Biography
Sut Jhally completed his undergraduate degree in England, his master’s and doctoral degrees in Canada and is Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is retired as a full-time faculty member, now teaches part-time, and is still very much involved with the intellectual life of the university. He is one of the world’s leading scholars looking at the role played by media, advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media (including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him “Best Professor”). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Simon Fraser University in 2015
Media Education Foundation
Sut Jhally is also the Executive Director of the non-profit Media Education Foundation (MEF), which he founded in 1991 after a legal dispute with MTV concerning issues of free speech and copyright for his very first film, Dreamworlds. Since then, MEF films have been seen by millions of students in college classroom across the country and the globe. Approaching its 35th anniversary it has become one the leading producers and distributors of educational films dealing with the critical issues connected to gender, sexuality, race, consumerism and politics. MEF has also become an important voice looking at the world of politics, engaging in the most vital issues of the day and seeking audiences beyond the classroom. Sut Jhally has been involved in the production of more than 80 MEF films. Born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in graduate studies in Canada, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Henry Giroux from the Preface to Sut Jhally’s The Spectacle of Accumulation
Just before his death, Edward Said, the great social and cultural critic, suggested that intellectuals have a greater responsibility than ever before in the United States and throughout the world, because democracy unlike no other time in our history is being threatened. In many ways, The Spectacle of Accumulation embodies, deepens, and extends Said’s sense of what it means to be an engaged intellectual. This is a book that is concerned with the ongoing threat to democratic culture, the corporate control of mass media, the intersection of race, class, power, the war on youth, and the power and reach of the spectacle of accumulation and commodification. Rather than separate knowledge from commitment, political economy from cultural politics, and theory from practice, this book connects all of these issues within a broad political and cultural landscape that makes visible how the spectacle of appearance, commodification, and accumulation functions to reproduce ongoing attacks on minorities of class and color, the highjacking of the political state by the corporate state, the commercialization of public space, and the increasing reduction of young people to consumers.