Communication, Culture and Community: Exploring and Reintroducing Civic Engagement

Positive civic engagement can range from the smallest interpersonal gesture to the largest government-sponsored social program. Communication, Culture and Community reintroduces readers to the importance of civic engagement, and to the idea that American society is built on sharing with and caring for fellow citizens.

The book is organized into three sections. Part One questions whether civic engagement is a disappearing trait in a society that increasingly seems to focus on the individual. Part Two explores the foundations of communication, culture, and community. Part Three details practices and policies of civic engagement.

Opening with a call for re-engagement, the text then moves on to address topics such as high quality civic education, building social capital, the role of citizenship in students' daily lives, cultural approaches to communication, and theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on global citizenship.

Communication, Culture and Community can be used in courses on communication, education, and political science.

Patricia Darlington earned her Ph.D. at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Currently Dr. Darlington is an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Darlington was instrumental in developing the introductory core course entitled Intro to Communication and Civic Life, which she also teaches in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Her research focuses on the intersectionality of women, power, and ethnicity in U.S. society, and, cultural minority representation in the media. Her recent publications include Cultural Minority Representation in the Media: A Historical View of Television's Underserved (2011) and The Concise Handbook of Cultural, Political, and Pop Culture Terms: A Few Hundred Words You Need to Know to Sound Ten Times Smarter (2012) . She is also co-author of the book Women, Power, and Ethnicity: Working Toward Reciprocal Empowerment. Dr. Darlington is the recipient of the (2003) Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award and the (2011) Florida Atlantic University Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.