Faculty
Michael Giardina
323 Gregory Hall
(217) 333-3635
giardina - at - illinois.edu
Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Kinesiology)
M.S., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Kinesiology)
B.S., Ithaca College
Affiliations
Visiting Assistant Professor of Advertising
Affiliate Faculty, Kinesiology & Community Health
Affiliate Faculty, Program for Cultural Studies & Interpretive Research
Course Specialties
Sport, Culture & Advertising
Classic Campaigns & Cultural Branding
Cultural Studies & Qualitative Methods
Background
Giardina is the author of "Sporting Pedagogies: Performing Culture & Identity in the Global Arena" (Peter Lang, 2005), which received the prestigious Most Outstanding Book Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in 2006, and "From Soccer Moms to NASCAR Dads: Sport, Culture, & Politics after 9/11" (Paradigm, in press). He is also the co-editor (with Norman K. Denzin) of "Contesting Empire/Globalizing Dissent: Cultural Studies after 9/11" (Paradigm, 2006), "Qualitative Inquiry and the Conservative Challenge: Confronting Methodological Fundamentalism" (Left Coast Press, 2006), "Ethical Futures in Qualitative Research: Decolonizing the Politics of Knowledge" (Left Coast Press, 2007), and "Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Evidence" (Left Coast Press, 2008); co-editor (with Cameron McCarthy, Aisha Durham, Laura Engel, Alice Filmer and Miguel Malagreca) of "Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method, and Policy" (Peter Lang, 2007); and co-editor (with Michele K. Donnelly) of "Youth Culture & Sport: Identity, Power, & Politics" (Routledge, 2007). His work has likewise appeared in numerous scholarly journals such as Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Qualitative Inquiry, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction. With Joshua I. Newman, he is currently completing a book titled, "Consuming NASCAR Nation: Sport, Spectacle, and the Politics of Neoliberalism."
Research/Creative Endeavor
Giardina's research examines the complex and often contradictory articulations between contemporary popular cultural practices and the broader social formations in which they are located, experienced, performed, contested and deployed. It is interdisciplinary in nature, residing at the intersections of media studies, advertising/consumer culture, political economy and cultural studies/critical theory (including Marxist, feminist, British, postcolonial and postmodern iterations). And it is motivated by a deep recognition that the cultural arena represents the clearest point of entry into everyday operations of power, knowledge and identity, one in which culture is always performative and pedagogical, and hence always political, and too frequently racist and sexist. More specifically, his research focuses on issues related to the cultural politics of race, gender, nation and identity in the historical present. It critically interrogates the production and circulation of global/local particularities with respect to transnational media (i.e., cinema, television, advertising, technology). It actively inquires into the "conditions of emergence" that constitute, signify and re-signify popular forms of multi/cultural identities in late-capitalist consumer culture. And it negotiates issues related to neoliberalism and democracy in a post-9/11 era, including the way in which notions of patriotism and freedom have been redefined as consumptive acts of "proper" citizenship.