Urban Communication

ISSN: 2153-1404

Cities are inherently places of communication, meeting spaces for interaction and/or observation. The nature of any communication venue is altered by social and technological circumstances and the urban environment is altered, in turn, by changes in communication patterns. We need to understand relationships among these significant forces – communication, technology, and the urban, suburban, rural environment – as they shape each other. Communication systems and urban social systems can be examined at multiple levels as scholars and planners examine interaction in public spaces, neighborhood communication patterns, and urban systems of transport. The focus of this series is on social relationships in a swiftly changing communication environment. Media coverage of urban issues, conflict resolution and contested urban space, visual communication, rhetorical dimensions of urban life, film and the city, journalism, the ethnic press, local media and public policy are just some areas of relevance. Volumes in this series provide a forum to explore and discuss the challenges created by the intersection of communication and urban life, focusing on what communication scholarship has to offer for enhanced understanding of cities and for the development of a public policy that takes into account communication needs and practices.

14 publications

Gender, Sexuality, and Culture

This new series is a forum for the investigation and analysis of the contested terrain between culture, gender, and sexuality. Titles in the series can include, but are not limited to, (re)theorizations of gender in relation to, or its constitution through, sexuality, race, dass, or culture, studies of sexuality and sexual identity that produce new understandings of gender, or new inquiries into culture, broadly defined, that raise competting implications for the ways in which we think about gender and sexuality in the contemporary social world. Of particular interest are manuscripts that cirtique and/or broaden traditional constructions of gender and take into account sexuality, race, dass, or the pressures of other constitutive categories, analyze nonwestern literary and cultural representations of gender and their relationship to sexuality, especially in postcolonial contexts, and theorize transgender from feminist, queer, postcolonial, or cultural studies frameworks. This new series is a forum for the investigation and analysis of the contested terrain between culture, gender, and sexuality. Titles in the series can include, but are not limited to, (re)theorizations of gender in relation to, or its constitution through, sexuality, race, dass, or culture, studies of sexuality and sexual identity that produce new understandings of gender, or new inquiries into culture, broadly defined, that raise competting implications for the ways in which we think about gender and sexuality in the contemporary social world. Of particular interest are manuscripts that cirtique and/or broaden traditional constructions of gender and take into account sexuality, race, dass, or the pressures of other constitutive categories, analyze nonwestern literary and cultural representations of gender and their relationship to sexuality, especially in postcolonial contexts, and theorize transgender from feminist, queer, postcolonial, or cultural studies frameworks. This new series is a forum for the investigation and analysis of the contested terrain between culture, gender, and sexuality. Titles in the series can include, but are not limited to, (re)theorizations of gender in relation to, or its constitution through, sexuality, race, dass, or culture, studies of sexuality and sexual identity that produce new understandings of gender, or new inquiries into culture, broadly defined, that raise competting implications for the ways in which we think about gender and sexuality in the contemporary social world. Of particular interest are manuscripts that cirtique and/or broaden traditional constructions of gender and take into account sexuality, race, dass, or the pressures of other constitutive categories, analyze nonwestern literary and cultural representations of gender and their relationship to sexuality, especially in postcolonial contexts, and theorize transgender from feminist, queer, postcolonial, or cultural studies frameworks.

8 publications

Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry

In recent years, critical researchers, educators, and activists have become aware of the problems and limitations that have resulted by placing the ‘human’ at the center of all societal conceptualizations, concerns, and practices. Across fields, ranging from medical research laboratory practices—to the construction of the humanities—to the social sciences—to environmental studies (just to name a few), this anthropocentric focus is being called to question. The goal of this book series is to provide scholars and readers with critical opportunities to contest this anthropocentrism, (1) by creating a textual field of Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry that generates critical spaces for (re)thinking philosophies, knowledges, and ways of being/living and performing, as well as methodologies and inquiries, that decenter the human, (2) while at the same time attempting always/already to actively transform inequities and injustices performed by human privilege on nonhuman others, traditionally disqualified human others, and the natural world more broadly. This Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry can represent difference and the multiple, while at the same time exploring and welcoming notions of indistinction. Work that further develops and expands current notions of becoming (animal, earth), new feminist materialisms, critical posthuman sensibilities, hybrid existences (past and present) are example locations from which an intersectional, non-anthropocentric politics may emerge. Additionally, post-anthropocentric inquiry and activism will always include the unthought, not-yet-considered modes of living, thinking, research while critically acknowledging that alternatives can create new dualisms, new forms of human privilege, and are not always liberatory for those labeled not human or for those human beings who have traditionally been marginalized. Further, post-anthropocentric scholarship acknowledges, and attempts to (1) transform, the current post-anthropocentric predicament that facilitates neoliberal capitalism as all forms of life, matter, and relations have been/are constructed to serve market economies, and (2) examine the unprecedented human/nonhuman interaction with the increasingly intrusive and intimate technological order. Post-anthropocentric inquiry is necessary as related to these contemporary aggressive, and all-encompassing post-human conditions. Single or multiple authored manuscripts are encouraged that facilitate the development of Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry by addressing one issue, multiple issues, research purposes, methodologies, and/or forms of activism. Over a wide range of volumes that cross disciplines, the series will address broad issues, as mentioned above, and questions like the following: What is post-anthropocentric inquiry? What is made possible, enabled by post-anthropocentric approaches and research methodologies? How is post-anthropocentric research conducted without (re)privileging the human? How does the work in fields that would decenter the human, like critical animal studies, intersect with professional content and practices in fields like education or medicine? How can coalitions be formed (and actions taken) that decenter the human and increase possibilities for all forms of justice, while countering capitalist and technological orders that devalue all forms of life? Interested authors should contact Gaile S. Cannella, gaile.cannella@gmail.com

2 publications

New Disciplinary Perspectives on Education

ISSN: 2297-718X

Educational theory has always been framed within a wider context including philosophy, psychology, sociology and history. In the last ten years, educational discourse has been characterized by the emergence of a more managerialist paradigm and increased emphasis on the delivery of particular educational ‘outcomes’. This has taken place in the context of the huge expansion of tertiary education from the national level, a process in which education has come to be understood as a lucrative global commodity. But alongside these developments, there has also been a resurgence of interest in the educational insights provided by the disciplines of education: for example, renewed emphasis on enquiry-based approaches to learning (Dewey), social constructivist pedagogy (Vygotsky), educational critique (Bourdieu, Freire), new inter-religious pedagogies (Grimmit, Jackson) and fresh perspectives on the ‘spiral’ curriculum (Bruner). Much of this work takes the form of a critique of the instrumentalism of outcome-driven approaches. As the debt-laden student emerges as a political subject, educational discourse has come to represent a particularly contested terrain. The book series New Disciplinary Perspectives on Education seeks to explore how these debates within the resurgence of the disciplines of education relate to wider political and economic conditions, creating new critical understandings and possibilities within educational theory and practice. It welcomes both theoretical and empirical studies, alongside mixed-methods approaches, and publishes disciplinary studies within philosophy, psychology, sociology and history as well as encouraging cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary work.

9 publications

Reimagining Canada

Canada, in all its messy manifestations, is in transition, but where is it going? With foundational myths eroded, identities fragmented, allegiances contested, the idea of Canada in the hearts and minds of those who live there is under intense scrutiny and careful criticism. Canada’s place in the wider world is just as uncertain. Against a backdrop of COVID, Indigenization, decolonization, inflation, immigration, and shifting global politics, what might Canada mean in five, ten or fifty years’ time? Reimagining Canada seeks to understand the forces at work, and to ask what comes next. Taking a broad and inclusive approach to the study of Canadian culture, history and society, the series interrogates Canada’s past and present in order to suggest possibilities for the future. Relevant issues might include, but are not limited to: arts and culture; Indigenization; decolonization; digital spaces and media; the future of the Canadian constitution; globalization; healthcare and social services; immigration and multiculturalism; memory and memorialisation; and sovereignty. The series is open to scholars and public intellectuals working in all areas of the humanities and social sciences, and aims to be interdisciplinary or even post-disciplinary in its approach. The editors　are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and welcome contributions from scholars of marginalized groups and communities that tend to be disproportionately underrepresented within public discourses in Canada. As such, they strongly encourage scholars from these groups and communities to contribute to the series. Contributors are free to self-identify as desired. Books in the series are aimed at a more general audience than the traditional academic monograph. Readers might include undergraduate students, academics working in other fields, practitioners, policymakers, and the public. The series provides a platform for authors to reach a larger audience than usual, or to speak to new audiences; to deliver bold new arguments; to write unencumbered by the usual obligations for referencing; and to be exciting, provocative and even polemical.

0 publications