Loading Poll...Lee to Discuss War and the Arts
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Hall Institute Communications Director Richard A. Lee will present a paper at the 2010 Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association Conference in South Minneapolis in October. The conference runs from October 1 to 3.
Lee will discuss the role that the arts play in disseminating information during times of war.
“Media scholars have suggested that there is a gap between the type of news that is reported and what is actually of importance and interest to the citizenry,” he explained.
“For example, protest music functioned as alternative media during the Vietnam War era, asking questions and raising issues that were absent from the mainstream media,” he said. By so doing, it played a critical role in strengthening public opposition to America’s involvement in Vietnam.”
In support of his theory, Lee wrote a book chapter for War and the Media: Essays on News Reporting, Propaganda and Popular Culture, an anthology published in 2009. . For the conference, he plans to build upon his research and examine music, books, plays, movies and other elements of popular culture from the start of the 20th Century up to the resent in order to first identify a few key examples that illustrate their role in providing news and information, and then determine whether – like the protest music of the 1960s -- the arts have filled, and continue to fill, gaps in mainstream media coverage.
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