Reading in a Participatory Culture

Remixing Moby-Dick in the English Classroom

Building on the groundbreaking research of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative, this book crosses the divide between digital literacies and traditional print culture to engage a generation of students who can read with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other.Reading in a Participatory Culturetells the story of an innovative experiment that brought together playwright and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, and new media scholar Henry Jenkins to develop an exciting new curriculum to reshape the middle and high school English language arts classroom. This book offers highlights from the resources developed for teaching Herman Melville’sMoby-Dickand outlines basic principles of design, implementation, and assessment that can be applied to any text.

Book Features:

• Models a new approach for teaching reading in a participatory culture, which has been field-tested in six different classrooms.


• Considers how19th-century authors, such as Herman Melville, participated in the literary culture around them.


• Includes links to a complimentary online digital book,Flows of Reading,which shares the many videos produced by Project New Media and models the application of these core concepts to a range of other texts, includingTheLord of the Rings, The Hunger Games,andFlotsam.

Henry Jenkinsis the Provost’s Professor of communications, journalism, cinematic arts, and education at the University of Southern California.Wyn Kelleyis senior lecturer in literature and comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“InReading in a Participatory Culture, Media Studies meets the Great White Whale in the English Classroom. This book is one of the most exciting and breathtaking works on English education ever written. At the same time it is must reading for anyone interested in digital media, digital culture, and learning in the 21st Century.”

—James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University

“An inspirational approach to democratizing the cultural canon and restoring classrooms to expansive educational purposes grounded in a participatory ethos. It explains in clear, accessible, and practically informative terms the New Media Literacies philosophy of reading and writing to prepare today's students for the world they must build—together, collaboratively—tomorrow.Readingin a Participatory Cultureprovides rich descriptions of experiences and perspectives of readers and writers, teachers, and learners who understandMoby-Dickas itself an instance of cultural remix and, in turn, a living creation to be remixed by all who take delight in it—especially those who can come to take delight in it by being introduced to it as part of theireducation.”

—Colin Lankshear,Adjunct Professor, James Cook University, Australia