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Dear LEARNING-FROM-FILM-TV-NEWMEDIA Subscribers, I hope the following titles will be of interest to you: Global Television Co-Producing Culture Barbara J. Selznick, University of Arizona "Global Television is well focused, disciplined, imaginative, and original; the global outlook and free ranging expertise across borders are signature virtues. It looms to be a blueprint for the emergent field of globally-centric media studies." -Thomas Doherty , American Studies Department, Brandeis University The face of U.S. television broadcasting is changing in ways that are both profound and subtle. Global Television uncovers the particular processes by which the international circulation of culture takes place, while addressing larger cultural issues such as identity formation. Focusing on how the process of internationally made programming such as Highlander: The Series and The Odyssey-amusingly dubbed "Europudding" and "commercial white bread"-are changing television into a transnational commodity, Barbara Selznick considers how this mode of production-as a means by which transnational television is created-has both economic rewards and cultural benefits as well as drawbacks. Global Television explores the ways these international co-productions create a "global" culture as well as help form a national identity. From British "brand" programming (e.g, Cracker) that airs on A&E in the U.S. to children's television programs such as Plaza Sesamo, and documentaries, Selznick indicates that while the style, narrative, themes and ideologies may be interesting, corporate capitalism ultimately affects and impacts these programs in significant ways. http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1855_reg.html Temple University Press June 2008 224 pp 5.5 x 8.25 inches 8 B & W illustrations £17.99 PB 978-1-59213-504-2 SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.50 to LEARNING-FROM-FILM-TV-NEWMEDIA Subscribers Postage and Packing £2.75 (PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: LN211108GT for discount) To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk <http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk> Signal and Noise Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria Brian Larkin, Columbia University "This thoughtful, scholarly, and original book links the transnational traffic of media forms to the logics of the colonial state and to the vulnerabilities of large cities in Africa. It will provoke new thinking among Africanists, urbanists, anthropologists, and all students of globalizing media processes. Brian Larkin is a major new voice in the study of media as lived infrastructure in a world of uneven connectivity."-Arjun Appadurai, author of Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger "This eagerly anticipated book is a wonderful contribution to several fields: media studies, cultural studies, African studies, anthropology, and analyses of globalization. Brian Larkin writes with eloquence and passion, and he compels us to rethink our assumptions about the work of transnational media and the formation of identity."-Purnima Mankekar, author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India Mainstream media and film theory are based on the ways that media technologies operate in Europe and the United States. In this groundbreaking work, Brian Larkin provides a history and ethnography of media in Nigeria, asking what media theory looks like when Nigeria rather than a European nation or the United States is taken as the starting point. Concentrating on the Muslim city of Kano in the north of Nigeria, Larkin charts how the material qualities of technologies and the cultural ambitions they represent feed into the everyday experiences of urban Nigeria. Media technologies were introduced to Nigeria by colonial regimes as part of an attempt to shape political subjects and create modern, urban Africans. Larkin considers the introduction of media along with electric plants and railroads as part of the wider infrastructural project of colonial and postcolonial urbanism. Focusing on radio networks, mobile cinema units, and the building of cinema theaters, he argues that what media come to be in Kano is the outcome of technology's encounter with the social formations of northern Nigeria and with norms shaped by colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and Islam. Larkin examines how media technologies produce the modes of leisure and cultural forms of urban Africa by analyzing the circulation of Hindi films to Muslim Nigeria, the leisure practices of Hausa cinemagoers in Kano, and the dynamic emergence of Nigerian video films. His analysis highlights the diverse, unexpected media forms and practices that thrive in urban Africa. Signal and Noise brings anthropology and media together in an original analysis of media's place in urban life. http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=1121111125430&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=15839 <http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=1121111125430&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=15839> Duke University Press April 2008 352pp 56 Illustrations £16.99 PB 978-0-8223-4108-6 SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.00 to LEARNING-FROM-FILM-TV-NEWMEDIA Subscribers Postage and Packing £2.75 (PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: LN211108SN for discount) To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk <http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk> Clare Cottrell Marketing Assistant Combined Academic Publishers 15a Lewin's Yard East Street Chesham Buckinghamshire HP5 1HQ Phone: ++44 (0)1494 581 601 Fax: ++44 (0)1494 581 602 Email: [log in to unmask]