REDCAT Hosts An Evening With Marc Cooper 12/15

REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) and the CalArts graduate Aesthetics and Politics Program co-present, as part of the REDCAT conversation series, Marc Cooper with Norman M. Klein and Martín Plot on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 8:30pm.

Prolific journalist and cultural critic Marc Cooper, a contributing editor to The Nation and formerly the writer of the LA Weekly's popular "Dissonance" column, is joined by Norman M. Klein and Martín Plot for a provocative discussion about shifting cultural patterns in a time of crises global and local. Is our long-spluttering model of government nearing the end of the line? Is the Golden State now the Failed State? Is broken government the new currency of globalization? Is 24-hour news, with its attendant twitter and scream, in a state of low-grade nervous breakdown? Cooper is a visiting professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. His books include Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir and Roll Over Che Guevara: Travels of a Radical Reporter.

MORE ABOUT MARC COOPER

Marc Cooper's career in journalism began in 1966, when he founded and edited an underground newspaper in high school in Los Angeles. After being expelled from the California State University system for his antiwar activities in 1971 by order of Governor Ronald Reagan, he signed on to work in the press office of Chilean President Salvador Allende. The 1973 military coup found Cooper working as Allende's translator for publication, and he left Chile as a UN-protected refugee eight days after the bloody takeover.

Since then Cooper has traveled the world covering politics and culture for myriad press outlets. He reported on the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon, South Africa, Central and South America, Eastern and Western Europe and domestic American politics for dozens of publications ranging from Playboy and Rolling Stone to the Sunday magazines of the Los Angeles Times and The Times of London. Cooper was news and public affairs director of KPFK-FM (Los Angeles) from 1980-83 and has been a correspondent for NBC, CBC and Monitor Radio. For television, he has been a reporter and a producer of news documentaries for CBS News, The Christian Science Monitor and PBS Frontline.

Cooper's journalism awards include prizes from The Society of Professional Journalists and PEN America, and several from the California Associated Press TV and Radio Association. An anthology of Cooper's work, Roll Over Che Guevara: Travels of a Radical Reporter, was published by Verso in 1994. He was also a contributor to the collection Literary Las Vegas, published in 1995 by Holt.

Returning to the system from which he was expelled, Cooper has also taught in the journalism departments at the Northridge and Los Angeles campuses of California State University. He is currently host and executive producer of The Nation's syndicated weekly radio show, RadioNation.

Official website: www.marccooper.com