The Allure of the Archives, by Arlett Farge (Yale, 2013) A new
translation of a classic. “Originally published in 1989, Farge’s classic work
communicates the tactile, interpretive, and emotional experience of archival
research while sharing astonishing details about life under the Old Regime in
France. At once a practical guide to research methodology and an elegant literary
reflection on the challenges of writing history, this uniquely rich volume
demonstrates how surrendering to the archive’s allure can forever change how we
understand the past.” –publisher’s description
The App Generation: How Today’s Youth
Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis
(Yale, 2013). The authors “approach their subject
in a constructive spirit, providing analytical tools to distinguish among apps,
the ones that will stifle and the ones that will nurture.” –Sherry Turkle, MIT
The
Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity,
edited by Thomas Burkhalter, Kay Dickinson, and Benjamin J. Harbart (Wesleyan
University, 2013). “Investigates the plethora of compositional and
improvisational techniques, performance styles, political motivations,
professional trainings, and inter-continental collaborations that claim the
mantle of "innovation" within Arab and Arab diaspora music.”
–publisher’s description
Black
Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace (Random House,
2013). An in-depth look at the growing insecurity of the Internet…a
meticulous examination of the “malicious threats that are growing from the
inside out” and which “threaten to destroy the fragile ecosystem we have come
to take for granted.”—Adam Thierer, George Mason University
Communicating Climate
Change and Energy Security: New Methods in Understanding Audiences, by Greg Philo and
Catherine Happer (Routledge, 2013). “Examines the contemporary public debate on climate change and the
linked issue of energy security…The authors address fundamental questions about
how to adequately inform the public and develop policy in areas of great social
importance when public distrust of politicians is so widespread. The new
methods of attitudinal research pioneered here combined with the attention to
climate change have application and resonance beyond the UK. –publisher’s
description
The
Cool School: Writing from America’s Hip Underground, edited
by Glenn O’Brien (Library of America, 2013). “A kaleidoscopic guided tour
through the margins and subterranean tribes of mid-twentieth century America—the
worlds of jazz, of disaffected postwar youth, of those alienated by racial and
sexual exclusion, of outlaws and drug users creating their own dissident
networks. Whether labeled as Bop or Beat or Punk, these outsider voices ignored
or suppressed by the mainstream would merge and recombine in unpredictable
ways, and change American culture forever.” –publisher’s description
Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why
Smaller Government is Smarter,
by Ilya Somin (Stanford, 2013). "Illuminates both the extent of political
ignorance and why maintaining such ignorance is rational for voters who
recognize the near-futility of their efforts at political engagement."—Sanford
Levinson, The University of Texas Law School
The
Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism From World War II to
the Psychedelic Sixties, by Fred Turner (University
of Chicago. 2013). “A
dazzling cultural history that demonstrates how American intellectuals,
artists, and designers from the 1930s to the 1960s imagined new kinds of
collective events—different from fascism’s crowds—that were intended to promote
a powerful experience of American democracy in action. Drawing parallels across
a wide set of venues—from MoMA’s Road to Victory and Family of Man
shows of the mid-century period to the 1959 National Exhibition in Moscow to
the Happenings of the sixties counterculture, Turner challenges us to think
about the lines between information, entertainment, art, and propaganda. Along
the way he shows how important the media have become to the design of
collective experiences and forms of democratic citizenship” --Lynn Spigel,
Northwestern University
Different
Bodies: Essays on Disability in Film and Television,
edited by Marja Evelyn Mogk (McFarland, 2013). ”Collection
of 19 new essays by 21 different authors from the United States, the UK,
Canada, Australia and India focusing on contemporary film and television (1989
to the present) from those countries as well as from China, Korea, Thailand and
France.
Digital Politics in
Western Democracies: A Comparative Study by
Cristian Vaccari (Johns Hopkins, 2013). “Greatly advances our understanding of
digital politics while engaging with the wider debates in political science, as
well as media and communications studies, through rigorous comparative analysis
and engaging writing.” –Bruce Bimber, University of California, Santa Barbara
Framing
the Net: The Internet and Human Rights, by Rikke Frank
Jorgensen (Edward Elgar, 2013). “Deconstructing four key metaphors-- the Internet as infrastructure,
public sphere, medium and culture…shows where the challenges to human rights
protection online lie and how to confront them…develops clear policy proposals
for national and international Internet policy-makers, all based on human
rights.”—Wolfgang Benedek, University
of Graz, Austria
The Future of Social Movement
Research: Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes, edited by Jacquelien van
Stekelenburg, Conny Roggeband, and Bert Klandermans (University of Minnesota,
2013). “ Major, very important work which brings together the leading lights in
the international, interdisciplinary, invisible college of social movement scholars…combines
thoughtful essays on the state of the art in the study of contentious politics
with grounded speculation on the many still unanswered or incompletely answered
questions. The authors do an excellent job of distinguishing what is based on solid
empirical research and what would require additional research to answer with
confidence.” --William Gamson, Boston College
The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the
2012 Presidential Election,
by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck (Princeton, 2013). "The 2012 election was
when Moneyball defeated Game Change--and Sides and Vavreck
explain why political scientists and number-crunchers were able to forecast the
results well in advance, while the conventional wisdom was so often wrong…definitive
account of what really happened and what really mattered in the
campaign."--Nate Silver, author of
The Signal and the Noise
Hatemail, by Salo Aizenberg ( University of
Nebraska, 2013). Examines the content and usage of anti-Semitic postcards
throughout the world, especially during the pre-Holocaust years.
How
Media Inform Democracy: A Comparative Approach, edited by
Toril Aalberg and James Curran (Routledge, 2013). Leading researchers
consider how media inform democracy in six countries – the United States, the
United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
How to Watch Television, edited by Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (New York University,
2013). “Brings together
forty original essays from today’s leading scholars on television culture,
writing about the programs they care (and think) the most about. Each essay
focuses on a particular television show, demonstrating one way to read the
program and, through it, our media culture.” –publisher’s description
Listening Publics: The Politics and
Experience of Listening in the Media Age, by Kate Lacy (Polity, 2013). A
sparkling synthesis of broadcast history and social theory that is full of
original insights and nuggets from primary research...unfolds
the neglected politics and ethics of the ear. A marvelously sane plea for
listening as a key mode of participation in the public sphere." --John D. Peters, University of Iowa
Saturday Night Live and
American TV, edited by Nick Mar, Matt Sienkiewicz, and Ron Becker (Indiana
University Press, 2013). Critical assessment of the show in relation to its
media environment.
Serial
Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology, by Ruth Mayer (Temple
University Press, 2013). Chinese characters in books, movies, comic
books, and television since 1913.
Social Acceleration: A New Theory of
Modernity, by
Hartmut Rosa (Columbia, 2013).“…the most developed and most important social
theoretical analysis of the acceleration of time from the perspective of
critical theory. His theory of social acceleration is of great importance,
since it explains how our social lives are speeding up, and extends critical
theory into a new and fruitful avenue of inquiry -- and maybe even into a new
generation of social theorizing and critique.” --Jerald Wallulis, University of
South Carolina.
Social
Media and the Law: A Guidebook for Communication Students and Professions,
edited by Daxton R. Stewart (Routledge, 2013). The legal ramifications of
social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Flickr in
relation to issues of free speech, defamation, privacy, terms of use,
intellectual property, student speech, government information, obscenity,
cyberbullying, social media in courtrooms, and policies for journalist,
advertisers and public relations professionals.
Social Media in the Courtroom: A New
Era for Criminal Justice?
by Thaddeus A. Hoffmeister (ABC-Clio, 2013). Social media is now used as proof
of a crime; further, social media has become a vehicle for criminal activity.
How should the law respond to the issue of online predators, stalkers, and
identity thieves? This book comprehensively examines the complex impacts of
social media on the major players in the criminal justice system: private
citizens, attorneys, law enforcement officials, and judges. It outlines the
many ways social media affects the judicial process, citing numerous example
cases that demonstrate the legal challenges; and examines the issue from all
sides, including law enforcement's role, citizens' privacy issues, and the
principles of the Fourth Amendment. –Publisher’s website
Spam:
A Shadow History of the Internet, by Finn Brunton (MIT,
2013). “Shows
us how spam has coevolved with social media, an arms race where new communal
tools and behaviors designed to fight spam lead to new kinds of spam, which
leads to still newer tools and behaviors.” –Clay Shirky, New York University
Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age, by William Brown
(Berghahn Books, 2013). Drawing on a variety of popular films, including Avatar, Enter the
Void, Fight Club, The Matrix, Speed Racer, X-Men and War of the Worlds… studies
the ways in which digital special effects and editing techniques require a new
theoretical framework in order to be properly understood… proposes that while
analogue cinema often tried to hide the technological limitations of its
creation through ingenious methods, digital cinema hides its technological
omnipotence through the continued use of the conventions of analogue cinema. As
such, digital cinema is analogous to Superman hiding his powers behind the
persona of Clark Kent - as opposed to most other superheroes who hide their
limitation behind their superheroic alter ego. --publisher’s description
Surveillance
on Screen: Monitoring Contemporary Films and Television Programs, by
Sebastien Lefait (University of Corsica, 2013) “Drawing on the
rapidly developing field of surveillance studies, Lefait offers an in-depth
analysis of television shows and films, which complement current theoretical
approaches to those subjects. This unique combination of surveillance theories
with the latest concepts of film, television, and Internet studies is based on
a large and diversified range of popular series and films, including the shows 24,
Lost, and Survivor as well as such films as Minority Report,
Paranormal Activity, The Truman Show, and the on-screen version
of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”—publisher’s description
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