Lawrence Grossberg

Lawrence Grossberg (b. December 3, 1947) 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. He remained at the University of Illinois until 1994, whereupon he moved to the [http://comm.unc.edu/ Department of Communication Studies] at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, he is Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Executive Committee of the [http://www.ibiblio.org/upcs/index.php 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), ": 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.

ources

* [http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/english/babo/fewell/grossbergbiographicalinformation.html Louisville - Biographical information on Lawrence Grossberg]
* [http://comm.unc.edu/facstaff/facultyprofile/grossberg/index_html Lawrence Grossberg faculty page at UNC-Chapel Hill]

References

*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence | title=Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future | location=Boulder | publisher=Paradigm Publishers | year=2005 | id=ISBN 1594511136
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence, Wartella, Ellen A., Whitney, D. Charles, and Wise, J. Macgregor | title=Media Making: Mass Media in a Popular Culture (2nd ed.) | location=Thousand Oaks | publisher=Sage Publications | year=2005 | id=ISBN 0761925430
*cite book | author=Bennett, Tony, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Morris, Meaghan (eds) | title= | location=Malden | publisher=Blackwell | year=2005 | id=ISBN 0631225692
*cite book | author=Gilroy, Paul, Grossberg, Lawrence, and McRobbie, Angela (eds) | title=Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall | location=London | publisher=Verso | year=2000 | id=ISBN 1859842879
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence | title=Bringing it All Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies | location=Durham | publisher=Duke University Press | year=1997 | id=ISBN 0822319160
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence | title=Dancing In Spite of Myself: Essays on Popular Culture | location=Durham | publisher=Duke University Press | year=1997 | id=ISBN 0822319179
*cite book | author=Hay, James, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Wartella, Ellen (eds) | title=The Audience and Its Landscapes | location=Boulder | publisher=Westview Press | year=1996 | id=ISBN 0813322855
*cite book | author=Frith, Simon, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Goodwin, Andrew (eds) | title=Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader | location=London | publisher=Routledge | year=1993 | id=ISBN 0044456050
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence | title=: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture | location=New York | publisher=Routledge | year=1992 | id=ISBN 0415903300
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence, Nelson, Cary, and Treichler, Paula (eds) | title=Cultural Studies | location=New York | publisher=Routledge | year=1992 | id=ISBN 0415903459
*cite book | author=Grossberg, Lawrence | title=It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics, and Culture | location=Sydney | publisher=Power Publications | year=1989 | id=ISBN 0909952159
*cite book | author=Dervin, Brenda, Grossberg, Lawrence, O'Keefe, Brenda J., and Wartella, Ellen A. (eds) | title=Rethinking Communication, vol. I: Paradigm Issues | location=Thousand Oaks | publisher=Sage Publications | year=1989 | id=ISBN 0803930291
*cite book | author=Dervin, Brenda, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Wartella, Ellen A. (eds) | title=Rethinking Communication, vol. II: Paradigm Exemplars | location=Thousand Oaks | publisher=Sage Publications | year=1989 | id=ISBN 0803930313
*cite book | author=Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence, (eds) | title=Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture | location=Urbana | publisher=University of Illinois Press | year=1988 | id=ISBN 0252014014

Further reading

* [http://www.freitag.de/2000/37/00371701.htm German interview]
* [http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2006/74/grossberg.html “Being young sucks: an interview (with Lawrence Grossberg)”, "Bad Subjects" 74 (2006)]