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Prof. Emeritus Nava, Mica

Contact details

Position: Professor of Cultural Studies

Location: EB 1.24, Docklands

Telephone: 020 8223 2762

Email: m.nava@uel.ac.uk

Contact address:

School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI)
University of East London
Docklands Campus
University Way
London E16 2RD

Brief biography

Mica Nava is Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her publications include Gender and Generation (1984); Changing Cultures: Feminism, Youth and Consumerism (1992); Modern Times: A Century of English Modernity (1996); Buy This Book (1997) and Visceral Cosmopolitanism (2007).

Since the 1980s her work has been widely cited and reprinted and has contributed to the expansion of cultural studies in UK and abroad. She has been invited to give keynote conference papers and/or special lectures on her research in Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Holland, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States as well as at universities and other venues throughout Britain.

In 2007 she was chair of the organising committee of the international conference 'Cultural Studies Now' held at UEL and founder of the UEL Centre for Cultural Studies Research (CCSR) http://culturalstudiesresearch.org/. In 2007 she also co-authored and presented a documentary programme 'Shopping for England' on developments in retailing and the influence of US entrepreneurs Selfridge and Woolworth on the UK for BBC Four.

She was a member of RAE2008 Sub-Panel 66 Communications, Cultural and Media Studies.

In 2011 she was awarded funding by the Reed Foundation US to work on race relations research in postwar Britain. In addition to this, her  work consists of PhD supervision and research administration.

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Activities and responsibilities

Centre for Cultural Studies Research (CCSR)

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Areas of Interest/Summary of Expertise

20th century metropolitan, intellectual, artistic, commercial and political cultures; modernity; feminism; consumption; cosmopolitanism; race and difference.

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Teaching: Programmes

Recent PhD Supervision

  • Ben Pitcher (AHRC funded): Multicultural Nationalism: New Labour and the Politics of Race and State (awarded 2007)
  • Ulrike Vieten (UEL funded): Situating Cosmopolitanism (awarded 2008)
  • Helen Taylor (UEL funded): Landscapes of Belonging: the Meaning of Home for Cypriot Refugees in London (awarded 2009)
  •  Katy Pettit (AHRC funded): The Food Culture of East London, 1880–1914 (awarded 2009)
  • Andrew Branch (UEL funded): Social Mobility, Masculinity and Popular Music : the case of Glam Rock (awarded 2010)
  • Sarah Baker (UEL funded): Retro Style, Class and the Home: The Making and Unmaking of Value (awarded 2010)
  • Susan Allen (part-time): Women’s Peace Campaigning before Greenham: Politics and Culture 1950-1970 (awarded 2011).
  • Nicola Samson (AHRC funded): Narratives of Women’s Belonging: Life Stories from an East London Street.

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Current research and publications

Mica Nava is currently following up some of the leads identified in chapter 6 of her Visceral Cosmopolitanism and is researching work by  women anthropologists and sociologists on race relations in 1950s Britain with particular attention to the influence of European thinking.

 

Recent publications and reprints include:

  • 2010 - ‘Cosmopolitan Modernity: Everyday Imaginaries and the Register of Difference’ reprinted in Cultural Theory Volume 3, ed. David Oswell, London: Sage (pp 269-286)
  • 2010 - ‘Cosmopolitan Modernity: Everyday Imaginaries and the Register of Difference’ reprinted in Cosmopolitanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology eds Gerard Delanty and David Inglis, London: Routledge.
  • 2011 - ‘Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society’ in Social History Vol. 36 No. 3 August.
  • 2012      'Los Usos de Todo Lo Solido: Modernidad, Consumo y Cosmopolitismo' in La Modernidad y Sus Paradojas, eds Francisco Carballo and Jorge Brenna Becerril, Mexico: Universidad Autonomo Metropolitana-Xochimilco and Barcelona: Anthropos.

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Research archive

Key publications

  • 1984 - Gender and Generation, eds. Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava, London: Macmillan.
  • 1992 - Changing Cultures: Feminism, Youth and Consumerism, London: Sage.
  • 1996 - ' Modernity's Disavowal: Women, the City and the Departmnet Store' in Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, eds. Mica Nava and Alan O’Shea, London: Routledge.
  • 1996 - (with Orson Nava) ‘Discriminating or Duped? Young People as Consumers of Advertising/Art’ in Media Studies: A Reader, eds Paul Marris and Sue Thornham, Edinburgh University Press. (second edition 1999).
  • 1997 - 'Framing Advertising: Cultural Analysis and the Incrimination of Visual Texts' in Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption, eds. Mica Nava, Andrew Blake, Iain MacRury and Barry Richards) London: Routledge.
  • 1998 - 'The Cosmopolitanism of Commerce and the Allure of Difference: Selfridges, the Russian Ballet and the Tango 1911-14' in International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 1 (2)
  • 1999 - 'Wider Horizons and Modern Desire: The Contradictions of America and Racial Difference in London 1935-45' in New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/ Politics No. 37
  • 1999 - 'Diana and Race: Romance and the Reconfiguration of the Nation' in Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief, eds. Adrian Kear and Deborah Steinberg, London: Routledge
  • 2000 - 'Mujeres, Consumo y Modernidad Europea' in Debate Feminista No 22.
  • 2002 - 'Cosmopolitan Modernity: Everyday Imaginaries and the Register of Difference', in Theory, Culture & Society (Special Issue on Cosmopolis) Vol. 19 No.1-2.
  • 2004 - 'Consumos, Cosmopolitismo e Cultura Quotidiana no olhar de Mica Nava', Interview with Claudia Alvares, in Media & Jornalismo: As Mulheres e Os Media No. 3/5.
  • 2005 - 'Thoughts on Contextualising Practice', Journal of Media Practice, Volume6, Issue 3, December.
  • 2006 - 'Thinking Internationally: Gender and Racial Others in Postwar Britain', in Third Text No 83, Issue 6 Vol. 2
  • 2006 - 'Domestic Cosmopolitanism and Structures of Feeling: the specificity of London', in The Situated Politics of Belonging, eds. Nira Yuval-Davis, Kalpana Kannabiran and Ulrike M. Vieten, London: Sage
  • 2007 - 'The Unconscious and Others: Rescue, Inclusivity and the Eroticisation of Difference in 1930s Vienna', in Culture and the Unconscious, eds. Caroline Bainbridge, Susannah Radstone, Michael Rustin and Candida Yates, London: Palgrave.
  • 2007 - Visceral Cosmopolitanism: Gender, Culture and the Normalisation of Difference, Oxford: Berg.

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Other scholarly activities

  • Advisory editorial board: Debate Feminista; Body and Society; Journal of Consumer Culture; International Journal of Cultural Studies.
  • Referee: AHRB/C; ESRC; British Academy; Australian Research Council; Austrian Science Fund; Theory Culture & Society; Environment & Planning; Social History; MIT Press; Sage, Ashgate, Arnold, Berg, Blackwell.
  • RAE2008 Member of Sub-Panel 66 Communications, Cultural and Media Studies.  
  • Research centre advisory boards:  Centre for Culture, Identity and Education, University of British Columbia; Forum On Migration and Communications (FOMACS), Dublin Institute of Technology; Raphael Samuel History Centre, UEL and Birkbeck; Centre for Research into Migration, Refugees and Belonging, UEL; City Centre, University College London.
  • 2003-7   Visiting professor/consultant Ivan Franko National University Lviv, Ukaine (Soros Foundation).

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Mica Nava

Visceral Cosmopolitanism
Gender, Culture and the Normalisation of Difference by
Mica Nava

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