This collection re-imagines the study of English and media in a way that decentralises the text (e.g. romantic poetry or film noir) or media formats/platforms (e.g. broadcast media/new media). Instead, the authors work across boundaries in meaningful thematic contexts that reflect the ways in which people engage with reading, watching, making, and listening in their textual lives. In so doing, this project recasts both subjects as combined in a more reflexive, critical space for the study of our everyday social and cultural interactions. Across the chapters, the authors present applicable learning and teaching strategies that weave together art works, films, social practices, creativity, 'viral' media, theater, TV, social media, videogames, and literature. The culmination of this range of strategies is a reclaimed 'blue skies' approach to progressive textual education, free from constraining shackles of outdated ideas about textual categories and value that have hitherto alienated generations of students and both English and media from themselves.

Pete Bennett is senior lecturer in post-compulsory education at the University of Wolverhampton. He is co-author of After the Media: Culture and Identity in the 21st Century (2011) and co-editor of Barthes' Mythologies Today (2013). Julian McDougall is professor of media and education and head of the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice at Bournemouth University. He is co-editor of the Media Education Research Journal and the Journal of Media Practice and author of a range of academic books and student textbooks in the fields of media education, media/cultural studies, and media literacy.