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TORONTO, September 23, 2000 -- The scholar who profoundly influenced cultural studies by connecting popular culture (such as rock music) to capitalism and postmodernism in his ground-breaking 1992 book, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture, is coming to York University Monday to again offer an original and bold interpretation of how America mistreats its youth.

Lawrence Grossberg, a Communication and Cultural Studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an internationally revered cultural theorist, suggests that neo-conservative society has marginalized its youth culturally, socially and economically. He will lay out his theory during a York University lecture, Is a Dream a Lie if it Doesn't Come True, or is it Something Worse?: Why There are no Kids in the Neo-liberal Future.

The lecture is being held to honour the life and work of Ioan Davies, a York Professor of Communication and Culture, Social and Political Thought and Sociology, who died suddenly in Cuba in February 2000. The lecture will be held at York University, Mon., Sept. 25, 5 p.m., in Curtis Lecture Hall "F" (off the Ross Building), 4700 Keele Street.

"Neo-liberal / neo-conservative society has declared war on its kids, although, unlike so many of its wars, it doesn't boast about it," says Grossberg. "Over the past twenty years or so, the way the US treats and thinks about its children has changed pretty dramatically and a society that for many decades was accused of worshipping youth now seems increasingly hostile to youth itself, and this has been played out in the way people under 18 are treated. Why would a society so drastically change its relationship to its youth/children? I think the answer has to do with the ways US society is being changed more generally. Looking at the war against youth in relation to economic, political and social change may give us a glimpse of the coming American century."

Grossberg says the US has the highest poverty rate of people under 18 in the advanced industrial world and that the US is one of only four nations that executes youth -- an irony he says, given that at 16 you cannot get your ears pierced without a parent's permission but you can be tried as an adult. He adds that youth are increasingly represented as radically different and dangerous.

Prof. Beth Seaton, Coordinator of York's Communication Studies program says Grossberg continues to push the parameters of communications and cultural studies. "The breadth and critical acuity of his writings are not only stunning, they are more often encouraging in the possibilities offered: namely that cultural studies revolve around political projects which must reveal the social conflicts of our time."

Grossberg is the Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Chair of the Executive Committee of the University Program in Cultural Studies. He is widely known for his work in the study of popular culture, especially popular music and youth culture, the philosophy of culture and communication, and postmodernism. His current work focuses on neo-conservatism, economics and globalization, and the modernist foundations of communication and cultural theory. He has written more than a hundred books and articles including: It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics and Culture (1988); We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (1992); and Media Making (with Ellen Wartella and D. Charles Whitney, 1998).

Grossberg's visit is also in honour of the 20th anniversary of the Communication Studies Program (formally Mass Communications), and the inaugural year of the York/Ryerson Graduate Program in Communications and Culture, which Davies played a pivotal role in establishing.

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For more information, please contact:

Prof. Beth Seaton
Coordinator, Communication Studies Program
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 30164
bseaton@calumet.yorku.ca

Ken Turriff
Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
kturriff@yorku.ca
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