Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479847208
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Winner, 2021 Ray and Pat Browne Edited Collection Award, given by the Popular Culture Association How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

By Any Media Necessary

By Any Media Necessary PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479899984
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
"There is a widespread perception that the foundations of American democracy are dysfunctional and little is likely to emerge from traditional politics that will shift those conditions. Youth are often seen as emblematic of this crisis--frequently represented as uninterested in political life and ill-informed about current-affairs. By Any Media Necessary offers a profoundly different picture of contemporary American youth. Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication, such as social media platforms and spreadable videos and memes, seeking to bring about political change--by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements--from the Harry Potter Alliance, which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise, to immigration-rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles--By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth."--Book jacket.

Art and the City

Art and the City PDF Author: Sarah Schrank
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204107
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
"Art and the City" explores the contentious relationship between civic politics and visual culture in Los Angeles. Struggles between civic leaders and modernist artists to define civic identity and control public space highlight the significance of the arts as a site of political contest in the twentieth century.

Popular Culture in the Ancient World

Popular Culture in the Ancient World PDF Author: Lucy Grig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107074894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
This book adopts a new approach to the classical world by focusing on ancient popular culture.

Practicing Futures

Practicing Futures PDF Author: Gabriel Peters-Lazaro
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781433161803
Category : Civics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Practicing Futures: A Civic Imagination Action Handbook is a practical guide for community leaders, educators, creative professionals and change-makers who want to sharpen their visions for the future and understandings of the how the past affects them.

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight PDF Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520248112
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness

Performance in Popular Culture

Performance in Popular Culture PDF Author: Sharon Mazer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100093442X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Performance in Popular Culture reveals the intricate relationship between performance and popular culture by exploring how theatrical conventions and dramaturgical tropes have informed the way the social is constructed for popular consumption. Staged as a series of case studies, this book considers the diverse ways the social is imagined and produced in live and mediated performances, in images and texts, in interactive experiences and in cultural institutions. By looking at performance in popular culture, the world we live in becomes more visible, open to investigation and (perhaps) to change. Performance in Popular Culture engages a wide range of disciplines and theoretical frameworks: performance, theatre and cultural studies; comparative literature and media studies; gender and sexuality, critical race and post-colonial theories. Designed for accessibility at an undergraduate level, the case studies make use of visual materials, moving images and texts that are readily available to lecturers and students, to scholars and to the general public.

Popular Culture, Social Media, and the Politics of Identity

Popular Culture, Social Media, and the Politics of Identity PDF Author: William Clapton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040223389
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Popular Culture, Social Media, and the Politics of Identity advances a novel methodological approach – pop culture as political object – to capture the centrality of popular culture as an object of a broad range of political contests and debates that constitute pop culture artefacts by generating and informing specific meanings and understandings of them. It is no longer novel to claim that popular culture matters to world politics. The literature on Popular Culture and World Politics (PCWP) has demonstrated the cultural basis of political action and meaning-making. However, this book argues that in doing so, the PCWP literature has focused primarily on the traditionally narrow range of issues, actors, and things that mainstream International Relations regards as part of world politics. While PCWP challenges restrictive disciplinary understandings of the sites of legitimate inquiry where one can purposefully gain knowledge about world politics, comparatively little has been done to challenge constricted understandings of what world politics is, who it involves, and where it takes place. Methodological approaches in the literature largely treat popular culture and politics as separate and therefore focus on understanding how popular culture relates to and intersects with a relatively circumscribed notion of world politics. Focusing on the everyday politics of how audiences perceive and contest popular cultural artefacts, this book demonstrates that pop culture does not merely intersect with or reflect discrete political processes; it is also directly situated as an object of politics. The author analyses current debates over identity politics across a range of contemporary pop cultural artefacts, including films and video games. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, Political Science, and Cultural and Media Studies.

Music Making and Civic Imagination

Music Making and Civic Imagination PDF Author: Dave Camlin
Publisher: Intellect Books
ISBN: 178938804X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
In a world facing multiple existential crises, music might be seen as little more than a distraction. However, in this synthesis of ideas developed over a decade, a timely re-appraisal of the potential of musicing for human flourishing is presented, emphasising its role in the history of human evolution alongside its potential as a resource for sustainable development. A holistic philosophy of music is outlined which recognises the complex web of meaning which spreads across complementary musical dimensions of performance and participation, whilst emphasising the ‘paramusical’ benefits which arise from both. Highlighting the notion that the social bonds which arise from musicing share much of the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment and love, musicing is presented as a resource with the potential for facilitating ethical human connection. The humanistic values which are thereby materialised during musicing – love, reciprocity and justice – form the experiential grounds for inhabiting alternative social realities. The book addresses how such a holistic philosophy of music might be implemented in practice, drawing on the author’s professional praxis as a performer, educator, community musician, composer and researcher, in particular their experience of musician education at Sage Gateshead, Royal College of Music and Trinity-Laban Conservatoire in the UK.