Steve Macek

Steve Macek teaches communication and media studies at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He is the author of Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right and the Moral Panic over the City (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), a critical analysis of media representations of and political discourse about American cities and the urban poor in the 1980s and 90s, and co-editor of Marxism and Communication Studies: The Point is to Change It (Peter Lang, 2006). His articles on Chicago's radical and alternative media during the 1960s have been published in A.R.E.A. magazine and in the collection A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of US Communication since WWII (Marquette University Press, 2011). He is a frequent contributor to Project Censored's annual book, published by Seven Stories Press. He is currently writing a history of Chicago's notorious film censor board, tentatively titled Banned in the Windy City: Eight Decades of Film Censorship in Chicago. He is also co-editing a collected volume about censorship and the crackdown on freedom of expression around the globe that will be published sometime in the next year by Peter Lang. His articles and op-eds about media, politics and freedom of expression have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and on a number of news sites. A longtime activist in progressive political causes, he currently devotes much of his energy to the American Association of University Professors and the fight to preserve academic freedom, tenure and faculty governance.