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The Total Black Experience is the first book to chronicle the history and social significance of Positively Black, one of the longest-running public affairs shows in the history of television. Spurred on by the findings of the Kerner Commission, executives at WNBC-TV greenlit the show and turned production over to a small but dedicated team of storytellers who quickly made it their mission to carve out a space for serious and nuanced discussion of issues important to the Black community and to celebrate all aspects of Black culture. They believed that accurate representation of their experiences was a right, not a privilege. The show’s first cohosts included the well-known Harlem-based activist Rev. Eugene Callender and Gus Heningburg, activist, successful consultant and mediator, and advocate for organized labor. Callender had founded Harlem Prep to equip young Black people for college, while Heningburg played a key role in stabilizing life in Newark following the rebellion there in the late 1960s. Both were adept at using the media to reach their constituencies. Combining in-depth interviews with painstaking archival research, The Total Black Experience introduces readers to key members of the Positively Black production team and analyzes thematic shifts in the show’s content. The book celebrates Positively Black’s longevity and challenges readers to explore the current state of Black representation on television.

The longest war in the nation's history, the American military intervention in Vietnam dominated United States culture and politics from 1965 to 1975. In addition to causing immense devastation in Southeast Asia, the war transformed American society, with effects that continue to be felt today. Yet aside from a few cultural studies of the war's representations, scholars have tended to ignore the relationship between the American war in Vietnam and broader cultural developments in the West. Frederic Jameson once characterized the Vietnam War as “the first terrible postmodernist war,” suggesting that it embodied or reflected the sensibility of an emerging historical epoch. But does it make sense to place a military conflict within a category of cultural and aesthetic periodization? Is it possible to see the Vietnam War as an expression and reflection of postmodernity—what Jameson calls “the cultural logic of late capitalism?” These are some of the questions addressed in this volume. Ranging across a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, cultural studies, literary criticism, and film studies, the essays explore the war's discourses and technologies in relation to the post-modern condition. At the same time, they reinterpret key cultural representations of the war from a postmodern perspective. The result is a book that poses important challenges to both Vietnam War studies and postmodern studies, at once reshaping the ways postmodernity is conceived and reminding us of the war's enduring significance in contemporary cultural history. In addition to Michael Bibby, contributors are Philip D. Beidler, Michael Clark, Cynthia J. Fuchs, Brady Harrison, Tony Williams, Eric Gadzinski, Chris Hables Gray, and Douglas Kellner.

A revelatory look at the people, platforms, and power struggles shaping work in the creator economy. 

More than two decades after YouTube first invited scrappy amateurs to “broadcast yourself,” social media content creation has transformed into one of the fastest growing labor markets. Today, some two hundred million people work as platform-dependent content creators, influencers, or streamers. Social media platforms boldly tout the rewards of the digital creator economy: independence, flexibility, and the chance to convert one’s ingenuity into cash. Yet the image of work in this entrepreneurial Promised Land conceals a starker reality—one marked by labor precarity, exploitation, and entrenched structural inequalities.  

In this essential work, award-winning communication scholar Brooke Erin Duffy analyzes the paradox of the “visibility bind.” On the one hand, labor devaluation and algorithmic suppression—where unseen forces and so-called “shadowbans” bury worker output—threaten to render creators invisible. On the other, excessive visibility introduces harms of its own, from scrutiny and surveillance to networked harassment. For creators at the margins—among them, creators of color, LGBTQ+ voices, and disability advocates—the bind is especially pronounced, belying the promise of a talent meritocracy. 

Drawing on extensive, in-depth interviews and more than a decade of insight, Duffy situates creators’ experiences within the broader landscapes of self-commodification and platform capitalism. But while platforms hold immense power to structure the pathways to success, creators and influencers wield newfound sway in this high-stakes visibility game. They are organizing, building solidarity, and experimenting with new forms of labor consciousness.

Refuting conventional wisdom about creator careers, Duffy illuminates the hidden labor dynamics for a class of workers shaping everything from culture and commerce to civil liberties and geopolitical conflict. The Visibility Bind reveals the price and perils for anyone who “puts themselves out there.”

Few other television series have received as much academic, media, and fan celebration as The Wire, which has been called the best dramatic series ever created. The show depicts the conflict between Baltimore's police and criminals to raise a warning about race; drug war policing; deindustrialization; and the inadequacies of America’s civic, educational, and political institutions. The show's unflinching explorations of a city in crisis and its nuanced portrayals of those affected make it a show all about race and class in America.

The essays in this volume offer a range of astute critical responses to this television phenomenon. More consistently than any other crime show of its generation, The Wire challenges viewers' perceptions of the racialization of urban space and the media conventions that support this. The Wire reminds us of just how remarkably restricted the grammar of race is on American television and related media, and of the normative codings of race---as identity, as landscape---across urban narratives, from documentary to entertainment media.

A critical analysis of historical and contemporary discourses around worklessness, economic inactivity, and the factors that contribute to people withdrawing from the conventional labor market. 

How do we define and respond to worklessness? This book combines analysis of media and political narratives around worklessness and factors that limit individuals’ capacity for conventional paid work—from disability and long-term illness to caring responsibilities—with interviews that shed light on the lived experience of so-called economic inactivity.

In dissecting popular portrayals of “the workless” in the present and tracing the historical evolution of discourses around “inactivity”—especially work-limiting disability—James Morrison draws heavily on sociological theories of stigma and symbolic annihilation. Conceptualising the contemporary narrative about the UK's supposed crisis in economic inactivity as the latest in a continuum of periodic moral panics about worklessness, he argues that neoliberal definitions of work and worklessness are too narrow, as they deny—and render invisible—the importance of various forms of unpaid labor performed by many people classified as “inactive,” notably informal caregiving and volunteering. 

Our favorite tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) provide a chance to act out a fantasy. It might be the desire to wipe out foes with a single strike, the ability to charm even the most curmudgeonly townsfolk, or maybe even just the aspiration to adventure as a potted plant. Since game systems don’t always let players craft the kinds of games they want to experience, this is when they turn to the “homebrew” process to create personal rules and worlds. While Pathfinder has a history of being an underdog to the longtime industry leader Dungeons & Dragons, it has an ethos of open game design that inspires players, indie makers, and third-party content creators to brew up new rules, characters, classes, and game settings. 

Their System, Our Game looks at the history of Pathfinder and how it encourages aspiring makers to break into the game design space. Through interviews with player-creators and third party makers, the authors use a range of perspectives to define homebrew for TTRPGs. Taking a closer look at homebrew design, they create two homebrew campaigns (available as free downloads) collaboratively with two different groups of players. Player accounts of gameplay and designer reflections of how their homebrew actually played out at the game table outline some of the challenges and perks of designing on the fly, creating customized settings, and bending or breaking rules. The book concludes by going through the research, interviews, design, and play analysis to show what homebrew and Pathfinder mean together. Ultimately Their System, Our Game is a celebration of how players use homebrew to explore creation and expression in their own TTRPGs.

The first English-language translation of Vilém Flusser’s final series of lectures: the definitive introduction to his methods and ideas in new media theory

In summer 1991, shortly before his death, Vilém Flusser gave a series of lectures as guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum at the invitation of Friedrich Kittler. Flusser intended for these lectures to be the definitive introduction to his “communicology,” the study of human communication and the means by which acquired information is saved, processed, and passed on. In Thinking Further, Aaron Jaffe and Michael F. Miller have curated “fragments” from these lectures—first published in German in 2008—to present the most exciting and timely parts of Flusser’s foundational contributions to what is now known as media studies.

These fragments capture Flusser’s engagements with a wide range of theories, approaches, and interventions, including ecocriticism, posthumanities, game theory, cybernetics, and translinguistic exchanges. Offering sustained engagements with the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, Thinking Further models possibilities for thinking through and clarifying the most obscure and obdurate implications of technology and modernity.

As they demonstrate Flusser’s contextual positionality and antiuniversalism, the writings presented here also underscore the pleasures and the power of his aphoristic style. Focusing less on Flusser-as-philosopher and more on his role as wry sage at the end of history, Thinking Further is a comprehensive but approachable introduction to his boundary-transcending exploration of the possibilities for communication, writing, and the human condition.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

A film-by-film introduction to Taiwan cinema and cultures

"In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a video game.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

So begins this story of personal redemption through the unlikely medium of electronic games. Quake, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and other online games not only offered author Jim Rossignol an excellent escape from the tedium of office life. They also provided him with a diverse global community and a job—as a games journalist.

Part personal history, part travel narrative, part philosophical reflection on the meaning of play, This Gaming Life describes Rossignol’s encounters in three cities: London, Seoul, and Reykjavik. From his days as a Quake genius in London’s increasingly corporate gaming culture; to Korea, where gaming is a high-stakes televised national sport; to Iceland, the home of his ultimate obsession, the idiosyncratic and beguiling Eve Online, Rossignol introduces us to a vivid and largely undocumented world of gaming lives.

Torn between unabashed optimism about the future of games and lingering doubts about whether they are just a waste of time, This Gaming Life also raises important questions about this new and vital cultural form. Should we celebrate the “serious” educational, social, and cultural value of games, as academics and journalists are beginning to do? Or do these high-minded justifications simply perpetuate the stereotype of games as a lesser form of fun? In this beautifully written, richly detailed, and inspiring book, Rossignol brings these abstract questions to life, immersing us in a vibrant landscape of gaming experiences.

“We need more writers like Jim Rossignol, writers who are intimately familiar with gaming, conversant in the latest research surrounding games, and able to write cogently and interestingly about the experience of playing as well as the deeper significance of games.”
—Chris Baker, Wired

“This Gaming Life is a fascinating and eye-opening look into the real human impact of gaming culture. Traveling the globe and drawing anecdotes from many walks of life, Rossignol takes us beyond the media hype and into the lives of real people whose lives have been changed by gaming. The results may surprise you.”
—Raph Koster, game designer and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design

“This is a wonderfully literate look at gaming cultures, which you don't have to be a gamer to enjoy. The Korea section blew my mind.”
—John Seabrook, New Yorker staff writer and author of Flash of Genius and Other True Stories of Invention

digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

Between 1971 and 1979, All in the Family was more than just a wildly popular television sitcom that routinely drew 50 million viewers weekly. It was also a touchstone of American life, so much so that the living room chairs of the two main characters have spent the last 40 years on display at the Smithsonian. How did a show this controversial and boundary-breaking manage to become so widely beloved?

Those Were the Days is the first full-length study of this remarkable television program. Created by Norman Lear and produced by Bud Yorkin, All in the Family dared to address such taboo topics as rape, abortion, menopause, homosexuality, and racial prejudice in a way that no other sitcom had before. Through a close analysis of the sitcom’s four main characters—boorish bigot Archie Bunker, his devoted wife Edith, their feminist daughter Gloria, and her outspoken liberal husband Mike—Jim Cullen demonstrates how All in the Family was able to bridge the generation gap and appeal to a broad spectrum of American viewers in an age when a network broadcast model of television created a shared national culture.

Locating All in the Family within the larger history of American television, this book shows how it transformed the medium, not only spawning spinoffs like Maude and The Jeffersons, but also helping to inspire programs like Roseanne, Married... with Children, and The Simpsons. And it raises the question: could a show this edgy ever air on broadcast television today?

Contemporary American media is awash with reality programs, faux documentaries, and user generated content. When did this fixation on real or feigned nonfictionality begin? Tomboys, Pretty Boys, and Outspoken Women argues that its origins can be found in the early 1970s, when American media discovered the entertainment value of documentaries, news programming, and other nonfiction forms. Edward D. Miller challenges preconceptions of the ’60s and ’70s through close readings of key events and important figures in the early 1970s: John Dean’s performance in front of the Senate during the Watergate Hearings; Billie Jean King popularizing tennis by taking on Bobby Riggs in a prime-time match; David Bowie experiencing “outer space” in his tours across America; An American Family and their gay son facing the public’s consternation; and Alison Steele, a female DJ who invited listeners to fly with her at night. Miller explores the early 1970s as a turning point in American culture, with nonfiction media of the time creating new possibilities for expressions of gender and sexuality, and argues that we are living in its aftermath.

In addition to readers attracted to media studies, this book will be of great interest to those involved in LGBT studies, feminism, and queer studies as well as students of contemporary media culture. The aim of the book is to demystify current media trends by providing an analysis of the recent past. Tomboys, Pretty Boys, and Outspoken Women is written for a large audience that extends beyond academia and embraces readers who have an interest in American pop culture and, in particular, the '70s.

A dynamic contemporary examination of universalism

Gathering a selection of essays by influential theorist Boris Groys, Towards a New Universalism articulates his sustained engagement with the problem of universality under contemporary conditions shaped by globalization, institutional fragmentation, and digital mediation. Rather than defending classical universalism or abandoning it in favor of cultural particularism, Groys approaches universality as something produced within shared historical, institutional, and technological frameworks.

These essays address topics spanning from identity politics to migration, museums, media, and artificial intelligence, examining how universal claims make their way into social and cultural contexts. Distinct from recent philosophical treatments of universalism, Towards a New Universalism situates the question within aesthetics, media theory, and institutional critique, offering an indispensable collection for anyone interested in the intersections of politics and art.

Distributed for e-flux.

In recent years, celebrities from George Clooney to Bono to Angelina Jolie have attempted to play an increasingly important role in global politics. Celebrity activism is an ever-growing, internationally visible phenomenon—yet the impact of these high-profile humanitarians on public awareness, government support, and mobilization of resources remains under-researched. Bringing together a diverse group of contributors from media studies and public diplomacy, Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics aims to fill that void with a new interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of celebrity activism in international relations.

Intermedia art—an avant-garde multimedia practice that combines sound and moving images—took root in Japan alongside other places in the 1960s. In Transpacific Experiments, Miki Kaneda analyzes intermedia as a practice that gives form to errant possibilities, unfolding in spaces of the everyday, to offer nuanced insights into the global flow of ideas, influence, and discourses of appropriation. The stories of intermedia art throughout the study offer feminist and transnational perspectives on experimental music and art that disorient existing narratives about the experimental and political in unexpected ways.

Transpacific Experiments contends that social, cultural, and political arrangements local to Japan had a greater influence on the transnational experimental music scene than previously acknowledged. Kaneda’s perspective extends, exceeds, and at times unsettles frameworks for experimental practices, revealing the limitations of any single political or aesthetic lens.