Invisible Culture, Issue 6: Please Post (apologies for cross postings) The editors of _Invisible Culture_ are pleased to announce the release of ISSUE 6: VISUAL PUBLICS, VISIBLE PUBLICS Edited by Catherine Zuromskis Available online at <http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ivchome.html> This issue of _Invisible Culture_ is a modest attempt to explore some of the many issues raised by the growing field of public sphere theory. Taking a cue from Michael Warner, the articles presented consider an understanding of publics as social, spatial, and ideological entities formed in discursive relation with a variety of cultural texts and practices, particularly, for the purposes of this issue, visual texts. In the essays included in this issue, publics are elaborated through discussions of art, mass media, notions of citizenship, history, and urban identity. Their authors show how the concept of public participation can be both hegemonic and resistant (and sometimes a combination of the two). And by drawing attention to such thorny issues as the often-indistinct distinction between public and private, the interdependence of public practice and urban history or identity, the sometimes-fleeting agency of the public citizen, and the difficulties in addressing a particular public, the essays in this issue endeavor to bring to life, and into view, the fragmentary, problematic nature of defining the public sphere. The articles included in this issue are: Appetite for Destruction: Public Iconography and the Artificial Ruins of SITE, Inc. by Jessica Robey All Together Now! Publics and Participation in _American Idol_ by Simon Cowell Canine Citizenship and the Intimate Public Sphere by Lisa Uddin Picturing Berlin: Piecing Together a Public Sphere by Sunil Manghani Plurality in Place: Activating Public Spheres and Public Spaces in Seattle by Shannon Mattern __________________________________________________________________________ Past issues of _Invisible Culture_ include: "Visual Culture and National Identity" (Issue 5) "To Incorporate Practice" (Issue 4) "Time and the Work" (Issue 3) "Interrogating Subcultures" (Issue 2), and "The Worlding of Cultural Studies" (Issue 1). _Invisible Culture_ has been in operation since 1998, in association with the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester. The present editors, Margot Bouman, Lucy Curzon, T'ai Smith, and Catherine Zuromskis, have revised the journal's original mission statement, with the goal of reaching a broader range of disciplines. The journal is dedicated to explorations of the material and political dimensions of cultural practices: the means by which cultural objects and communities are produced, the historical contexts in which they emerge, and the regimes of knowledge or modes of social interaction to which they contribute. As the title suggests, Invisible Culture problematizes the unquestioned alliance between culture and visibility, specifically visual culture and vision. Cultural practices and materials emerge not solely in the visible world, but also in the social, temporal, and theoretical relations that define the invisible. Our understanding of Cultural Studies, finally, maintains that culture is fugitive and is constantly renegotiated. _Invisible Culture_ accepts book, film, media, and art review submissions of 600 to 800 words. _______________________________________ Catherine Zuromskis Ph.D. Student Program in Visual and Cultural Studies University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627 (585)241-9667 [log in to unmask] ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu