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2 books match the query 'Immersion'

cover of Immersion: A Writer's Guide to Going Deep

Immersion

A Writer's Guide to Going Deep

Ted Conover

University of Chicago Press, 2016

Over three and a half decades, Ted Conover has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, guarded prisoners in Sing Sing, and inspected meat for the USDA. His books and articles chronicling these experiences, including the award-winning Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, have made him one of the premier practitioners of immersion reporting.

In immersion reporting—a literary cousin to ethnography, travel writing, and memoir—the writer fully steps into a new world or culture, participating in its trials, rites, and rituals as a member of the group. The end results of these firsthand experiences are familiar to us from bestsellers such as Nickel and Dimed and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. But in a world of wary strangers, where does one begin?

Conover distills decades of knowledge into an accessible resource aimed at writers of all levels. He covers how to “get into” a community, how to conduct oneself once inside, and how to shape and structure the stories that emerge. Conover is also forthright about the ethics and consequences of immersion reporting, preparing writers for the surprises that often surface when their piece becomes public. Throughout, Conover shares anecdotes from his own experiences as well as from other well-known writers in this genre, including Alex Kotlowitz, Anne Fadiman, and Sebastian Junger. It’s a deep-in-the-trenches book that all aspiring immersion writers should have in hand as they take that first leap into another world. 
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cover of Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion

Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion

James R. Ball III

University of Michigan Press, 2027

From theater to virtual reality, we find ourselves making sense of imagined worlds that surround us. Our experience of democracy in the twenty-first century is similar: we are spectators to politics, immersed in 24-hour news, joining candidates on the campaign trail, reflecting on civic life and national memory in spaces of culture. Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion draws on extensive interviews with artists to develop a theory of immersive spectatorship as political action, arguing that through our experience of art, we can cultivate practices to navigate the disorientations and disenchantments of our democracy. This theory complements and complicates debates over the democratic promise of participatory performance by theorizing a mode of spectatorship that cuts across media, disciplines, genres, and everyday experiences. 

James R. Ball III investigates phenomena that compose our experience of democracy, including campaign trail debates and rallies; electoral microtargeting; misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theory; sonic weapons and psychic spying; political assassination; racist state violence; public commemoration; AI in government; and the democratic work of mourning. Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion provides a unique performance studies intervention into political theory, indicating new avenues for research into political spectatorship and the theatricality of deliberative and ocular democracy.

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