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InsUrgent Media from the Front
A Media Activism Reader
Edited by Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau
Published by: Indiana University Press
348 Pages, 21 b&w illus.
- eBook
- 9780253051400
- Published: November 2020
$39.99
- eBook
- 9780253051424
- Published: November 2020
$39.99
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In the 1940s, it was 16 mm film. In the 1980s, it was handheld video cameras. Today, it is cell phones and social media. Activists have always found ways to use the media du jour for quick and widespread distribution.
InsUrgent Media from the Front takes a look at activist media practices in the 21st century and sheds light on what it means to enact change using different media of the past and present. Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau's edited collection uses the term "insUrgent media" to highlight the ways grassroots media activists challenged and are challenging hegemonic norms like colonialism, patriarchy, imperialism, classism, and heteronormativity. Additionally, the term is used to convey the sense of urgency that defines media activism. Unlike slower traditional media, activist media has historically sacrificed aesthetics for immediacy. Consequently, this "run and gun" method of capturing content has shaped the way activist media looks throughout history.
With chapters focused on indigenous resistance, community media, and the use of media as activism throughout US history, InsUrgent Media from the Front emphasizes the wide reach media activism has had over time. Visibility is not enough when it comes to media activism, and the contributors provide examples of how to refocus the field not only to be an activist but to study activism as well.
Foreword. "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
Chris Robé is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has written two books: Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Radical Film Culture and Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas. Stephen Charbonneau is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He is author of Projecting Race: Postwar America, Civil Rights, and Documentary Film.
"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