Is a university education still relevant? What are the forces that threaten it? Should academics ever be allowed near Twitter? InAcademic Diary, Les Back has chronicled three decades of his academic c
A timely exploration of whether sound and listening can be the basis of political change.In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? This timely and important book
An investigation of the future of various media industries and technologies that considers how media shape our future.How do we combat post-truth in the news? Are social media influencers the journalists of today? What is it like to live in a smart city? Does AI really change "everything"? The Future of Media investigates the future of media industries and technologies (journalism, TV, film, photography, radio, publishing, social media), while exploring how media shape our future―on a political, economic, cultural and individual level. Issues of diversity, media reform, labour, activism and art take the discussion into a wider social context. Through this, the book celebrates the importance and vitality of media in the modern world. The Future of Media is also an experiment in collaborative modes of thinking and working. Co-authored by theorists and practitioners from one of the world’s most established media departments, it offers a radical, creative and critical take on media
A memoir and cultural history the World’s End, a West London area once home to bohemian artists and punk rock and now an outpost of neoliberalism.Charlie Gere’s account of growing up in the World’s End area of West London during the Cold War combines local history, cultural history, memoir, and a strong sense of the apocalyptic. Once a rundown part of Chelsea at the wrong end of the King’s Road, the World’s End has long been a place for bohemian writers and artists, including Turner, Whistler, Beckett, Bacon, and Bacon’s muse Henrietta Moraes, all of whom evinced an appropriate apocalyptic sensibility. After World War II, in which the area suffered severe bombing, it became a center of the counterculture that emerged from what Jeff Nuttall called “Bomb Culture,” formed by the threat of nuclear annihilation. The famous boutique Granny Takes a Trip opened there in 1966, joined later on by Hung On You, Puss Weber’s Flying Dragon Tea Room, and the commune Gandalf’s Garden. The area also
A critical and evidence-based account of the COVID-19 pandemic as a political–economic rupture, exposing underlying power struggles and social injustices.Unprecedented? tells the story of the COVID-19 pandemic as one of political–economic rupture, where the basic fabric of economic and political rules was torn up and underlying power struggles and social injustices were exposed. Focusing on the case of Britain, but with lessons for all countries, this book offers a critical and evidence-based account of unprecedented events. In early 2020, many of the most basic building blocks of capitalism were transformed in a matter of weeks, thanks to the novel coronavirus. Workplaces and schools were closed, governments took on unprecedented debt, and new technologies had to be rapidly procured and rolled out in an effort to achieve control over the pandemic. Meanwhile, lurking inequalities―of class, race, gender, and geography―were deepened and exposed in new ways, and populations became
What does it mean to be a liberal in neoliberal times? This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a h
A sophisticated critical take on contemporary game culture that reconsiders the boundaries between gamers and games.This book is not about the future of video games. It is not an attempt to predict th
Exploring sex—bodily capacities, appetites, orientations, and connections—in terms of play and playfulness.We all know that sex involves a quest for pleasure, that sexual palates vary across people's
How forty-one women—including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne—were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s “Red Scare.”At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women
An innovative new anthology exploring how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics.From the libertarian economics of Ayn Rand to Aldous Huxley's consumerist dystopias, economics and sc
