Books that Changed Humanity 2021: Subculture: The Meaning of Style

Professor Chris McAuliffe, Head of the ANU Centre for Art History & Art Theory and Sir William Dobell Chair, presenting online at the ANU Humanities Research Centre’s 2021 Books that Changed Humanity Series. Youth culture, pop art, cultural studies, style – Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style was an influential early text in the march of cultural studies, but it was also very influential on artists and art criticism, and in fact Hebdige ended up teaching in art school in the US. Professor Chris McAuliffe expands on the text’s multi-directional impact, in which artists themselves were ahead of him in exploring visual cultures of youth subcultures, while he overtook them in scope and the resonance of his ideas.