“…Using national communication studies journals as an index of trends, the objects of popular culture are being examined, increasingly, in terms of their global circulation (e.g., DeLuca & Peeples, 2002;Shome & Hegde, 2002a;Zacharias, 2003). The most popular approaches are drawing from, and contributing to, postcolonial theory (e.g., Kraidy, 2002;Parameswaran, 2002;Shome & Hedge, 2002), feminist and queer theory (e.g., Brookey & Westerfelhaus, 2002;Cooper, 2002;Herman, 2003;Shugart, 2003), media ecology (with a renewed interest in McLuhan and Baudrillard; e.g., Brummett, 2003;Rufo, 2003), and public sphere theory (particularly in terms of "counterpublics"; e.g., Asen, 2000;Greene, 2002;Owens & Palmer, 2003;Squires, 2002;Warner, 2002). Across the wide range of different methods used to forward these approaches, many share a focus on signs, images, aesthetics-in general, on surfaces.…”