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Lawrence Grossberg
Lawrence Grossberg is an American scholar of cultural studies and theories of culture. He helped introduce and define cultural studies—an interdisciplinary intellectual study of the intersections of culture and power through practices of contextuality, complexity, and contingency—into the United States. His theoretical works attempt to bring together the constructionists of Stuart Hall, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
He was among the first academic intellectuals to take seriously the challenges of understanding the relations of popular music and post-war youth cultures. His argument that popular music worked through uniquely “affective” forms of communication—and his attempts to theorize affect—helped open the concept to broader and more rigorous study and debate.
In cultural studies, his work focuses on the relations of popular and political cultures. He has produced a series of studies that attempt to offer what he calls "better stories" about the changing political culture and conjunctural struggles of the U.S. since the 1960s. These studies follow the contests among various conservative, reactionary, and progressive political movements—and the affective logics driving them—to construct livable stories around crises of modernity. He argues that the contemporary post-war American conjuncture, especially its (increasingly affective) political culture, has been shaped by two distinct organic crises. Grossberg argues that both these crises problematize liberalism and modernity in the face of their presumed failures. The first seeks what Grossberg calls "better ways of being modern"; the second seeks ways of being something other than modern. The first accepts the modern project; the second rejects it.
Lawrence Grossberg was born on December 3, 1947. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in an upwardly mobile, second-generation immigrant Jewish family, suffering from a congenital orthopedic disability. He attended 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, Richard Taylor, and Lewis Beck. Afterwards, he studied with 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 United States for doctoral studies at the Institute of Communications Research, with James W. Carey, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Research in 1976. His dissertation was an attempt to bring together Martin Heidegger's phenomenology and the work of key cultural studies figures.
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. At the University of Illinois, he helped found the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994 as the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, where he also held appointments in American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography. There he helped establish the University Program in Cultural Studies. He retired as Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Communication in 2022.
In 1988, Grossberg married Barbara Anne Claypole White and in 1994, their son, Zachariah Nigel Claypole White was born (with Stuart Hall as one of his godparents). Barbara is novelist; Zachariah is a poet and short-story writer.
Grossberg has published 11 books and more than 250 essays and interviews, and has edited ten books in English. Internationally, he is recognized as one of the leading figures in cultural studies. He edited the international journal Cultural Studies for thirty years (1990‒2019) and has served on more than forty editorial boards. He was a founding member of the Association for Cultural Studies and an invited founding member of the Global University. He has lectured all over the world.
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Lawrence Grossberg
Lawrence Grossberg is an American scholar of cultural studies and theories of culture. He helped introduce and define cultural studies—an interdisciplinary intellectual study of the intersections of culture and power through practices of contextuality, complexity, and contingency—into the United States. His theoretical works attempt to bring together the constructionists of Stuart Hall, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
He was among the first academic intellectuals to take seriously the challenges of understanding the relations of popular music and post-war youth cultures. His argument that popular music worked through uniquely “affective” forms of communication—and his attempts to theorize affect—helped open the concept to broader and more rigorous study and debate.
In cultural studies, his work focuses on the relations of popular and political cultures. He has produced a series of studies that attempt to offer what he calls "better stories" about the changing political culture and conjunctural struggles of the U.S. since the 1960s. These studies follow the contests among various conservative, reactionary, and progressive political movements—and the affective logics driving them—to construct livable stories around crises of modernity. He argues that the contemporary post-war American conjuncture, especially its (increasingly affective) political culture, has been shaped by two distinct organic crises. Grossberg argues that both these crises problematize liberalism and modernity in the face of their presumed failures. The first seeks what Grossberg calls "better ways of being modern"; the second seeks ways of being something other than modern. The first accepts the modern project; the second rejects it.
Lawrence Grossberg was born on December 3, 1947. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in an upwardly mobile, second-generation immigrant Jewish family, suffering from a congenital orthopedic disability. He attended 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, Richard Taylor, and Lewis Beck. Afterwards, he studied with 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 United States for doctoral studies at the Institute of Communications Research, with James W. Carey, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Research in 1976. His dissertation was an attempt to bring together Martin Heidegger's phenomenology and the work of key cultural studies figures.
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. At the University of Illinois, he helped found the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994 as the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, where he also held appointments in American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography. There he helped establish the University Program in Cultural Studies. He retired as Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Communication in 2022.
In 1988, Grossberg married Barbara Anne Claypole White and in 1994, their son, Zachariah Nigel Claypole White was born (with Stuart Hall as one of his godparents). Barbara is novelist; Zachariah is a poet and short-story writer.
Grossberg has published 11 books and more than 250 essays and interviews, and has edited ten books in English. Internationally, he is recognized as one of the leading figures in cultural studies. He edited the international journal Cultural Studies for thirty years (1990‒2019) and has served on more than forty editorial boards. He was a founding member of the Association for Cultural Studies and an invited founding member of the Global University. He has lectured all over the world.