Lawrence Grossberg: Under the Cover of Chaos

"We treated Reagan, we treated Bush, and we treat Trump too often as if they're idiots. I have no idea whether they are or not, but I don't think that it's a good strategy to assume your opponent is an idiot."

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Lawrence Grossberg discusses his book Under the Cover of Chaos: Trump and the Battle for the American Right with Chris Richardson. Grossberg is the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (since 1994), and he has held additional appointments in American Studies, Anthropology and Geography. He studied at the University of Rochester (with Hayden White and Richard Taylor), the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Birmingham, England, with Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart) and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois (with James W. Carey) in 1976.

He was the editor of the journal Cultural Studies from 1990 through 2018. He has published ten books and edited another eleven, as well as over 250 essays and dozens of interviews, in English. His work has been translated into twenty languages and additionally, he has published numerous original books and essays in other languages, and lectures all over the world. He has advised over fifty doctoral students, and been honored for his scholarship, teaching and mentorship by the International Communication Association, the (U.S.) National Communication Association, the Association for Cultural Studies, and the University of North Carolina.

His work has addressed a wide range of questions especially the specificity of cultural studies, developments in contemporary theory, the affective nature of the popular, and the changing political culture of the U.S. He has approached these in writings on: U.S. popular music, youth culture and politics; the construction of kids as a political field; value theory: struggles over modernities; the state of progressive oppositions and countercultures; and post-war reconfigurations of the conservative and reactionary rights.

In 2019, Under the Cover of Chaos won the National Communication Association’s Diamond Anniversary Book Award. His other recent books include Cultural Studies In the Future Tense, We All Want to Change the World (available free online), Under the Cover of Chaos, and (co-edited) Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies 1983.