October 19th, 2015, 4:30-6:00 P.M.
Location: McCardell Bicentennial Hall 216
Livestream Feed: http://www.go.middlebury.edu/stream

In a preview of his forthcoming book, Henry Jenkins shares some core observations about the ways that young activists are learning to tap the affordances of new media platforms and participatory culture practices in order to recruit and mobilize others of their generation. Drawing examples from Occupy, the DREAMer movement, #Blacklivesmatter, Invisible Children, and the Harry Potter Alliance, among other groups, this talk will ask some core questions about what democracy looks like in the 21st century. This talk is especially interested in the ways young activists are appropriating and remixing elements of their surrounding culture to foster new forms of the civic imagination. Recent accounts  of Twitter Revolution and Slacktivism do not begin to tell the story of young activists who are using every available media to tell their story and circulate their messages to the world. Many of them are disenchanted with institutional politics, but as a consequence, they are exploring models which seek to change the world through educational and cultural interventions.

Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, is one of the world’s most influential and prolific scholars of media and culture. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture.

This event is co-sponsored by the Film & Media Culture and Sociology & Anthropology departments and the American Studies program.

Professor Henry Jenkins will also be leading a lunchtime roundtable on Digital Literacies. For more information and to RSVP click here.

A recording of the lecture is available below: