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[gravityslips]

I'm teaching a First Year Seminar class on subcultures and I spent the last 3 months looking for a good text to use and coming up empty handed.  I was hoping for something that would be more about the idea of a subculture and less about a particular subculture, but everything I've found in that direction has been either too theoretical for the kind of class it is or too much a bad attempt at humor that it ends up being very dismissive of subcultures in general.

So now I'm broadening my search and considering fiction as well, but my own and research interests in the area are fairly narrow and I'm not sure what else is out there.  Any ideas?

I've also considered just dropping some money on a wide assortment of zines and distributing them, but that seems like it would cause some planning difficulties in terms of discussion...

[mountainguy]

Can you clarify how you're defining "subcultural"?? I can think of a couple of different meanings.

[gravityslips]

The course itself is sort of about the lifecycle of a subculture - why one originates, what it is in response to, its relationship to the mainstream, and its lasting power.  One of the things we're going to do as a class is figure out our parameters for the definition, so it's hard to give a more specific answer.

[neutralname]

You have now explained why you looked for 3 months for a suitable text with no positive result.  You have an ill-defined idea which is "sort of about the lifecycle of a subculture."  And this is for a first year undergraduate seminar, starting in a few weeks time.  You are thinking about using some 'zines.

It is hard to imagine how the course won't be a disaster.  You seem to have little idea of what sorts of things you want them to read.  Are you going to use Dick Hebdige, Pierre Bourdieu, or Stuart Hall?  I don't recommend it.  Will you have just sociology majors or a mixture of students? -- normally first year classes are a mixture. 

I'd ditch all the theoretical aspirations and maybe do some compare and contrast: train spotting and BDSM subcultures.  Wikipedia lists Gothic Lolita - that would be fun too.  That way, they will have some fond memories of the course.

[gravityslips]

Fair enough, but it's not quite as ill-defined and conceived as it seems in this post.  I've been working on the details of how to make this class work with the other members of my cohort for the last few months, but I'm just not finding an actual book that I like for a course reading that isn't a Dick Hedige or Stuart Hall type.  I'm not lacking in ideas or materials or things to hopefully give them fond memories of the class, just a common course reading.  It's not even a requirement, but I wouldn't be satisfied until I'd explored all my options. 

[gravityslips]

To further clarify, I've been hesitant to choose a book that focuses on a single subculture because of how I've chosen to structure the class, but I'm realizing now that perhaps I shouldn't rule that out.  I have a space in my schedule that I've reserved near the end of the semester in case I find a good novel or something we could read and discuss and apply what we will have been discussing - something modern but that deals with aspects of belonging to a subculture (any subculture) in a fairly direct way.

A friend suggested a lead for a novel about gaming, so I'm going to look into that, but I'm just looking for other options.

[academic_cog]

Something about a subculture? Here, how's this?

Goth: undead subculture
 By Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Michael Bibby (2007).

Do you have a specific _place_ or _time_ or even something specific you want students to get out of it? You're not giving us much guidance to go on.

[gravityslips]

I actually considered that book, academic_cog.  I'm sorry for not giving much to go on, but that's partially because I don't know everything that's out there and I was interested to see if anyone had any ideas that I haven't looked into already.

At one point I'd planned on using the novel Punk by Gideon Sams because the story isn't explicitly about being punk, but there are all these great little moments and descriptions that show insight into the experience of identifying as such.  But it's not an easy book to get 22 copies of because it's out of print and wasn't widely distributed in the first place.  But that's just one example of the sort of book that could work with the class.

As to what I want students to get out of it, I want them to see the theories and principles we'll be studying come to life in something other than class discussion.   I'm beginning to think a film might be easier.

[aldara]

How about a documentary like this one (Dogtown and Z Boys, about origins of skateboarding and its subsequent mass popularization...it would really hit that "relationship to the mainstream" -death AS a subculture?- part of the lifecycle):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275309/

There is a Hollywood remake of the "story," but the documentary is way better.  

If you want to do the punk thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_State_of_Mind_%28film%29

I like this one because they interview a lot of young people in the scene.  

[mountainguy]

The term "subculture" itself is problematic. At this point, I would suggest using the term "cultural identity" instead as your keyword focus. Our cultural studies people like to assign memoir/biography at the 100 level, because it's generally accessible to first-year students and can be broadly related to different academic theories and genres. One memoir that I recommend is Packinghouse Daughter, which deals with working-class culture and a strike at a meatpacking plant in 1959 Minnesota. The book intersects nicely with social movement theory and discussions about class-based privilege.

For more academic prose, you might also want to take a look at Alice Echols' Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture and Shaky Ground: The Sixties and its Aftershocks. Both books are probably too dense to be assigned in totality to first-year students, but there are some useful chapters about the significance of music in cultural change.

[academic_cog]

For documentaries, I liked _American Hardcore_ ... but if you are squeamish about loud angry guys dropping the f-bomb every five minutes, it might not be good for classroom use. :)

Actually, there are *so many* good/interesting/entertaining documentaries of pop music subcultures that I'm not sure I'd be able to help you narrow it down without some more help ... would you want a specific time or place? To show the success of a subculture? The death of a subculture? A more "progressive" or "political" subculture or maybe one that is more "retrograde" (I'm thinking of the "soccer hooligan" brawls over in England because of the riots over there right now)? To represent a certain racial or ethnic minority that hasn't been covered as much in the rest of the class (or girls --- they tend to get ignored in subcultural studies)?

Oh, and as I was looking for more examples I found out that we are post-subcultural now:

The Post-Subcultures Reader [Paperback]
David Muggleton (Editor), Rupert Weinzierl (Editor) (2004).

[ex_mo]

Oh, and as I was looking for more examples I found out that we are post-subcultural now:

The Post-Subcultures Reader [Paperback]
David Muggleton (Editor), Rupert Weinzierl (Editor) (2004).

Or, the book this book is trying to be "post" of:  The Subcultures Reader (1997) edited by Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton.

You could also try Club Cultures and Female Subjectivity by Maria Pini, The Clubcultures Reader edited by Redhead, Club Cultures by Sarah Thorton, or if you want to focus on British (and maybe a little American) rave culture, Generation Ecstasy by Simon Reynolds is a good one.  I have stacks of books about rave culture, most of them suck. 

[prytania3]

The Last Days of Disco: with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards by Whit Stillman.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-days-of-disco-with-cocktails-at-petrossian-afterwards-stillman/1030164223

There's also the movie The Last Days of Disco, which is absolutely fabu.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120728/


It looks at the last days of the Studio 54 subculture. Check out the movie at least.

Don't go with boring crap.

I was there with the punks and the Studio54 crowd. The punks were fun--but a bit repetitive. Studio54 crowd was more interesting.