The Cultural Industries in a Critical Multicultural Pedagogy

In higher education (HE), media studies, perhaps more than any other discipline, exemplifies the pedagogic challenges, but also the possibilities, of teaching ‘race’ and difference. The impact of Stuart Hall and his work on new ethnicities (Hall, 1996) in particular has given the study of ‘the politics of representation’ a central role within the cultural and media studies curriculum, providing a space for teachers to confront and contest students’ particular attitudes about difference, as well as potentially transform their own entrenched racialized subjectivities (Sharma, 2006). Indeed, one of the most productive elements of teaching media studies is in inspiring and encouraging students from minority backgrounds to enter the cultural industries and make their own productions — whether in television, radio, film, publishing, theatre and so on — that feature narratives and characters that challenge reductive representations of racial difference, and in the process contribute to a more progressive form of multiculture.