Toby Miller's Presentation on Cultural Policy

As part of our ongoing speaker series supported by the Ford Foundation's Division of Knowledge, Creativity & Freedom, I am pleased to announce that the subject of our next presentation is "Cultural Citizenship" which will be held this Friday, December 5, at 1:30 p.m. in the Peterson Conference Room (231 Gregory Hall). The distinguished speaker will be Professor Toby Miller.

ABSTRACT Aesthetically, culture operates globally as a signifier of differences and similarities in taste and status within groups. Anthropologically, culture refers to how we live our lives, often between social groups or populations. Bridging these aesthetic and anthropological registers is cultural policy. Institutions enable and support creativity and collective ways of life by soliciting, training, distributing, financing, and rejecting actors and activities. In this presentation, Professor Miller examines "blood and soil" questions of citizenship—political, economic, and cultural—from a variety of perspectives and summarizes what each analysis entails for cultural policy. Miller outlines the positions of five international scholars: Tony Bennett (cultural studies), Renato Rosaldo (anthropology), Will Kymlicka (political theory), Bhiku Parekh (political theory), and Amelie Rorty (philosophy). In Miller's view, citizenship should be a demographic matter based on where one lives, not on "blood or soil."

The HANDBOOK OF CITIZENSHIP STUDIES (editor Isin and Turner Sage 2002) is available via electronic reserves at the library. The title of the chapter is "Cultural Citizenship." When searching for this book via the electronic reserve system, please type in SpCom 438.

The link to Professor Miller's web site: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tm3/

Toby Miller, formerly Professor of Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Program in American Studies, and the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, is now teaching and writing at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author and editor of twenty-one books: The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Contemporary Australian Television (University of New South Wales Press, 1994 with Stuart Cunningham); The Avengers (British Film Institute, 1997/Indiana University Press, 1998); Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media (University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Sage Publications, 1998 with Alec McHoul); SportCult (University of Minnesota Press, 1999 edited with Randy Martin); A Companion to Film Theory (Basil Blackwell, 1999 edited with Robert Stam); Film and Theory: An Anthology (Basil Blackwell, 2000 edited with Robert Stam); Globalization and Sport: Playing the World (Sage Publications, 2001 with Geoffrey Lawrence, Jim McKay, and David Rowe); Sportsex (Temple University Press, 2001); Global Hollywood (British Film Institute/Indiana University Press, 2001 with Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell); A Companion to Cultural Studies (Basil Blackwell, 2001 edited); The Television Genre Book (British Film Institute/Indiana University Press, 2001 associate editor with John Tulloch, editor Glen Creeber); Cultural Policy (Sage Publications, 2002 with George Y󺤩e); Television Studies (British Film Institute/University of California Press, 2002 edited, associate editor Andrew Lockett); Critical Cultural Policy Studies: A Reader (Basil Blackwell, 2003 edited with Justin Lewis); Television Studies: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (Routledge, 2003 5 volumes edited); and Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and TV from the 1930s to the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2003). The following books are in press: Spanish and Chinese translations of Global Hollywood with Pa㭤s and Chi Liu Book Company, and a Spanish translation of Cultural Policy with Editorial Gedisa. He is the editor of Television & New Media, co-editor of the Sport and Culture book series for University of Minnesota Press, editor of the Popular Culture and Everyday Life series for Peter Lang, and co-editor on the Web of Blackwell/Polity Cultural Theory Resource Centre. Previously he was editor of the Journal of Sport & Social Issues (1996-99), co-editor of Social Text (1997-2001), and co-editor of the Cultural Politics book series for University of Minnesota Press (1997-2001) and the Film Guidebooks book series for Routledge (1999-2002). His work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and Spanish. He has made many appearances in the print and electronic media and previously worked in broadcasting, banking, and politics. Other academic appointments have been at Murdoch University, Griffith University, and the University of New South Wales. In 2003 he was Distinguished Faculty Visitor at the Center for Ideas of Society, University of California, Riverside.