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Books > Social sciences > General
Using groundbreaking studies, news stories, and interviews, this
book underscores that there will never be gender equity until men
stop harassing women in public spaces—and it details strategies
for achieving this goal. Street harassment is generally dismissed
as harmless, but in reality, it causes women to feel unsafe in
public, at least sometimes. To achieve true gender equality, it
must come to an end. Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places
Safe and Welcoming for Women draws on academic studies, informal
surveys, news articles, and interviews with activists to explore
the practice's definition and prevalence, the societal contexts in
which it occurs, and the role of factors such as race and sexual
orientation. Perhaps more crucially, the book makes clear how women
experience street harassment—how they feel about and respond to
it—and the ways it negatively impacts lives. But understanding is
only a beginning. In the second half of the book, readers will find
concrete strategies for dealing with street harassers and ways to
become involved in working to end this all-too-common violation.
Educators, counselors, parents, and other concerned individuals
will discover resources for teaching about harassment and modeling
behavior that will help prevent harassment incidents.
The Islands of the Sun and the Moon in Bolivia's Lake Titicaca
were two of the most sacred locations in the Inca empire. A
pan-Andean belief held that they marked the origin place of the Sun
and the Moon, and pilgrims from across the Inca realm made ritual
journeys to the sacred shrines there. In this book, Brian Bauer and
Charles Stanish explore the extent to which this use of the islands
as a pilgrimage center during Inca times was founded on and
developed from earlier religious traditions of the Lake Titicaca
region.
Drawing on a systematic archaeological survey and test
excavations in the islands, as well as data from historical texts
and ethnography, the authors document a succession of complex
polities in the islands from 2000 BC to the time of European
contact in the 1530s AD. They uncover significant evidence of
pre-Inca ritual use of the islands, which raises the compelling
possibility that the religious significance of the islands is of
great antiquity. The authors also use these data to address broader
anthropological questions on the role of pilgrimage centers in the
development of pre-modern states.
This interdisciplinary collection explores how cinema calls into
question its own frame of reference and, at the same time, how its
form becomes the matter of its thought. Building on the axiom
(cherished by philosophers of cinema from Epstein to Deleuze) that
cinema is a medium that thinks in conjunction with its spectators,
this book examines how various forms of the cinematic rethink and
redraw the terrain of traditional disciplines, thereby enabling
different modes of thought and practice. Areas under consideration
by a range of leading academics and practitioners include
architecture, science, writing in a visual field, event-theory and
historiography.
A top educator looks at the causes and national costs of the
lowering of college admission and academic standards in the United
States, then proposes confronting the problem by tying federal
student grants and loans to academic performance as well as to
financial need. After a half-century of teaching, distinguished
educator Jackson Toby concludes that all too often, our current
system gives high school students the impression that college is an
entitlement and not a challenge. The Lowering of Higher Education:
Why Financial Aid Should be Based on Student Performance is Toby's
unflinching look at this broken system and the ways it can be
fixed. The Lowering of Higher Education documents just how far
college admission standards have fallen, then measures the cost of
remedial programs for underprepared high school students just to
get them to where they should have been in the first place. Toby
also pulls no punches on the issue of grade inflation, which
rewards laziness while demoralizing hard-working students. In
conclusion, Toby proposes an innovative solution: base financial
aid solely on academic performance, creating a compelling incentive
for students to develop serious attitudes and study approaches in
high school.
The Science Fiction Film in Contemporary Hollywood focuses on the
American science fiction (SF) film during the period 2001-2020, in
order to provide a theoretical mapping of the genre in the context
of Conglomerate Hollywood. Using a social semiotics approach in a
systematic corpus of films, the book argues that the SF film can be
delineated by two semiotic squares —the first one centering on
the genre’s more-than-human ontologies (SF bodies), and the
second one focusing on its imaginative worlds (SF worlds). Based on
this theoretical framework, the book examines the genre in six
cycles, which are placed in their historical context, and are
analyzed in relation to cultural discourses, such as technological
embodiment, race, animal-human relations, environmentalism, global
capitalism, and the techno-scientific Empire. By considering these
cycles —which include superhero films, creature films, space
operas, among others—as expressions of the genre’s basic
oppositions, the book facilitates the comparison and juxtaposition
of films that have rarely been discussed in tandem, offering a new
perspective on the multiple articulations of the SF film in the new
millennium.
Since the early twentieth century, thousands of Mexican Americans
have lived, worked, and formed communities in Chicago’s steel
mill neighborhoods. Drawing on individual stories and oral
histories, Michael Innis-Jiménez tells the story of a vibrant,
active community that continues to play a central role in American
politics and society. Examining how the fortunes of Mexicans in
South Chicago were linked to the environment they helped to build,
Steel Barrio offers new insights into how and why Mexican Americans
created community. This book investigates the years between the
World Wars, the period that witnessed the first, massive influx of
Mexicans into Chicago. South Chicago Mexicans lived in a
neighborhood whose literal and figurative boundaries were defined
by steel mills, which dominated economic life for Mexican
immigrants. Yet while the mills provided jobs for Mexican men, they
were neither the center of community life nor the source of
collective identity. Steel Barrio argues that the Mexican immigrant
and Mexican American men and women who came to South Chicago
created physical and imagined community not only to defend against
the ever-present social, political, and economic harassment and
discrimination, but to grow in a foreign, polluted environment.
Steel Barrio reconstructs the everyday strategies the working-class
Mexican American community adopted to survive in areas from labor
to sports to activism. This book links a particular community in
South Chicago to broader issues in twentieth-century U.S. history,
including race and labor, urban immigration, and the segregation of
cities.
This single-volume book contends that reshaping the paradigm of
American Indian identity, blood quantum, and racial distinctions
can positively impact the future of the Indian community within
America and America itself. This academic compendium examines the
complexities associated with Indian identity in North America,
including the various social, political, and legal issues impacting
Indian expression in different periods; the European influence on
how self-governing tribal communities define the rights of
citizenship within their own communities; and the effect of Indian
mascots, Thanksgiving, and other cultural appropriations taking
place within American society on the Indian community. The book
looks at and proposes solutions to the controversies surrounding
the Indian tribal nations and their people. The authors—all
leading advocates of Indian progress—argue that tribal
governments and communities should reconsider the notion of what
comprises Indian identity, and in doing so, they compare and
contrast how indigenous people around the world define themselves
and their communities. Chapters address complex questions under the
discourse of Indian law, history, philosophy, education, political
science, anthropology, art, psychology, and civil rights. Topics
covered in depth include blood quantum, racial distinctions, First
Nations, and tribal citizenship.
Tracing developments in toy making and marketing across the
evolving landscape of the 20th century, this encyclopedia is a
comprehensive reference guide to America's most popular playthings
and the culture to which they belong. From the origins of favorite
playthings to their associations with events and activities, the
study of a nation's toys reveals the hopes, goals, values, and
priorities of its people. Toys have influenced the science, art,
and religion of the United States, and have contributed to the
development of business, politics, and medicine. Toys and American
Culture: An Encyclopedia documents America's shifting cultural
values as they are embedded within and transmitted by the nation's
favorite playthings. Alphabetically arranged entries trace
developments in toy making and toy marketing across the evolving
landscape of 20th-century America. In addition to discussing the
history of America's most influential toys, the book contains
specific entries on the individuals, organizations, companies, and
publications that gave shape to America's culture of play from 1900
to 2000. Toys from the two decades that frame the 20th century are
also included, as bridges to the fascinating past—and the
inspiring future—of American toys.
Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 Through
interviews and case studies, Klein develops an explanation for
bully behavior in America's schools In today’s schools, kids
bullying kids is not an occasional occurrence but rather an
everyday reality where children learn early that being sensitive,
respectful, and kind earns them no respect. Jessie Klein makes the
provocative argument that the rise of school shootings across
America, and childhood aggression more broadly, are the
consequences of a society that actually promotes aggressive and
competitive behavior. The Bully Society is a call to reclaim
America’s schools from the vicious cycle of aggression that
threatens our children and our society at large. Heartbreaking
interviews illuminate how both boys and girls obtain status by
acting “masculineâ€â€”displaying aggression at one another’s
expense as both students and adults police one another to uphold
gender stereotypes. Klein shows that the aggressive ritual of
gender policing in American culture creates emotional damage that
perpetuates violence through revenge, and that this cycle is the
main cause of not only the many school shootings that have shocked
America, but also related problems in schools, manifesting in high
rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, eating disorders,
self-cutting, truancy, and substance abuse. After two decades
working in schools as a school social worker and professor, Klein
proposes ways to transcend these destructive trends—transforming
school bully societies into compassionate communities.
In this powerful memoir, the creator of the viral videos "Before
You Call the Cops" and "Walking While Black", Tyler Merritt, shares
his experiences as a Black man in America with truth, humour, and
poignancy. Tyler Merritt's video "Before You Call the Cops" has
been viewed millions of times. He's appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and
Sports Illustrated and has been profiled in the New York Times. The
viral video's main point-the more you know someone, the more
empathy, understanding, and compassion you have for that person-is
the springboard for this book. By sharing his highs and exposing
his lows, Tyler welcomes us into his world in order to help bridge
the divides that seem to grow wider every day. In I Take My Coffee
Black, Tyler tells hilarious stories from his own life as a black
man in America. He talks about growing up in a multi-cultural
community and realizing that he wasn't always welcome, how he quit
sports for musical theater (that's where the girls were) to how
Jesus barged in uninvited and changed his life forever (it all
started with a Triple F.A.T. Goose jacket) to how he ended up at a
small Bible college in Santa Cruz because he thought they had a
great theater program (they didn't). Throughout his stories, he
also seamlessly weaves in lessons about privilege, the legacy of
lynching and sharecropping and why you don't cross black mamas. He
teaches readers about the history of encoded racism that still
undergirds our society today. By turns witty, insightful, touching,
and laugh-out-loud funny, I Take My Coffee Black paints a portrait
of black manhood in America and enlightens, illuminates, and
entertains-ultimately building the kind of empathy that might just
be the antidote against the racial injustice in our society.
When did the Common Core evolve from pet project to pariah among
educators and parents? This book examines the rise and fall of our
national education standards from their inception to the present
day. Parents, teachers, and political groups have waged debates
over the Common Core since the standards' adoption in 2010. This
timely examination explores the shifting political alliances
related to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, explains why
initial national support has faded, and considers the major debates
running through the Common Core controversy. The book is organized
around four themes of political conflict: federal versus state
control, minorities versus majorities, experts versus
professionals, and elites versus local preferences. The work
reviews the politics of state and national standards, evaluating
the political arguments for and against the Common Core: federal
overreach, lack of evidence for effectiveness, lack of parental
control, lack of teacher input, improper adaptive testing,
overtesting, and connections to private education-reform funders
and foundations. The work includes a short primer on the Common
Core State Standards Initiative as well as on the Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter
Balance, two state-level organizations that have worked on the
standards. An informative appendix presents brief descriptions of
major interest groups and think tanks involved with the standards
initiative along with a timeline of American educational standards
reforms and the Common Core.
This concise historical overview of the existing historiography of
women from across eighteenth-century Europe covers women of all
ages, married and single, rich and poor. During the 18th century,
the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, protoindustrialization,
and colonial conquest made their marks on women's lives in a
variety of ways. Women's Roles in Eighteenth-Century Europe
examines women of all ages and social backgrounds as they
experienced the major events of this tumultuous period of sweeping
social and political change. The book offers an inclusive portrayal
of women from across Europe, surveying nations from Portugal to the
Russian Empire, from Finland to Italy, including the often
overlooked women of Eastern Europe. It depicts queens, an empress,
noblewomen, peasants, and midwives. Separate chapters on family,
work, politics, law, religion, arts and sciences, and war explore
the varying contexts of the feminine experience, from the most
intimate aspects of daily life to broad themes and conditions.
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