Fall 2011 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
2011 may be getting on in months, but there's still time for exciting tidings about Public Books previews and the release of issue 23.3, which in addition to some wonderful essays includes Eric Klinenberg's first Public Culture Editor's Letter and our first ever online media supplement.
Public Books Previews and Web-Design Charrette
As reported in a previous newsletter, in Winter 2012 the journal will launch Public Books, a new web-exclusive section devoted to real-time debate about serious non-fiction books, literary fiction, and emergent cultural trends as evidenced in current media and the arts, including digital arts; at the time we also asked readers to look for a preview this fall. Now, on the cusp of another season, we are thrilled to offer readers both a preview of some of the inaugural contributions and an opportunity to participate in a conversation leading to the shape of the site to come.
The full text of two major review essays—inaugural contributions by Jonathan Levy on the new histories of capitalism and by Sharon Marcus on Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Marriage Plot—are available NOW on the current journal website.
In our search for a beautiful and innovative form for the new editorial group's first major initiative, we've taken an arguably unique approach. After considering the work of dozens of designers, we invited three outstanding teams to participate in a web-design charrette to produce three different preliminary visions for the Public Books site. On December 5 we will all have the chance to view presentations by the following design teams on their own studio websites:
- COMMON NAME (Yoonjai Choi & J. Kenyon Meier)
- OTHER MEANS (Gary Fogelson, Phil Lubliner, Ryan Waller,
& Vance Wellenstein - RUMORS (Renda Morton & Andy Pressman)
and participate in an online conversation about the designs, hosted on the journal website (watch this space for more information!).
Finally, for those in New York City on the evening of Tuesday, December 6, Public Books will host a public conversation between several of the participating charrette designers, journal editors and staff, distinguished invited critics, and the general public about the three designs and, ranging more broadly, about what makes for effective design of the online public sphere. The event will take place at the Institute for Public Knowledge Main Conference Room, 20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, at 7 PM. RSVP at books@publicculture.org.
Release of the Fall 2011 Issue
The work assembled in issue 23.3 contemplates the phenomenon of modern networks—on the computer, in the market, and in the world at large. Three stimulating opinion pieces examine changes to political culture in the age of the Internet; Arjun Appadurai revisits some fundamental financial scholarship in an attempt to restore attention to the “spirit” of the market; Steve Spence looks at how cultural globalization altered local politics in 1960s Birmingham, Alabama; David Novak traces the ways world music enthusiasts in North America use the Internet to share and redistribute “authentic” music (supplemented on our website by scores of links allowing readers to explore the online media contexts and sights and sounds described in the article); and much more.
Table of Contents
- Editor's Letter
- Eric Klinenberg
DOXA AT LARGE
- Tahrir: Ends of Circulation
- Brian Edwards
- Revolutionary Tactics, Media Ecologies, and Repressive States
- Adam Fish and Ramesh Srinivasan
- Hacker Politics and Publics
- Gabriella Coleman
TRAJECTORIES OF FINANCE
- The Ghost in the Financial Machine
- Arjun Appadurai
PHOTO-ESSAY
GLOBAL EXCHANGES
- Consumption for the Common Good? Commodity Biography Film
in an Age of Postconsumerism - Jennifer Wenzel
- The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media
- David Novak
Subscribe to Public Culture
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Press website.
From everyone at Public Culture, best wishes for a happy end to 2011!