In this book, Charles Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceive

The contributors to Signal Traffic investigate how the material artifacts of media infrastructure--transoceanic cables, mobile telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like--intersect with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and what human beings experience when a network fails. Some contributors explore the physical objects and industrial relations that make up an infrastructure. Others venture into the marginalized communities orphaned from the knowledge economies, technological literacies, and epistemological questions linked to infrastructural formation and use. The wide-ranging insights delineate the oft-ignored contrasts between industrialized and developing regions, rich and poor areas, and urban and rural settings, bringing technological differences into focus. Contributors include Charles R. Acland, Paul Dourish, Sarah Harris, Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, Shannon Mattern, Toby Miller, Lisa Parks, Christian Sandvig, Nicole Starosielski, Jonathan Sterne, and Helga Tawil-Souri.

Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy's Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities is the first detailed and comprehensive examination of how American philanthropic foundations have shaped numerous fields, including dance, drama, education, film, film-music, folklore, journalism, local history, museums, radio, television, as well as the performing arts and the humanities in general. Drawing on an impressive range of archival and secondary sources, the chapters in the volume give particular attention to the period from the late 1920s to the late 1970s, a crucial time for the development of philanthropic practice. To this end, it examines how patterns and directions of funding have been based on complex negotiations involving philanthropic family members, elite networks, foundation trustees and officers, cultural workers, academics, state officials, corporate interests, and the general public. By addressing both the contours of philanthropic power as well as the processes through which that power has been enacted, it is hoped that this collection will reinforce and amplify the critical study of philanthropy's history.

Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy's Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities is the first detailed and comprehensive examination of how American philanthropic foundations have shaped numerous fields, including dance, drama, education, film, film-music, folklore, journalism, local history, museums, radio, television, as well as the performing arts and the humanities in general. Drawing on an impressive range of archival and secondary sources, the chapters in the volume give particular attention to the period from the late 1920s to the late 1970s, a crucial time for the development of philanthropic practice. To this end, it examines how patterns and directions of funding have been based on complex negotiations involving philanthropic family members, elite networks, foundation trustees and officers, cultural workers, academics, state officials, corporate interests, and the general public. By addressing both the contours of philanthropic power as well as the processes through which that power has been enacted, it is hoped that this collection will reinforce and amplify the critical study of philanthropy's history.

In this book, Charles R. Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceived crisis of American youth. After examining the dominant paradigms for scholarly research into youth deviance, Acland explores the ideas circulating in the popular media about a sensational crime known as the "preppy murder" and the confession to that crime. Arguing that the meaning of crime is never inherent in the event itself, he evaluates other sites of representation, including newspaper photographs (with a comparison to the Central Park "wilding"), daytime television talk shows (Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue), and Hollywood youth films (in particular River's Edge). Through a cultural studies analysis of historical context, Acland blurs the center of our preconceptions and exposes the complex social forces at work upon this issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Acland asks of the social critic, "How do we know that we are measuring what we say we are measuring, and how do we know what the numbers are saying? Arguments must be made to interpret findings, which suggests that conclusions are provisional and, to various degrees, sites of contestation." He launches into this gratifying book to show that beyond the problematic category of "actual" crime, the United States has seen the construction of a new "spectacle of wasted youth" that will have specific consequences for the daily lives of the next generation.

Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.

Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.

A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what" we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers the implications of this social and cultural history through an analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel, Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.

In Screen Traffic, Charles R. Acland examines how, since the mid-1980s, the US commercial movie business has altered conceptions of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from international audiences and from the ancillary markets of television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an understanding of their commodities as mutating global products. Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other sites of leisure. Acland explores this transformation by investigating the generation and dissemination of a new understanding of Hollywood movies. examination of promotional materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through to 1998, when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signalled another wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the felt internationalism of our global era.

By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, the essays in "Useful Cinema" show how moving images became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as factories and community halls, people encountered industrial, educational, training, advertising, and other types of "useful cinema." Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces, conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape common sense about cinema's place in contemporary life. Whether measured in terms of the number of films shown, the size of audiences, or the economic activity generated, the "non-theatrical sector" was a substantial and enduring parallel to the more spectacular realm of commercial film. In "Useful Cinema," scholars examine organizations such as UNESCO, the YMCA, the Amateur Cinema League, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also consider film exhibition sites in schools, businesses, and industries. As they expand understanding of this" other "American cinema, the contributors challenge preconceived notions about what cinema is.
Contributors. Charles R. Acland, Joseph Clark, Zoe Druick, Ronald Walter Greene, Alison Griffiths, Stephen Groening, Jennifer Horne, Kirsten Ostherr, Eric Smoodin, Charles Tepperman, Gregory A. Waller, Haidee Wasson. Michael Zryd

In a society that breathlessly awaits "the new" in every medium, what happens to last year's new? Ample critical energy has gone into the study of new media, genres, and communities. But what becomes of discarded media? In what manner do the products of technological change reappear as environmental problems, as "the new" in another part of the world, as collectibles, as memories, and as art?
Residual Media grapples with these questions and more in a wide-ranging and eclectic collection of essays. Beginning with how cultural change bumps along unevenly, dragging the familiar into novel contexts, the contributors examine how leftover artifacts can be rediscovered occupying space in storage sheds, traveling the globe, converting to alternative uses, and accumulating in landfills. By exploring reconfigured, renewed, recycled, neglected, abandoned, and trashed media, the essays here combine theoretical challenges to media history with ideas, technology, and uses that have been left behind.
From player pianos to vinyl records, and from the typewriter to the telephone, Residual Media is an innovative approach to the aging of culture and reveals that, ultimately, new cultural phenomena rely on encounters with the old.
Contributors: Jennifer Adams, DePauw U; Jody Berland, York U; Sue Currell, U of Sussex; Maria DiCenzo, Wilfrid Laurier U; Kate Egan, U of Wales; Lisa Gitelman, Catholic U; Alison Griffiths, CUNY; James Hamilton, U of Georgia; James Hay, U of Illinois--Champaign-Urbana; Michelle Henning, U of the West of England; Lisa Parks, UC Santa Barbara; Hillegonda C. Rietveld, South Bank U; Leila Ryan, McMaster U; John Davis, Alfred U; Collette Snowden, U of South Australia;Jonathan Sterne, McGill U; JoAnne Stober, National Archives, Canada; Will Straw, McGill U; Haidee Wasson, Concordia U.
Charles R. Acland is Professor and holds the Concordia University Research Chair in communications studies at Concordia University, Montreal.

The contributors to Signal Traffic investigate how the material artifacts of media infrastructure--transoceanic cables, mobile telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like--intersect with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and what human beings experience when a network fails. Some contributors explore the physical objects and industrial relations that make up an infrastructure. Others venture into the marginalized communities orphaned from the knowledge economies, technological literacies, and epistemological questions linked to infrastructural formation and use. The wide-ranging insights delineate the oft-ignored contrasts between industrialized and developing regions, rich and poor areas, and urban and rural settings, bringing technological differences into focus. Contributors include Charles R. Acland, Paul Dourish, Sarah Harris, Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, Shannon Mattern, Toby Miller, Lisa Parks, Christian Sandvig, Nicole Starosielski, Jonathan Sterne, and Helga Tawil-Souri.

"Swift Viewing" reveals the secret story of subliminal influence, showing how an obscure concept from experimental psychology came to be a core idea about how our minds work in an age of media clutter. Since the late 1950s, the notion that hidden, imperceptible messages could influence mass behavior has been debated, feared, and ridiculed. Charles R. Acland chronicles the enduring popularity of the dubious claims about subliminal influence, revealing their nineteenth-century origins and exposing their links to twentieth-century educational technology. His expansive history of popular concern about subliminal messages shows how the idea of "hidden persuaders" became a form of vernacular media criticism, one reflecting anxiety about a rapidly expanding media environment. Analyzing works of nonfiction, including Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders," Wilson Bryan Key's "Subliminal Seduction," and Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"; mind-control tropes in fictional works from George Orwell's novel "1984" to the film "The Matrix"; the "Subliminal Man" skit on "Saturday Night Live"; and allegations of the use subliminal ads in the 2000 presidential campaign, Acland establishes the subliminal as both a product of and a balm for information overload.

By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, the essays in "Useful Cinema" show how moving images became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as factories and community halls, people encountered industrial, educational, training, advertising, and other types of "useful cinema." Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces, conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape common sense about cinema's place in contemporary life. Whether measured in terms of the number of films shown, the size of audiences, or the economic activity generated, the "non-theatrical sector" was a substantial and enduring parallel to the more spectacular realm of commercial film. In "Useful Cinema," scholars examine organizations such as UNESCO, the YMCA, the Amateur Cinema League, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also consider film exhibition sites in schools, businesses, and industries. As they expand understanding of this" other "American cinema, the contributors challenge preconceived notions about what cinema is.
Contributors. Charles R. Acland, Joseph Clark, Zoe Druick, Ronald Walter Greene, Alison Griffiths, Stephen Groening, Jennifer Horne, Kirsten Ostherr, Eric Smoodin, Charles Tepperman, Gregory A. Waller, Haidee Wasson. Michael Zryd

A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what" we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers the implications of this social and cultural history through an analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel, Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.