Virginia Festival of the Book

Migration: A Gallery supports the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Don't miss this very important discussion of the role the media plays in our lives and our culture. It will be held on Friday, March 28th at 2pm in the City Council Chambers. The panel discussion features four prominent authors, my favorite being my father, John E. Semonche from UNC-CH. Rob and I know you will enjoy it, and we hope you can attend.

How the Media Shapes Life As We Know It

Fri. March 28th, 2:00 PM

John Semonche (Censoring Sex: A Historical Journey Through American Media), Hank Klibanoff (The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation), Stephen J. Farnsworth (The Nightly News Nightmare), and Mary Beth Mathews (Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South).

Moderator: Aniko Bodroghkozy

Location: City Council Chambers, 605 E. Main Street, (434) 970-3113

John E. Semonche, author of Censoring Sex: A Historical Journey Through American Media, is a   professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two of his prior books have dealt with the United States Supreme Court.

The Library Journal says this about John’s recent book: "[A]n engaging scholarly study as well as something of a witty rejoinder to those who would seek to impose their own personal values on the creativity of others. The combination of accessible writing and solid research make it equally useful for intellectual pursuits and weekend reading."

Censorship is the enemy of art and indeed life. I hope you can attend. (p.s. If you go, ask him about "Unveiling the Evidence" print he had in his office for years.) You can buy Censoring Sex here.

Also on the panel:

Mary Beth Mathews, author of Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South, is affiliated with University of Mary Washington. She specializes in American religious history, fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and African-American religions. She previously worked on Capitol Hill.

Hank Klibanoff, co-author of The Race Beat, is the managing editor for enterprise at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A native of Alabama, he has been a reporter, national correspondent, and editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked for twenty years; and a reporter at the Boston Globe and three Mississippi newspapers.

Stephen J. Farnsworth, Ph.D., is associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Author of three books, including The Nightly News Nightmare: Network Television's Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988-2004, he was for a year the Fulbright Research Chair in Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal.