Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Henry Jenkins is Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California. He is the author or coauthor of twenty books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, and By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism.Gabriel Peters-Lazaro is Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts where he researches, designs and produces digital media for innovative learning. His current research interests include civic imagination and hypercinemas. He is a practicing documentary filmmaker and his courses deal with critical media making and theory.Sangita Shresthova is the Director of Research of Civic Paths@USC. Her previous books include By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (with Henry Jenkins et al.) and Is it All About Hips?: Around the World With Bollywood Dance.

An exceptionally well-conceived and thoughtfully assembled collection that resuscitates a cultural studies oriented toward the popular, in service of politically urgent questions about agency and resources for imagining otherwise. Across a wide array of case studies that span genres, media, and geopolitical contexts, the entries in this volume build on each other in a rich and versatile way. - Eva Cherniavsky, author of Neocitizenship: Political Culture after Democracy Raises timely, critical questions and provides creative answers to this current moment in US history ... The essays thus function as a handbook for how individuals and groups can find creative collaborative approaches to crystallize their aspirations for a better society. This collection is a useful resource for scholars and advanced students in media studies, critical cultural studies, social movements, and sociology. (CHOICE)