As communicative, cultural, and political spaces, cities present a vast array of racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and socioeconomic experiences around which human communities take shape. This shaping forms a germinal point of mass cultural life. City planners decide where buildings and neighborhoods are developed, which ultimately affects who residents interact with, how they get there, and why they choose city life. From these experiences, boundaries and possibilities arise that define cultures of “the city.” In Separately Together: Ethnographic Engagements of the City, contributors focus on theorizing the notion of “the city” as a communicatively constituted cultural space, drawing on situated, reflexive ethnographic examinations of “the city” to show the complex and varied ways in which cities produce social meaning.

Based on the author’s scholar-activist interventions to promote social justice in cities, this book highlights the role engaged communication scholarship can play in fostering a more equitable future. Through three innovative case studies situated in South Los Angeles, the book illustrates engaged communication scholarship projects grounded in design criteria that are social justice-oriented, place-based, collaborative, and public. It models university-community partnerships that promote positive social change in marginalized communities that stand to benefit the most from university resources, guiding readers in how these partnerships can be incorporated into social justice-oriented curriculum and engaged learning projects. It provides strategic recommendations for how "in community" communication research and media practices can be used to build local power in marginalized urban neighborhoods, and calls for communication’s research, pedagogy, epistemologies, practices, ethics, politics, and community engagement to purposefully serve the concerns of marginalized groups in society. The book will be of interest to researchers and social change practitioners interested in solution-oriented work in cities within the fields of research methods, organizational communication, urban planning, public policy, sociology, and social work.

New Directions in Radical Cartography looks at the contemporary debates about the role of maps in society. It explores the emergence of counter-mapping as a distinctive field of practice, and the impact that digital mapping technologies have had on cartographic practice and theory. It includes original research, accounts of mapping projects and detailed readings of maps. The contributors explore how digital mapping technologies have sponsored a new wave of practices that seek to challenge the power that maps are commonly assumed to have. They document the continued vitality of analogue maps in the hands of artists and activists who are pushing the boundaries of what is mappable in different ways. New Directions in Radical Cartography draws on a rich body of mapping work that exists as part of community action, urban ethnography, environmental activism, humanitarianism, and public engagement.

Critical Administration: Negotiating Political Commitment and Managerial Practice in Contemporary Higher Education explores the challenges that higher education administrators face when negotiating political commitments in the day-to-day practice of university life. Jay Brower and W. Benjamin Myers have collected reflections from 12 administrators, all of whom identify as critical/cultural scholars, about how ideological commitments affect their identities as administrators and the work they conduct. Contributors reflect on how their academic training helps them understand their role as administrators in higher education in terms of central issues surrounding power, ethics, and identity, and how they entwine with managerial responsibilities. Each contributor focuses on specific experiences where their managerial duties intersect with political commitments. Ultimately, this collection provides opportunities to observe the challenges and opportunities of performing ethical leadership in contemporary higher education. Scholars of education, critical/cultural communication, and administration will find this book particularly useful.

This book honors the advocacy of Dr. Wangari Maathai, acclaimed environmentalist and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. Dr. Maathai was a gifted orator who crafted messages that imagined new possibilities for human agency and social justice and who inspired action to protect our natural habitats. This collection explores the various strategies Maathai employed in her speeches to create memorable images and arguments for audiences in Kenya and around the world. Specifically, authors examine Maathai's use of storytelling, her creative use of metaphor and local cultural knowledge, and her use of sharp social-political analysis. Authors approach Maathai's rhetoric from both African and Western ways of knowing.

Australia holds a unique place in the global scheme of fandom. Much of the media consumed by Australian audiences originates from either the United States or the United Kingdom, yet several Australian productions have also attracted international fans in their own right. This first-ever academic study of Australian fandom explores the national popular culture scene through themes of localization and globalization. The essays within reveal how Australian audiences often seek authentic imports and eagerly embrace different cultures, examining both Hollywood’s influence on Australian fandom and Australian fan reactions to non-Western content. By shining a spotlight on Australian fandom, this book not only provides an important case study for fan studies scholars, it also helps add nuance to a field whose current literature is predominantly U.S. and U.K. focused. Contributors: Kate Ames, Ahmet Atay, Jessica Carniel, Toija Cinque, Ian Dixon, Leigh Edmonds, Sharon Elkind, Jacqui Ewart, Lincoln Geraghty, Sarah Keith, Emerald L. King, Renee Middlemost

This book presents different aspects of intercultural communication research as they connect to and intersect with sub-disciples such as media studies, communication education, international communication, rhetorical studies, gender and sexuality studies, popular culture, and organizational communication. Intercultural communication (IC) scholars in the CSCA region have often been questioned, and sometimes challenged, by scholars who have claimed that the Midwest is not an ideal locale for studying communication across cultures and among people from varying cultural backgrounds. However, over the years, scholars have established that intercultural communication is an important area of scholarship in the Midwest (and beyond), and that the region offers plenty of opportunities for studying the intersections of cultural perspectives in communication, ranging from racial and ethnic discrimination to the adaptation process of international students and from immigrant experiences to issues in queer cultures. Because IC research does not exist in isolation, and it is always connected to larger frameworks or theoretical approaches within communication studies, the contributors in this book address how IC scholarship informs other areas of research and how IC scholars use the concepts and theoretical lenses of IC research to examine issues outside of IC. Although the focus is mainly on IC scholarship within the CSCA region, the scope of the book extends beyond this regional boundary as well. This book was originally published as a special issue of Communication Studies.