Reading the Homeless

As one of our country's major social problems, homelessness is often in the news. The media tend to portray the homeless as drunk, stoned, crazy, or sick individualsa portrayal that is only partly accurate and represents an obstacle to our understanding of the wider social implications of this complex issue. This edited collection examines the various waysboth verbal and visualin which the homeless have been portrayed by the media from the 1980s to the present day. The contributors apply different frameworks, ranging from phenomenology to culture studies, to analyze the characteristics, implications, and consequences of the stories and images disseminated by the media.