Gramsci and Media Literacy

Erika Engstrom is professor and director of the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky. Ralph Beliveau is associate professor in the Creative Media Production area of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

In their important new book, scholars and professors Erika Engstrom and Ralph Beliveau provide a crucial wake-up call along with a thoughtfully devised action plan for recognizing and combating ideologically manipulative media power. Through well-developed clear arguments and convincing evidence (underscored by dynamic prose), they wed Antonio Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony and social justice to an approach to media literacy education firmly grounded in critical activism. The authors’ in-depth, exemplary close analysis of hegemonic masculinity in the all-time highest grossing film (as of July 2019)—Marvel/Disney’s Avengers: Endgame—is a brilliant and inspiring penultimate chapter.

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: A Gramscian Approach to Media Literacy Chapter 3: Gramsci, Film, TV, and Cable Streaming: Toward CounterhegemonyChapter 4: Hegemonic Masculinity in the Mass MediaChapter 5: The Gendered Endgame: Marvel’s New ManChapter 6: ConclusionBibliographyIndexAbout the Authors