Page 12 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

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the museum so as to rethink assumptions about the ways in which they act as
‘sites for the classification and ordering of knowledge, the production of ideol-
ogy, and the disciplining of the public.’ For Henning, new questions need to be
posed about the experiential and performative aspects of museums, that is, the
ways they transform the manner in which people attend to things, the very
sensuality of their practices of looking. At stake, as she shows, is the need not
only to fashion strategies for applying theoretical frameworks to museums, but
also to better enable museums to inform our ongoing efforts to rewrite cultural
and media studies.
The Issues in Cultural and Media Studies series aims to facilitate a diverse
range of critical investigations into pressing questions considered to be central
to current thinking and research. In light of the remarkable speed at which the
conceptual agendas of cultural and media studies are changing, the series is
committed to contributing to what is an ongoing process of re-evaluation and
critique. Each of the books is intended to provide a lively, innovative and com-
prehensive introduction to a specific topical issue from a unique perspective.
The reader is offered a thorough grounding in the most salient debates indica-
tive of the book’s subject, as well as important insights into how new modes of
enquiry may be established for future explorations. Taken as a whole, then, the
series is designed to cover the core components of cultural and media studies
courses in an imaginatively distinctive and engaging manner.

Stuart Allan