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.

Motivated by greed and sadism—or perhaps by poverty and boredom—star-crossed lovers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow set out on a series of robberies throughout the American Southwest, many of which ended in murder. Frustrated by the suffocating poverty of the Great Depression, they were especially eager to target their oppressors—banks, store owners, and at times, the police. Their numerous crimes triggered an FBI manhunt, but their Robin-Hood ethos made them heroes in the eyes of many, establishing their place as legends of American folklore. This objective volume paints a realistic picture of often-romanticized subject matter, as it explores the motivation and impact of two of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history. Motivated by greed and sadism—or perhaps by poverty and boredom—star-crossed lovers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow set out on a series of robberies throught the American Southwest, many of which ended in murder. Frustrated by the suffocating poverty of the Great Depression, they were especially eager to target their oppressors—banks, store owners, and at times, the police. Their numerous crimes triggered an FBI manhunt, but their Robin-Hood ethos made them heroes in the eyes of many, establishing their place as legends of American folklore. This objective volume paints a realistic picture of often-romanticized subject matter, as it explores the motivation and impact of two of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history. Colorful narrative chapters explore the lives of Bonnie and Clyde in vivid detail, giving insight into the fear of a country gripped by Depression-era poverty, and the public's endless fascination with those that live on the outside of the law. Ready-reference features such as a timeline and glossary round out the work's accessibility, making this an ideal resource for students of American history and popular culture.

A fascinating and challenging inquiry into black identity and its shifting meaning throughout U.S. history Scientific research has now established that race should be understood as a social construct, not a true biological division of humanity. In Imagining Black America, Michael Wayne explores the construction and reconstruction of black America from the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown in 1619 to Barack Obama’s reelection. Races have to be imagined into existence and constantly reimagined as circumstances change, Wayne argues, and as a consequence the boundaries of black America have historically been contested terrain. He discusses the emergence in the nineteenth century—and the erosion, during the past two decades—of the notorious “one-drop rule.” He shows how significant periods of social transformation—emancipation, the Great Migration, the rise of the urban ghetto, and the Civil Rights Movement—raised major questions for black Americans about the defining characteristics of their racial community. And he explores how factors such as class, age, and gender have influenced perceptions of what it means to be black. Wayne also considers how slavery and its legacy have defined freedom in the United States. Black Americans, he argues, because of their deep commitment to the promise of freedom and the ideals articulated by the Founding Fathers, became and remain quintessential Americans—the “incarnation of America,” in the words of the civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph.

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.

A tremendous amount of media attention has been devoted to revealing sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic priests. These essays outline a clinical and research agenda for professionals dealing with clergy sexual abuse. They should enable research clinical professionals, and clergy to identify the relevant issues in the identification, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of child and adolescent sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests. Leading experts in the field from the United States and Canada have offered their different perspectives on this compelling problem including victim profiles for determining who is at risk.

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 “masculine”—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.

This book presents a provocative debate between parapsychological advocates who claim that Western science's worldview is incomplete, and counteradvocates who insist that parapsychological data is either spurious or can be explained by standard scientific principles. Despite ongoing and repeated attempts to prove or disprove the existence of parapsychological events, there are still no conclusive findings—and certainly no consensus across the worldwide community of scholars, scientists, and proponents of psychic phenomena. Still, there is no shortage of information about this fascinating topic to allow everyone to draw their own conclusions. This book has been expressly written to make each chapter and topic accessible to a general audience, despite containing a vast amount of theoretical material. The book is organized into two parts: in the first section, proponents of the validity of parapsychological data and critics who reject that validity state their respective positions. In the second part, each group responds to each others' statements in the form of a debate. Other experts from the United States as well as from Australia and Great Britain provide overviews and conclusions.

We live in a three-dimensional world, but many of our learning environments today offer few opportunities for three-dimensional exploration. Spatial reasoning is also integral to everyday life, in social studies, the arts, and geography as well as new careers like computer animation. Navigating the 3-D World will help early childhood teachers feel confident in implementing more mathematical and spatial concepts into their rooms.

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.

Academic Motherhood tells the story of over one hundred women who are both professors and mothers and examines how they navigated their professional lives at different career stages. Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel base their findings on a longitudinal study that asks how women faculty on the tenure track manage work and family in their early careers (pre-tenure) when their children are young (under the age of five), and then again in mid-career (post-tenure) when their children are older. The women studied work in a range of institutional settings—research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges—and in a variety of disciplines, including the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. Much of the existing literature on balancing work and family presents a pessimistic view and offers cautionary tales of what to avoid and how to avoid it. In contrast, the goal of Academic Motherhood is to help tenure track faculty and the institutions at which they are employed “make it work.” Writing for administrators, prospective and current faculty as well as scholars, Ward and Wolf-Wendel bring an element of hope and optimism to the topic of work and family in academe. They provide insight and policy recommendations that support faculty with children and offer mechanisms for problem-solving at personal, departmental, institutional, and national levels.

Here is an up-to-date, thoroughly researched biography of the world's most popular pop-punk band. Green Day is almost certainly the world's most popular pop-punk band. How they got there is the subject of Green Day: A Musical Biography, the first book to follow the band from their beginnings through the spring 2009 release of 21st Century Breakdown. Tracing the band's evolution from fiercely independent punks to a global powerhouse, Green Day starts with the members' earliest musical influences and upbringing and the founding of the punk club 924 Gilman Street that shaped their sense of community. Discussion of their conflicted feelings about signing to a major label explores the classic rock 'n' roll conundrum of "selling out," while details of their decline and 2004 rebirth offer an inspirational story of artistic rejuvenation. Interviews with the band members and key figures in their lives, excerpted from punk 'zines and other publications, offer a perspective on their methods of self-promotion and the image they have chosen to project over time.