Popular Culture Genres

Arthur Asa Berger is Professor Emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught between 1965 and 2003. He has published more than 100 articles, numerous book reviews, and more than 60 books. Among his latest books are the third edition of Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (2013), The Academic Writer’s Toolkit: A User’s Manual (2008), What Objects Mean: An Introduction to Material Culture (2009), Bali Tourism (2013), Tourism in Japan: An Ethno-Semiotic Analysis (2010), The Culture Theorist’s Book of Quotations (2010), and The Objects of Our Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture (2010). He has also written a number of academic mysteries such as Durkheim is Dead: Sherlock Holmes is Introduced to Sociological Theory (2003) and Mistake in Identity: A Cultural Studies Murder Mystery (2005). His books have been translated into eight languages and thirteen of his books have been translated into Chinese.

• PART ONE: THEORIESOn the Structure of GenresPropp, de Saussure and the NarrativeFormulas and TextsGenre TheoryGenre, Society and CultureThe Classical MysteryA Case StudyPART TWO: TEXTSMurder on the Orient Expressf003 The Maltese FalconThe Hard-Boiled Detective Novelf003 Dr Nof003 War of the WorldsFrankensteinThe New PrometheusConclusions