John Fiske has passed
To those interested in Media Studies, and particularly early Cultural Studies of Television, John Fiske was a powerhouse. Sadly, he passed on July 12, 2021, due to complications following heart surgery.
Fiske revived what was then called “Telecommunications Studies” and made it become an integral part of the larger (and burgeoning) domain of Cultural Studies. Fiske wrote on television, race, and power, and is probably best known for the books Television Culture and Understanding Popular Culture, both widely used 101-level introductions.
Fiske taught at several universities in his native UK and in Australia before relocating to teach at Wisconsin. Fiske was among the first to regard television programmes as texts that could be decoded, and in this respect he was one of a number of scholars who took post-structuralist theories as crucial to their understanding of how popular cultural artifacts are made meaningful.
Here’s a quote that captures the type of cultural analysis we find in the work of Fiske and his generation (from his Wikipedia entry): “Culture (and its meanings and pleasures) is a constant succession of social practices; it is therefore inherently political, it is centrally involved in the distribution and possible redistribution of various forms of social power.”
An obituary on Fiske is available from U Wisconsin: https://commarts.wisc.edu/in-memoriam-john-fiske/.
Posted 20 Jul, 2021. Modified 7 Mar, 2025.
