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The World is a Text: Writing About Visual and Popular Culture: Updated Compact Edition
A compact, writing-focused new edition of this popular guide to writing about visual and popular culture.
From the Back Cover
The World Is a Text is a popular composition textbook devoted to helping students to understand a variety of non-traditional texts and develop their skills as creators of texts. It teaches critical reading, writing, and argument in the context of pop-culture and visual examples, showing students how to “read” everyday objects and visual texts. The book shows show how texts of all kinds, from a painting to a university building to a pair of sneakers, make complex arguments through their use of semiotics, and shows students how to make these arguments in their own essays. This new compact edition is rich with images, real-world examples, writing and discussion prompts, and examples of student writing.
New to the edition are chapters on fashion, sports, and nature and the environment.
From the Back Cover
The World Is a Text is a popular composition textbook devoted to helping students to understand a variety of non-traditional texts and develop their skills as creators of texts. It teaches critical reading, writing, and argument in the context of pop-culture and visual examples, showing students how to “read” everyday objects and visual texts. The book shows show how texts of all kinds, from a painting to a university building to a pair of sneakers, make complex arguments through their use of semiotics, and shows students how to make these arguments in their own essays. This new compact edition is rich with images, real-world examples, writing and discussion prompts, and examples of student writing.
New to the edition are chapters on fashion, sports, and nature and the environment.
300 pages, Paperback
First published December 2, 2002
7 people are currently reading
206 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Silverman
11 booksJonathan Silverman is a professor of English at UMass Lowell. He is the editor of Astros and Asterisks: The Houston Sign-Stealing Scandal, Explained.
He is the co-author with Michael Hinds of Johnny Cash International: How and Why the World Loves the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), which is the winner of the 2023 Peggy O'Brien Book Prize.
He is also author of Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010); the co-author with Dean Rader of The World Is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking about Culture and Its Contexts (Pearson/Broadview, 2002-2018, five editions); and the co-editor with Meghan Sweeney of Remaking the American College Campus (McFarland, 2016).
He has served as the Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway (2007-2008) and was a John H. Daniels fellow at the National Sporting Library (2013-2014).
He has published articles on horse racing in The Cambridge Companion to Horseracing, The Journal of Sport History, Poor Yorick, Post, and The End of Austin as part of a larger work on horse racing in progress. He has published work in Prospects, Kugelmass, The Rumpus, The Journal of the American West, and The Journal of Radicalism, and wrote for PBS’s website, Remotely Connected.
He is the co-author with Michael Hinds of Johnny Cash International: How and Why the World Loves the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), which is the winner of the 2023 Peggy O'Brien Book Prize.
He is also author of Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010); the co-author with Dean Rader of The World Is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking about Culture and Its Contexts (Pearson/Broadview, 2002-2018, five editions); and the co-editor with Meghan Sweeney of Remaking the American College Campus (McFarland, 2016).
He has served as the Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway (2007-2008) and was a John H. Daniels fellow at the National Sporting Library (2013-2014).
He has published articles on horse racing in The Cambridge Companion to Horseracing, The Journal of Sport History, Poor Yorick, Post, and The End of Austin as part of a larger work on horse racing in progress. He has published work in Prospects, Kugelmass, The Rumpus, The Journal of the American West, and The Journal of Radicalism, and wrote for PBS’s website, Remotely Connected.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 30, 2018
This was an interesting, relevant textbook that I actually enjoyed reading.
August 15, 2018
As a textbook, I find the second half, which is dedicated to breaking down specific types of cultural analysis, far more used to rhetoric and composition instructors than the first. I feel that the book is easily accessible, although the pop culture references do skew more towards a white Western audience, and circumvents the kind of dense prose that can make textbooks so alienating to college students. The first section though, in this current edition, contains some questionable terminology, misinformation, and somewhat prescriptive writing pedagogy that could dissuade rhetoric and composition instructors from utilizing the book in their classes.
December 3, 2008
My essay "'La Femme Veronica': Intelligence as Power in Veronica Mars" is in here!
August 14, 2021
Beautiful book, a must read for anyone interested in pop culture!
February 23, 2025
An excellent introduction to understanding images from a cultural studies perspective; however, it would work better with images as exemplary throughout the text.
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May 14, 20147 of 7
July 6, 2016
Read this for my English class and it was fun to read all the different essays that are in here.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews