DAVID TREND is Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in Curriculum Theory and an MFA in Visual Studies. His books include Update Available: The Algorithmic Self (Worlding Books, 2023); Anxious Creativity: When Imagination Fails (Routledge, 2020); Elsewhere in America: The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture (Routledge, 2016), Worlding: Identity, Media, and Imagination in a Digital Age (2013), The End of Reading (2010), A Culture Divided (2009), Everyday Culture (2008), and The Myth of Media Violence (2007), among others. Honored as a Getty Scholar, Trend is the author of over 200 essays and a former editor of the journals Afterimage and Socialist Review. He lives in Los Angeles, CA
Contents include discussions of issues in the fields of cultural and media studies, politics, and education relating to topics concerning identity, representation, and power. My book, Elsewhere in America, addresses both old and new forms of marginalization, which consign so many in the U.S. to the category of “elsewhere.” Prejudice, competition, and discordant beliefs are but the most obvious ways that Americans cast each other to “some other place” figuratively or literally. Yet in another way, “elsewhere” can evoke an undefined “not yet” ripe with potential. In the face of America’s daunting challenges, can “elsewhere” point to optimism, hope, and common purpose? Through 12 detailed chapters, Elsewhere in America applies critical theory in the humanities and social sciences to examine recurring crises of social inclusion in the U.S.