Creativity and Academic Activism

Reviews / Votes

"A provocative and insightful engagement with the new landscape of the university. This book brings together a host of leading international scholars in the humanities and social sciences who have lived to tell the tale of the 'enterprise university.' Strategies for rethinking public purpose and innovative approaches to pedagogy are explored through diverse cultural locales. A must-read for those who are committed to changing things from the inside out."-Janine Marchessault, York University "Rather than sketching out wishful thinking or platitudinous ideas about cultural studies' transformative potential, this book deals with very specific contexts in which cultural studies has built an institutional presence. The book is very up to date in engaging directly with the managerial ethos which has become part of university life around the world over the last decade. It does not treat universities as abstractly conceived sites of power or potential transformation. While the book has wide applicability, the emphasis on Asian institutions will de-familiarize for many our sense of cultural studies' history and institutional fate by showing what can be done in other kinds of contexts. The contributors all write as seasoned, institutionally savvy practitioners and administrators of cultural studies activity, and this gives the book a distinctive authority and maturity."-Will Straw, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada "This is an extremely valuable collection on the institutionalization of cultural studies. Whereas the discipline has largely disavowed its participation in institutionalization, its institutional success is fundamental to the way the field of study has developed. This book offers a rich and fascinating array of experiences and reflections upon this history. Its location primarily in Asia is also a highly valuable aspect-this is where the histories of institutionalization have been most contingent and interesting."-Graeme Turner, University of Queensland "Meaghan Morris and Mette Hjort...have coedited a timely, reflective, hopeful and capaciously situated collection, Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies.... It looks back as a way to move cultural studies forward and out into the world, and mines resources and tactics of hope much needed in an academic culture becoming managerial and banal." - Rob Wilson (Pacific Affairs) "For many reasons, this is a very timely publication, which should be read by all those interested in cultural studies as well as by one of the key notions mentioned in the title of the book (creative industries, activism, academic life, institutionalization)." - Jan Baetens (Leonardo Reviews)