Creative Activism: Conversations on Music, Film, Literature, and Other Radical Arts [Paperback]

This collection brings together interviews with a compelling range of musicians, artists, and activists from around the globe. What does it mean for an artist to be political? Moving away from a narrow idea about politics that is organized around elections, advocacy groups, or concrete manifestos, the subjects ofCreative Activismdo their work through song, poetry, painting, and other arts. The interviews take us from Oakland to London to Johannesburg and from the Occupy movement to the coal mines of Appalachia to the fantasy worlds created by some of our most fascinating writers of spectacular fiction. Listening to the important cultural workers of our time challenges any idea that some other time was the golden age of political art:Creative Activismgives us a front-row seat to the thrilling artistic activism of our own moment.Rachel Lee Rubinis Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA, where she directs the Center for the Study of Humanities, Culture, and Society. She has authored and edited numerous books on American popular culture includingWell Met:Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture,American Identities: An Introductory Textbook,American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century, and an upcoming title for Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series,Okie from Muskogee. She is a regular commentator on public radio and frequently quoted as a popular culture expert in the mainstream media.

There is a wonderfully useful group of contemporary thinkers assembled here. I am glad it exists. Samuel R. Delany, author of Babel-17 (1966) and Dhalgren (1975)

Featuring an extraordinary range of artists and voices,Creative Activismis an indispensable compilation of oral histories-and an often-exhilarating exchange of ideas on the roles of artists on the front lines of activism today. As an instructive and evocative guide, Rachel Lee Rubin lc|