Random Acts Of Culture

An unsentimental, optimistic book about the art of living in apocalyptic times.

This culturally and politically timely collection examines new Black films and moving images that have, once again, excited and possibly shifted the global media landscape. At a moment some scholars have described as post-post-racial, Black Cinema & Visual Culture provides new, urgent definitions and theories for Black cinema and furthers the development of its critical discourses. Gathering some of the leading scholars and critics in the field, this book enriches and advances the study of Black film and media and its social and political implications at a breakthrough period of expansion in the 21st century. This anthology tackles a wide range of topics from social justice, new media, and Afrofuturism, to race, gender, sexuality, mass incarceration, cultural memory, and Afrosurrealism, exploring the current climate of Black cinematic art that has proven wildly popular with domestic and global audiences, including hit films like Get Out and Marvel’s Black Panther. Together, these essays deepen understandings of Black visual culture, its creative image-makers, the political economy of Hollywood, and the cultural politics at the intersection of modern cinema, streaming platforms, and digital technologies. Black Cinema & Visual Culture will serve as an important learning tool for university courses spanning topics in film studies, American film and television, cultural studies, American studies, African Diaspora studies, media activism, social analysis, and African-American studies. This volume will also provide a benchmark in popular and intellectual circles for anyone interested in popular culture, Black-American cinema, media, issues of race in Hollywood, or Black culture and the conditions that shape both its art and politics.

From YouTube's Head of Culture and Trends, a rousing and illuminating behind-the-scenes exploration of internet video's massive impact on our world. Whether your favorite YouTube video is a cat on a Roomba, “Gangnam Style,” the “Bed Intruder” song, an ASAPscience explainer, Rebecca Black's “Friday,” or the “Evolution of Dance,” Kevin Allocca's Videocracy reveals how these beloved videos and famous trends--and many more--came to be and why they mean more than you might think. YouTube is the biggest pool of cultural data since the beginning of recorded communication, with four hundred hours of video uploaded every minute. (It would take you more than sixty-five years just to watch the vlogs, music videos, tutorials, and other content posted in a single day!) This activity reflects who we are, in all our glory and ignominy. As Allocca says, if aliens wanted to understand our planet, he'd give them Google. If they wanted to understand us, he'd give them YouTube. In Videocracy, Allocca lays bare what YouTube videos say about our society and how our actions online--watching, sharing, commenting on, and remixing the people and clips that captivate us--are changing the face of entertainment, advertising, politics, and more. Via YouTube, we are fueling social movements, enforcing human rights, and redefining art--a lot more than you'd expect from a bunch of viral clips.

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of what has been achieved in the field to date and what might be expected in the future. This handbook addresses community music through five focused lenses: contexts, transformations, politics, intersections, and education. The contributors to this handbook outline community music's common values that center on social justice, human rights, cultural democracy, participation, and hospitality from a range of different cultural contexts and perspectives.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year: In a dystopian future New York, a girl’s diary chronicles her life as society begins to crumble around her. Until recently, Lola Hart’s biggest problem was her annoying little sister. Now the twelve-year-old girl’s once comfortable life is slowly falling apart. Her mother is a teacher, but she’s lost her job. Her father is a writer, but no one is buying his scripts. It’s gotten so bad that they can no longer afford their Manhattan apartment or the tuition for Lola’s exclusive private school. They move to a small apartment near Harlem, and Lola enrolls in public school—but the Harts aren’t alone in their troubles. Riots, fires, TB outbreaks, roaming gangs, and civil unrest have become commonplace, threatening the very fabric of life in New York. In the pages of her diary, Lola documents her family’s attempts to adjust as the city and the country spin out of control. Jack Womack, a winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, has been compared to both William Gibson and Kurt Vonnegut for his vivid prose and unbridled imagination. In this novel, “Womack’s stark vision of the United States’s decline is an uncompromising satire that, perhaps even more than it did in the mid-1990s, forces us to confront a world instantly recognizable as our own” (Los Angeles Review of Books). “A heartrending coming-of-age story. Flecked with black humor, this is speculative fiction at its eerie best.” —Entertainment Weekly

I have chosen a number of pivotal events and experiences in my life as a vehicle to shine light upon actions that provided me not a hand out, but a hand up. Some of these actions may have been insignificant or perhaps even trivial on the part of those whose actions mean so much to me. That is precisely my point. Effective care and human involvement does not necessarily need to be complicated or intentional. These times can come in the simplest of moments. These actions for me have brought rich purpose, hope and value and meaning to my life. The care I have given to others has simply been a reflection of those who have given to me. But, perhaps more marvelously, they are a glowing reflection of the God who first loves us.

Goat Island are one of the world’s leading contemporary performance ensembles. Their intimate, low-tech, intensely physical performances represent a unique hybrid of strategies and techniques drawn from live art, experimental theatre and postmodern dance. Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island, is the first book to document and critique the company’s performances, processes, politics, aesthetics, and philosophies. It reflects on the company’s work through the critical lens of ecology – an emerging and urgent concern in performance studies and elsewhere. This collage text combines and juxtaposes writing by company members and arts commentators, to look in detail at Goat Island’s distinctive collaborative processes and the reception of their work in performance. The book includes a section of practical workshop exercises and thoughts on teaching drawn from the company’s extensive experience, providing an invaluable classroom resource. By documenting the creative processes of this extraordinary company, this book will make an important contribution to the critical debates surrounding contemporary performance practices. In so doing, it pays compelling tribute to committed art-making, creativity, collaboration, and the nature of the possible.

Leading School Culture through Teacher Voice and Agency helps school leaders uncover, understand, and build the skill set to engage teachers in the work of school culture as they navigate the changes needed to improve the achievement for all students. This book presents a Framework for School Culture that explores how school culture, when acted upon through teacher voice and agency, is an untapped resource that can move schools forward. By supporting teacher voice and agency, the school and its teachers and leaders move toward taking collective responsibility for sustaining a culture of improvement that is stronger and more responsive. This research-grounded book is rich in practical tools to help leaders work with teachers, ensuring all the educators in a school are taking ownership over their own learning and developing the skills to reshape school culture to ensure students, teachers, and community members thrive.