Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau's edited collection InsUrgent Media from the Front: A Media Activism Reader proposes that 'visibility is clearly not enough' when it comes to media activism. Their attention to media studies' emphasis on technologies over practices helps focus media activism on an actual practice of activism rather than a detached understanding of activist media as cultural artifact. As they argue, media production, distribution, and exhibition "often serve as a means to activism rather than an ends." In an era of hactivism and slacktivism, this volume makes a powerful reminder of the purpose of media activism and its urgency today, particularly as democracy is threatened in places like India and the United States."—Dale Hudson, author of Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places
"The 'personal is political' has become so trite, it is co-opted by the right. InsUrgent Media from the Front traces the ethos of intersectional and indigenous politics historically and transnationally through the personal experiences of activists fighting to represent their struggles. It is urgent to understand the through lines of these alternative, activist and community media if we want to prevent social movements from becoming just another meme."—Vicki Mayer, author of Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans: The Lure of the Local Film Economy
Table of ContentsForeword. "Then and Now: A Comparative POV on Activist Media" by John D.H. Downing
Introduction. "Insurgent Projections" by Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau
I. US Radical Histories
1. Tanya Goldman / Men and Dust, Labor Advocacy, and Alternative Film Distribution, 1939-1942
2. Angela Aguayo / Subjugated Histories as Affective Resistance: U.S. Abortion Documentaries, Middle-Class Resistance, and Botched Political Subjectivity
3. Alexandra Juhasz and Sam Feder / Setting the Terms of Our Own Visibility: A Conversation between Sam Feder and Alexandra Juhasz on Trans Activist Media in the United States
4. Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr / Seeing What the Patrimony Didn't Save, Alternative Stewardship of the Activist Media Archive: A Conversation between Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr
II. Indigenous Resistances and Indigenous Issues in Canada, US, and Australia
5. Lisa Gye, Daniel Marcus, Oliver Vodeb, Kristy-Lee Horswood and Sam Burch / Coming to the Fire: Collaboration across Cultures in Media Activism
6. Ezra Winton / The Program(ming) is Political: Documentary, Festivals and the Politics of Programming
7. Dorothy Kidd / Mobilizing with Video in the Extractive Zone
8. Kristi Kouchakji and Jason W. Buel / Analog No More: Idle No More as Digital Nation
9. Ezra Winton / Letting it Seep In: Ojibwe Filmmaking Duo Adam and Zack Khalil
Discuss Political Filmmaking as Covert Ops
III. Community Media in the Americas and Asia
10. Ruth Goldman / Media Activism through Community: A Case Study of Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources
11. Chun Chun Ting / Community Organizing and Media Activism: The Case of v-artivist in Hong Kong*
12. Kara Andrade / WhatsApp Messaging and Murder in Mexico
13. Ben Lenzner / Film, Video, and Digital Media Activism Collection: Regional Video Activism in India—Video Volunteers, Community & Empowerment
List of Contributors
Index
