in Journalism and Mass Communication
Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror. Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 249 pp.
The cover art of Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror might lead the reader to believe that the book will examine American pop culture for military influences. Instead, the book offers a subjective look into U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the motivation behind America’s wars. [Read more...]
Faith, Politics & Press in Our Perilous Times. Stephen Burgard, ed. New York: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 2010. 178 pp.
For many years the religion beat was the least popular assignment of all. Editors routinely handed it to cub reporters. But times have changed. Religion is now in the news, and reporting on religion has become a challenge to the knowledge, empathy, and writing skills of journalists.
The twelve essays in this book exhibit this change. Most of the authors, many now teaching in American journalism schools, have “been there” as reporters, editors, and students of the kaleidoscopic worlds of religion. [Read more...]
Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Jodi Dean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 232 pages.
Jodi Dean is a multitasker. She teaches political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the Erasmus Professor of the Humanities at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is also a critical scholar worthy of the title. Rather than following the well-worn path of criticism directed at the “powers that be,” Dean directs her attention toward the infirmities within and among critics and activists on the political left in the United States. At the heart of her critique is her suggestion that the once-sharp edges of social movement vanguards have been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she defines as the essence of “communicative capitalism.” [Read more...]
