Dearest colleagues and friends,
Happy holidays on behalf of everyone at Figure/Ground Communication! 2012 has been a decisive year for us: we have finalized our transition from being a one-man show to becoming a student-led research website with a staff of +25 collaborators and a database of +120 interviews. Inspired by Bryan Magee‘s philosophical interviews and Hans Ulrich Obrist‘s Interview Project, our aim is to build the largest repositories of scholarly interviews on the web. This year had the pleasure to converse with such renowned scholars as Simon Critchley, John Searle, Alphonso Lingis and Douglas Kellner; were nominated for a number of social media and online publishing awards; received endorsements from key scholars, academics and intellectuals, and have steadily grown our readership base, reaching +12,000 clicks this month.
Figure/Ground’s last interview of 2012 is with Brian Cogan. Dr. Cogan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications at Molloy College in Long Island, New York. He is the author, co-author and co-editor of numerous books, articles and anthologies on popular culture, music and the
media. His specific areas of research interest are media studies, music, fandom, punk rock, popular culture, comic books, graphic novels, and the intersection of politics and popular culture. He is the author of *The Punk Rock Encyclopedia* (Sterling 2008), co-author with Tony Kelso of *The
Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Media and Politics* (Greenwood Press 2009) as well as co-editor with Tony Kelso of *Mosh the Polls: Youth Voters, Popular Culture, and Democratic Engagement* (Lexington 2008), which is about youth culture and political involvement. Dr. Cogan is also the co-author, along with William Phillips, of the *Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music* (Greenwood Press 2009), and is the editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on the popular television show *South Park* (Lexington 2011). He is also the co-author/editor of two forthcoming books in 2013, *Baby Boomers and Popular Culture**: **An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation* (Co-edited with Thomas Gencarelli) 2 Volumes Praeger Books (2013) and *Everything I Ever Needed to Know About _____________* I Learned from Monty Python” *Including History, Art, Poetry, Communism, Philosophy, the Media, Birth, Death, Religion, Literature, Latin, Transvestites, Botany, the French, Class Systems, Mythology, Fish Slapping, and many more!* (Co-written with Jeffrey Massey) St. Martins Press (2013).
http://www.figureground.ca/2012/12/31/interview-with-brian-cogan/
Bon appetit and happy holidays!
L.
—
Laureano Ralon (BA, MA)
Simon Fraser University
www.sfu.ca
Founder and Editor-in-Chief,
Figure/Ground Communication*™*
www.figureground.ca
Co-director, Observatorio de Canadá
Centro Argentino de Estudios Internacionales
www.caei.com.ar
Blog de Octavio Islas 