Michael J. Shapiro, Negotiating Civic Life: Literature, Film, Politics – Edinburgh University Press, May 2025

A politically-attuned textual journey through civic life

• Contributes to thinking about civic life both thematically and methodologically
• Features critical interventions into gender, race, sexuality, and clothing
• Emphasises the historiographic contributions of artistic genres

Focused both thematically and methodologically on diverse aspects of civic life, this book elucidates the mentalities and forces involved in the way individuals and collectives negotiate ways of being in common. The chapters feature critical interventions into the civic lives of grief, of things, of Blackness, and of trans identity.

With an emphasis on the historiographic contributions of literature, film, objects and embodied memories of events, Shapiro’s textual analyses treat the way artistic genres supply the critical thinking needed to encourage a more egalitarian and convivial life world.