic democracy as an end in itself [does this ring a bell
with anyone?]  Secondly...i'm beginning to do some writing around issues of
authenticity and representation in film and tv. Authenticity is a genuinely
slippery topic. There is a enough good work around [e.g James Clifford's
The Predicament of Culture] to show/argue the need for this concept to be
understood as embedded in a set of dynamics over time....which means authenticit
   y must be seen as moving and changing...yet audiences are often pre-disposed
to judgments about what are and are not authentic representations...what i'd
kelike to hear is other people's views on what some of the c
key issues might be within this theme.
 
I work out of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto which
has a lively, large group of faculty devoted to teaching and research in the
area of critical pedagogy and cultural studies.
 
Roger Simon