Zack Furness

Email     312-369-8791

Zack Furness is a recent hire at Columbia College Chicago and he begins work as a professor of Cultural Studies in the fall of 2007. He holds Ph.D. (2005) and M.A. (2001) degrees in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh and he earned his B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University (1999). Zack's interests lie in the intersections of cultural studies, technologies, radical politics, alternative media and cities. His forthcoming book, entitled One Less Car: Bike Culture and the Politics of Cycling (Temple University Press), explores the ways that cyclists in the United States have politicized bicycles and everyday cycling as a response to the proliferation of car culture and the ideology of automobility. In addition to his book project, he has been an active writer/editor with Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (http://bad.eserver.org) and he has written for various academic and non-academic publications including Mobilities, Social Epistemology , Punk Planet and a recent edited volume entitled Handbook of Critical Media Literacy (Eds. Donaldo Macedo and Shirley Steinberg, Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2007). In the following year he intends to edit a book on academia & punk culture entitled Punkademics and co-edit a book on pedagogy and radical politics.

Prior to joining the Cultural Studies faculty at Columbia College Chicago, Zack taught a variety of courses in media and communication at the University of Pittsburgh (1999-2006) and Shoreline Community College (2006-2007). He views teaching as an integral part of the struggle for peace & social justice and his goal as a teacher is to help students take an active role in their education and their communities. He strongly believes in bell hooks' notion of education as the practice of freedom.

When he's not teaching or staring at a computer screen, Zack rides bikes, plays music and drinks an intense amount of coffee. In recent years he sang in two Pittsburgh punk bands, Voice in the Wire and Teddy Duchamp's Army, and played guitar/sang in a folk-punk duo called Cityhands.