“I am not going to back away from being called a radical. If being an advocate of peace, justice, and humanity toward all human beings is radical, then I’m glad to be called a radical.” - Congressman Ron Dellums (1935 - 2018)
Tony Kaye's Detachment is a powerful meditation on teacher-cogs and disadvantaged students caught in the corporatizing, underfunded, bureaucratic educational system. Told through the viewpoint of a long term substitute teacher caught in his own mind, who slowly opens up to the world in his slow awakening as a result of his interaction with two youths (one in his class and one on the streets). I particularly appreciated the glimpses into the minds (literally) of many of the main characters and slipstream manner of the narration. One of the best films about teaching I have seen, especially as it develops the main character as a fully fleshed out, problematic and conflicted force in a chaotic environment, not the stereotypical heroic force of simplistic Hollywood feel good teaching movies or the simplistic bad apple that privatized education advocates seek to portray teachers as. Besides being a great film of teaching and students, it is universal in its portrayal of workers struggling make sense and make a difference (or not) in an uncaring system/institution. It is difficult to communicate to people who do not teach the emotional havoc of this profession ... a good attempt to do so... -- Michael Dean Benton
The characters. I was interested in writing about marriage, middle-aged marriage, and about hitting up against this ceiling of what your expectations were and where you are now - that zone. And then, in vitro, dealing with fertility and stuff, was something that I had dealt with myself. When I was doing my own IVF, a very good friend said, "Oh, you should really write about this." I was like, "I am not ever writing about this. Forget it." And then, of course, here I am because it became the perfect metaphor.
Some people are probably more conscious about the way they start writing, but I am not. I'm sort of unconscious, or self-conscious. I have a general sort of thing, and then I start going after it and then what exactly I'm interested in starts revealing itself. It's like mining or looking at tea leaves - writing material, finding these characters and then trusting the rational part of your brain that something's going on in there. Eventually, a structure starts revealing itself. One of the things that I realized that the movie had in a structural way was an exploration of women at biological moments in their life and how it impacts them as people. There's a women in menopause, Molly Shannon, who's dealing with an empty nest thing. There is an insanely fertile [women who does] not have any interest in having a child, and there's a person who is hitting the end of that [period]. I remember writing a pretentious note to myself: "The biological tyranny of the female condition." I was like, "Oh, that's what the movie's kind of about." - Tamara Jenkins in Salovaara, Sara. "Moment of Conception."Filmmaker #104 (Fall 2018): 33.
Contemporary constructionism has multiple roots. They grow from a variety of different dialogues that span the the humanities and the sciences. In this sense, social constructionism is not a singular and unified position. Rather, it is better seen as an unfolding dialogue among participants who vary considerably in their logics, values, and visions. And the dialogues remain in motion. To articulate a final truth, a foundational logic, or a code of values would indeed be antithetical to the flow of the dialogue itself.
...
The Communal Origins of Knowledge
Perhaps the pivotal assumption around which the constructionist dialogues revolve is that what we take to be knowledge of the world and self finds its origins in communal interchange. What we take to be true as opposed to false, objective as opposed to subjective, scientific as opposed to mythological is brought into being by historically and culturally located groups of people. This view stands in dramatic contrast to two of the most important intellectual and cultural traditions of the West. First the tradition of the individual knower, the rational, self-directing and knowledgeable agent of action is thrown into question. ... the constructionist dialogues ... challenge the individualist tradition, and increasingly invite an appreciation of relationship as central to knowledge and human well-being. Second, the communal view of knowledge also represents a major challenge to the view of Truth, or the possibility that any one arrangement of words is necessarily more objective or accurate in its depiction of reality than any other. To be sure, accuracy may be achieved within a given community (not Truth but 'truth'), but any attempt to determine the superior account would itself be the outcome of a given community of agreement. All authorities of truth are thus both legitimized and relativized.
Without doubt, the most influential opening to the communal view of knowledge is located in the pages of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 volume, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. ... As Kuhn proposed, knowledge within any discipline depends on a communally shared commitment to a paradigm. Roughly speaking, a paradigm consists of (1) an array of assumptions about what exists (ontology), how it may be known (epistemology), and how scientific work out to proceed (ethics), and (2) a pattern of activities held to be consistent with these assumptions. The importance of Kuhn's proposal is twofold: first, a commitment to a paradigm must precede the generation of knowledge. Thus it is the commitment to a priori [roughly --> knowledge without experience] set of assumptions and practices that makes knowledge possible. In effect, different paradigms will create different scientific realities, and there is no means of standing outside a paradigm of some kind to adjudicate among them. Truth exists only within a paradigm. The second significant point is that individual minds are not the source of knowledge, but communities - people in relationship. Individual knowledge, on this account, is not a private achievement but owes its origins to community participation.
While Kuhn's work grew from the soil of historical study, highly congenial ideas had also been brewing for many years within sociology. Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, and Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality, among others, had all been concerned with the social processes giving rise to scientific truth claims. Such work also contained important implications that went far beyond the realm of science. Rather, one could begin to see that everyday knowledge - indeed the grounds for all our daily activity - were also lodged in community negotiations. These implications were made most fully apparent by the work of sociologist, Harold Garfinkel ... and his colleagues. As Garfinkel reasoned, built into the conventions of ongoing conversation are 'methods' for creating various events, objects, institutions, and the like as 'real.' These reality-generating practices are termed 'ethnomethods.' For example, to classify a particular event as a 'suicide' requires that people come to an agreement that, from the enormous and complex flux of everyday life events, a certain configuration counts as suicide. Depending on the ethnomethods in operation, however, what one group might call suicide could be interpreted as an 'act of honor,' or an 'accident' or, given a certain kind of conversation we might come to see all cigarette smokers as engaged in suicidal behavior. As Garfinkel also reasoned, these unwritten agreements can be fragile; if participants question them the consequences can be painful. ... and the intense frustration that can result from failures to participate in them ... points to the enormous trust we must place in each other from moment to moment to support the common rules for constructing reality.
Gergen, Mary and Kenneth J. Gergen. "Social Construction of the Real and the Good: Introduction." Social Constructionism: A Reader. ed. Mary Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen. Sage, 2003: 2-3.
In 1983, 50 companies owned 90 percent of the media consumed by Americans. By 2012, just six companies controlled that 90 percent, according to testimony before the House Judiciary Committee examining Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal. How long before just three Studio Death Stars become the Standard Oils of the knowledge economy's Gilded Age? -- Brown, Colin. "Swimming with Megalodons."Filmmaker #104 (Fall 2018)
Almaaita, Zaynah. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018 - #22 Big Pharma’s Biostitutes: Corporate Media Ignore Root Cause of Opioid Crisis."Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["The beginning of the opioid crisis, Martin reported, goes back to drug manufacturing companies hiring “biostitutes,” a derogatory term for biological scientists hired to misrepresent research or commit fraud in order to protect their employers’ corporate interests. As Martin reported, research by biostitutes was used to make the (misleading) case that opioids could treat pain without the risk of addiction. Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, and McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, which distribute that drug and other opioids, suppressed research that showed how addictive opioids are, and they began to push doctors to write more prescriptions on behalf of the “needs” of consumers. In particular, Papantonio said, distributors targeted the nation’s poorer communities, including industrial cities with high unemployment rates, such as Detroit, and economically-stressed mining communities, as in West Virginia. Such mercenary practices not only impacted the individuals who became addicted, they also ravaged the finances of the targeted cities and counties. As Papantonio told The Empire Files, the opioid crisis has required local government expenditures for everything from new training for emergency medical responders, to the purchase of Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) for treating opioid overdoses, to the expansion of dependency courts to handle the cases of neglected or abused children, and the retooling of jails as de facto rehabilitation centers—all of which have come out of city and county budgets. In his Empire Files interview, Papantonio estimated that the cost for a “typical community” fell between “ninety and two hundred million dollars—that’s just the beginning number.”]
Drori, Danielle. "Feminist Ambivalences at Exclusive Women’s Social Club."BLARB (November 15, 2018) ["The critical theorist Nancy Fraser has argued for decades that feminism has lost its way. Once a social movement that fought for equality in its broadest sense, its most vocal ambassadors in the Global North since the ’70s have focused on “cracking glass ceilings” and “leaning in.” These powerful metaphors reflect the concerns of a specific group of women — the professional and upper classes — rather than serve the larger goal, as Fraser and others see it, of creating an egalitarian society."]
Gil, Rahuldeep. "From the Frontlines of a Civilizational Crisis."BLARB (November 14, 2018) ["Maybe the statistics will still show that Thousand Oaks is one of the safest communities in the United States. But now there can be no complacency in such safety. We, as a country, have to stop electing leaders who are making the world ever more dangerous for all young people. We have to support policies that ensure that humanity sees a twenty-second century. We have to support leaders who understand the urgency of sharing solidarity across lines of difference, and not those who give ammunition to racists, bigots, and murderers. This is a global, civilizational crisis. As an educator, and as a parent, I implore you. Hoping and praying is not enough, we have to act for change."]
Khanna, Ro. "By Blocking Yemen Resolution, House GOP Is Abdicating Its Duty to Decide War & Peace."Democracy Now (November 15, 2018) ["House Republicans have quashed debate on a resolution that aims to end U.S. military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, by sneaking a single line into an unrelated resolution about wolves. The House voted 201 to 187 on the bill Wednesday, approving a provision that blocks the Democrats from forcing a vote on the U.S. role in Yemen under the War Powers Act. For nearly four years the United States has played a key role supporting the Saudi-led invasion, which has devastated Yemen, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The U.N. is warning 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine. One new study has estimated the war has killed at least 57,000 people since the beginning of 2016. We speak with Congressmember Ro Khanna, who introduced the resolution in the House."]
Surface, Bethany. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #21 Parkland Shooter’s JROTC Connections Spotlight Militarization of Schools."Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["Florida is “arguably the most friendly state in terms of the militarization of the schools,” Elder said. Its statutes “allow a student who takes four years of JROTC to substitute biology, physical science, physical education and art for this straight-jacketed military indoctrination program.” In an article for World Beyond War, he further noted that, in Florida, JROTC is regarded as an Advanced Placement course for which students earn points toward their weighted GPAs, even though many of the courses are taught by retired soldiers with no teaching credentials and little or no college education. Florida, Elder explained, has simply gone further than other states, many of which allow JROTC participation to substitute for requirements in physical education and American government and civics."]
I have been thinking about this a lot in interacting with people in my life lately (as well as in our larger society - irl and online). A lot of pontificating and dictating, little listening to others' perspectives or self-questioning of one's own position. Communication skills are seriously lacking - you reply by directly responding to what a person actually said/wrote and if you want to convince someone you build common ground. I made it my New Year's resolution last year to consciously further develop my listening skills and empathy for others. I was a shy, bookish kid, so I have always watched and listened, but I also forced myself to become more extroverted and lost some of that (especially as our society moved to online communities). I've always questioned my own perspective (when you lose a world-building faith at an earlier age, it leaves you with that) - funny how the blindly-certain view that as a weakness.
-What prevents us from changing our opinions?
-Does debate truly encourage people to change their minds, or does it actually prevent the formation of new opinions?
-Can one look at the opinions of others accurately without looking closely at their own assumptions?
-What is the role of corporate media and social media in the formation of public opinion?
-Do they allow for people to change opinions or work against it?
-Is action necessary to prove an opinion has truly changed; is saying one has changed enough?
-What is the role of violence (individually and collectively) in changing opinions?
-What effect does an absence of belief in the possibility of change have on individuals and communities?
-Does academia serve to foster or prevent the changing of minds?
-Does experience override education (or vice versa, or both working together) in the formation of beliefs, values, and opinions?
- Does our society produce an abundance of egomaniacs/narcissists that are incapable or relating to or understanding other opinions/perspectives? If so, why is that?
I can't help but dream about a type of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. - Michel Foucault, Foucault Live (Interviews, 1966-84). Trans. John Johnston. Semiotext(e), 1989: 193 - 202.
Dreifus, Claudia. ""I’m not the Resistance, I’m a reporter’: An Interview with April Ryan."NYR Daily (November 12, 2018) ["At the top of Donald Trump’s journalistic enemies list is April Ryan, the fifty-one-year-old American Urban Radio Networks correspondent. Ryan—who has covered the presidency for more than two decades—is also an on-air political analyst for CNN and the author of three books, including the recently released Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House. Around Washington, D.C., Ryan holds the title Dean of the White House Press Corps. “I watched her get up,” the president fumed last week before departing for Paris. “I mean, you talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing… She’s very nasty, and she shouldn’t be… You’ve got to treat the White House and the Office of the Presidency with respect.” What Trump may find disrespectful is that Ryan has a penchant for asking tough questions on topics he’d doesn’t want to hear about: voter suppression, civil rights, Russia. Ryan is also black, female, middle-aged, and resolute. In January 2018, she asked, “Mr. President, are you a racist?” This boldness has made Ryan the target of Trump’s more ardent followers. She receives frequent death threats. On a reporter’s salary, she’s had to hire a full-time bodyguard. There are reports that Cesar Sayoc Jr., who is accused of sending pipe bombs to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Barack Obama, and others, also had Ryan on his mailing list."]
West, Stephen. "Michel Foucault (Part 1)."Philosophize This (August 15, 2018) ["Foucault himself would never describe [Discipline and Punish] as a 'history' of anything. Foucault hated the word history and almost never used it in his writing. He used words to describe this book more like, a geneology of the way we’ve treated criminals, or an archaeology of how criminals have been punished over the years. He hates the word history…because so often the word history brings with it a connotation… that we exist in our modern world at the end of this long historical timeline of events that have led to near constant progress. This idea that, hey, we used to be these barbaric savages that followed the playbook of Machievelli, the ends justify the means, we used to believe that it was morally acceptable for the king or the people in power to brutally torture and kill someone that was guilty of a heinous crime…but then HISTORY happened. Time went on…progress was made. Great political theorists came along…great leaders, great ethical philosophers did their work and we all realized the error of our ways and brought into existence a more modern world where everyone is much more free…the people in power inhibiting the lives of the average citizen far less than they used to . Foucault is going to call this assumption about history into question and really dig deeper into the idea of: how much has really changed when it comes to the fundamental relationship between those in power and the citizens?"]
[Building an archive of resources for my ENG 102 & HUM 121 courses designed to develop critical historical thinking, ethical framing and narrative awareness. How and why we tell stories to make sense of/in the world - praxis, mappings, analysis, critiques, deconstruction, revisions, transformations and censorship. From how we treat our selves, to the interactions of individuals and smaller groups, to social movements seeking social justice, to the policies/effects of larger social/political structures, and ranging across broader regional/global conflicts. How does power use and manipulate stories to benefit certain peoples/groups? How do movements struggle to challenge or change dominant narratives? Historical/contemporary non-fiction/fiction/art. Emphasis on a people's history as an alternative to the limited narratives of the dominant corporate media. The archive is an ongoing project!]
Ethics and politics look at both how we should regard and accommodate each other and what kind of things make it possible to, for example, treat each other with respect and what kinds of things don't. That I might view you as "weird" or even "inhuman" (politics) may very much dictate how I then treat you (ethics). When we examine more closely how we think about the world, it turns out that ethics and politics are inseparable. (21) -- Veronique Pin-Fat "How Do We Begin to Think About the World." (2014)
Until the lion has his historian," the African proverb goes, "the hunter will always be a hero." (quoted in Fear of an Animal Planet, 2010)
How do images affect our hearts and minds? How do images influence our everyday lives, our techno-scientific practices, our connections and disconnections, our conscious and unconscious desires and fears? How do images show up in the clothes we wear, in the ways we walk, and the objects we want? How do images influence the foods we eat or don’t eat and the ideas and feelings we have about our selves and others? How do some images enter our flesh, captivate us, fascinate us, or arouse our senses? How is it that other images put us to sleep? How do images inform our habits and fantasies, pleasures and doubts, worries and joys, rituals and rebellions? How do images shape our personal, political, cultural, moral, and religious beliefs about nature and about justice? How do images influence what we imagine to be possible and what’s not? Visual images are today everywhere entangled within a complex and contradictory web of global electronic flows of information. Images are typically racialized, gendered, territorialized, eroticized, militarized, and class-driven. Some of the most powerful images are hooked-up to hi-tech machineries of war, surveillance, and the economic marketplace. Images also lie at the core of global corporate technologies of profit, control and advantage. How might such images be best understood? How might they be critically subverted, transformed, or remade?" -- Stephen Pfohl, "Images and Power" (2011)
Cinderella is a horrific story about a rich girl whose evil stepmother forced her to live as though she were a member of the working class. - Existential Comics (posted on Facebook)]
People who do not tell stories well, listen to stories effectively and learn to deconstruct those stories with a skeptical ear will be more apt to be victims of … exploitation and power games. Stories have many interpretations. If one interpretation gets pasted over all the rest and becomes a dominant or the only political acceptable way to interpret events, we have ideology, domination, and disempowerment. Part of exploitation is to deny an interpretation, point of view, or experience, that differs from the dominant view. Rhetoric about healthy, happy, and terrific harmony and unity can mask just the opposite reality. A simple sounding moral or prescription about consensus or teamwork can mask deeper costs in terms of power and domination. (339)
Story Deconstruction Method
1. Duality Search. Make a list of any bipolar terms, any dichotomies that are used in the story. Include the term even if only one side is mentioned.
2. Reinterpret. A story is one interpretation of an event from one point of view. Write out an alternative interpretation using the same story particulars.
3. Rebel Voices. Deny the authority of the one voice. What voices are being expressed in this story? Which voices are subordinate or hierarchical to other voices?
4. Other Side of the Story. Stories always have two sides. What is the [other] side of the story (usually a marginalized, under-represented, or even silent) …?
5. Deny the Plot. Stories have plots, scripts, scenarios, recipes, and morals. Turn these around.
6. Find the Exception. What is the exception that breaks the rule, that does not fit the recipe, that escapes the scrictures of the principle? State the rule in a way that makes it seem extreme or absurd.
7. State What is Between the Lines. What is not said? What is the writing on the wall? Fill in the blanks. … What are you filling in? With what alternate way[s] could you fill it in? (340)
Boje, David M. and Robert F. Dennehy. Managing in the Postmodern World: America’s Revolution Against Exploitation. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1999.
It's weird how many people think the word "unbiased" means something along the lines of "supporting the status quo". -- Existential Comics (April 17, 2017)
The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. - Jacques Barzun, "Reasons to De-Test the Schools," New York Times (1988-10-11), later published in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. -- Simone Beauvoir, (Quoted on page 82 in Fallaize, Elizabeth. "A Saraband of Imagery: The Uses of Biological Science in Le Deuxième Sexe." The Existential Phenomenology of Simone Beauvoir. ed. Wendy O'Brien and Lester Embree. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001: 67-84.
How much of our everyday life is colonized by corporate sponsored vandalism and socially engineered marketing prompts? Never mind the obvious mediatized experiences. Take a walk across your nearest urban landscape and look deeply at the signs—explicit and implicit—that seek to influence our actions. Observe how the environment increasingly is demarcated, bordered, limited, controlled and monitored. Why do so few people think about our “society of control” or its soft bargaining through manufactured desires, marketing prompts and mindless distractions? (Hard bargaining occurs when your Governor threatens to call out the National Guard on you for exercising your democratic rights.)
The distinction between private and public space is becoming increasingly blurred. The average urban dweller is now estimated to absorb—mindfully or not—2000+ ads a day. Advertising dominates our internal mindscapes and our external landscapes. Unless we desire to isolate ourselves like the technophobic Unabomber, we are unable to escape these corporate marketing intrusions. What, then, is our defense?
... The colonization of personal mindscapes and public landscapes is part of a privatization of the commons in which limitations are put into place through walls and barriers. Extending this metaphor further, corporate colonization delimits the artistic creative imagination as well as the civic imagination of what is possible. Extend this even further and it is as if we have been culturally framed and put on the wall of a museum. Our world becomes comprised only of the narratives that “they” state “we” should pay attention to.
... Humans are narrative creatures, homo fabulans, who seek meaning and are open to narrative constructions. We all laugh at the person who is unable to perceive that their favorite TV star is not the character they play, but is this all that different from those of us who are unable to perceive the surreality of the infotainment with which we are presented 24/7? When it comes to more important political and social issues, how does this play out in our perceptions of what is right and wrong? Do most people investigate for themselves and use their knowledge to produce their own meanings, or do they sit back and allow talking heads to tell them what to think?
... What do you do, though, when the populace has been colonized so heavily by the invading forces? How do you get them to recognize their enslavement or to begin to imagine something different? How do you deal with the lackey art world that supports the dominant structure of passive consumption, corporate branding and obsessive collecting? What does an artist do, when they know their art depends on a critical audience to respond as co-creators, to wake people up? Especially when all of their direct actions of defiance and critique are immediately repurposed and delimited for safe consumption in the 24-hour titillation news cycle.
This is not a new dilemma. As Monty Python so humorously demonstrates in The Life of Brian, graffiti most likely showed up wherever the first empires sought to control societies. Critical artists of all types have a heritage of challenging controlling narratives through defiant rejection of the forms of the dominant culture: medieval carnival culture, dada, ‘pataphysics, punk, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s performative dioramas, Luis Bunuel’s films, Situationist detournements, and so on.
Documentaries generally adopt an authoritative voice and are very manipulative in their traditional structures. Documentary films from the very beginning have problematized and/or been implicated in this cultural problem. From the questions of whether Nanook of the North restaged its anthropological observations of Inuit life, to Orson Welles’ playful mocking of truth, art and property in F for Fake, to Errol Morris’s restaging of torture scenes in Standard Operating Procedure. What then is the filmmaker-artist to do when attempting to critique dominant, controlling narratives through the form of documentary film? -- Michael Dean Benton, "Exit Through the Gift Shop."North of Center (March 2, 2011)
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Abosch, Kevin, et al. "A Very Crypto Future."On the Media (October 12, 2018) ["The economy is the ultimate exercise in collaboration — with collaborators you don’t necessarily choose, such as governments, which can impoverish you with the stroke of a pen. In response to this vulnerability, a person (or persons) working under the name Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer currency with a fixed number of tokens, built on a distributed, indelible ledger. Ten years into the life of the cryptocurrency, it has a market cap in the billions of dollars, and has given rise to thousands of copycat and competitor currencies, all built on their own communities and visions of the future. But in many ways, the underlying principle — faith — is as central to the value of money as ever. Bob speaks with Vinay Gupta, Nathaniel Popper, Neha Narula, Mark Blyth and Kevin Abosch about how cryptocurrency fits into the evolution of money."]
Abrams, Jenessa. "Written in Chalk: What It Means to Be Crazy."The Rumpus (April 17, 2017) ["A 2016 study from the National Center for Health Statistics reported that suicide rates in the United States surged to the highest levels in thirty years. The Centers for Disease Control now ranks suicide as the second leading cause of death for individuals ages fifteen to thirty-four. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five children ages thirteen to eighteen have or will develop a serious mental illness in their lifetime. With numbers that high, and with major depressive episodes reportedly affecting three million adolescents annually nationwide, it is about time we reexamine how we talk about mental illness, what we mean when we assign casual labels and how much harm we unknowingly cause in the process."]
"A Charlottesville Syllabus for Our Uncertain Times."Beacon Broadside (August 18, 2017) ["The events in Charlottesville, Virginia are a frightening and disheartening reminder of how hate and intolerance in the US resurface when bigots feel empowered to act on their prejudice. Cornel West described the rally that took place on August 12 as “the biggest gathering of a hate-driven right wing in the history of this country in the last thirty to thirty-five years.” Watching the violence unfold left us feeling sorrowful and horrified. We at Beacon Press believe in promoting anti-racism, religious pluralism, and respect for diversity in all areas of life. We work to lift up the voices that speak to urgent social issues. In today’s politically fraught climate, we find ourselves face-to-face with these issues, which is why Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II has rightfully declared that, “now is the time for a Third Reconstruction. We who believe in freedom insist that we are going forward together, not one step back.” The level of hate seen at the rallies in Charlottesville has a history and a context that need to be understood. As president of the Unitarian Universalist Association Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray said at the peaceful counter-protests in Charlottesville, “White supremacy is not new in this country, but its renewed boldness is.” To that end, discussions about it need to continue in order for us to work toward inclusiveness and social justice. That’s why we’ve put together a list of resources for your perusal. This list includes resources from the Anti-Defamation League, Teaching Tolerance, Political Research Associates, Facing History, and our own authors and staff; it’s by no means exhaustive. We’ll keep adding to it to empower a reimagining of justice and the societal transformation necessary to dismantle white supremacy and structural violence. We hope you find these helpful in our uncertain times."]
A Class DividedFrontline (March 26, 1985) ["The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, a teacher in a small town in Iowa tried a daring classroom experiment. She decided to treat children with blue eyes as superior to children with brown eyes. FRONTLINE explores what those children learned about discrimination and how it still affects them today."]
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. "The Danger of a Single Story."TED (July 2009) ["Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding."]
---. "Why We Should All Be Feminists."TED (December 2012) ["We teach girls that they can have ambition, but not too much ... to be successful, but not too successful, or they'll threaten men, says author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this classic talk that started a worldwide conversation about feminism, Adichie asks that we begin to dream about and plan for a different, fairer world — of happier men and women who are truer to themselves."]
Afineevsky, Evgeny. "Cries From Syria."Film School (March 4, 2017) ["CRIES FROM SYRIA will take the audience on a unique, five-year journey, from Syria to Turkey, through Jordan, Lebanon and into Europe.They will see the situation from the inside out, through the eyes of those trapped in-between – many of them children – and experience their suffering, bravery, struggle, survival and hope. In March 2011, the Syrian people, inspired by events in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, rose up against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Public protests sparked by the arrest and torture of children who had been detained after writing anti-regime graffiti led to violent crackdowns. As what would become a long civil war intensified, the Islamic State and other groups began seizing Syrian territory and imposing brutally oppressive conditions of their own. Stranded between the opposing forces in the conflict, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, seven million have been internally displaced and more than five million have desperately tried to survive by fleeing the country. Two-thirds of those who have fled to date are women and children. CRIES FROM SYRIA is a searing, comprehensive account of the Syrian war from the inside out. The film draws on hundreds of hours of war footage from Syrian activists and citizen journalists, as well as testimony from child protestors, revolution leaders, human rights defenders, ordinary citizens and high-ranking army generals who have defected from the government. Their collective stories are a cry for attention and help from a world that little understands their reality or agrees on what to do about it. Oscar®-nominated Director Evgeny Afineevsky (Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom) joins us to talk about his unflinching look inside our own heart of darkness."]
Alderman, Naomi. "Dystopian Dreams: How Feminist Science Fiction Predicted the Future."The Guardian (March 25, 2017) ["From Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood, feminist science fiction writers have imagined other ways of living that prompt us to ask, could we do things differently?"]
Allen, Reniqua, et al. "In Jesus's Name ... We Legislate."United States of Anxiety (June 20, 2017) ["There’s been much progress for the LGBTQ community over the past decade: the legal debate over same-sex marriage has been resolved, popular culture has largely embraced gay and lesbian people, and transgender people are gaining legal recognition. But as LGBTQ people make these strides, other groups have begun to claim that their religious rights are threatened by these cultural and political shifts. Now, these religious groups are asking for protections too. This year alone, dozens of bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country, aiming to restore or protect the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment. There have been fights over a bakeries refusing to bake a cakes for same-sex wedding ceremonies, doctors who wish to refuse services to transgender folks because of religious beliefs, and more."]
Almaaita, Zaynah. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018 - #22 Big Pharma’s Biostitutes: Corporate Media Ignore Root Cause of Opioid Crisis."Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["The beginning of the opioid crisis, Martin reported, goes back to drug manufacturing companies hiring “biostitutes,” a derogatory term for biological scientists hired to misrepresent research or commit fraud in order to protect their employers’ corporate interests. As Martin reported, research by biostitutes was used to make the (misleading) case that opioids could treat pain without the risk of addiction. Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, and McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, which distribute that drug and other opioids, suppressed research that showed how addictive opioids are, and they began to push doctors to write more prescriptions on behalf of the “needs” of consumers. In particular, Papantonio said, distributors targeted the nation’s poorer communities, including industrial cities with high unemployment rates, such as Detroit, and economically-stressed mining communities, as in West Virginia. Such mercenary practices not only impacted the individuals who became addicted, they also ravaged the finances of the targeted cities and counties. As Papantonio told The Empire Files, the opioid crisis has required local government expenditures for everything from new training for emergency medical responders, to the purchase of Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) for treating opioid overdoses, to the expansion of dependency courts to handle the cases of neglected or abused children, and the retooling of jails as de facto rehabilitation centers—all of which have come out of city and county budgets. In his Empire Files interview, Papantonio estimated that the cost for a “typical community” fell between “ninety and two hundred million dollars—that’s just the beginning number.”]
Alshaibi, Usama. "Nice Bombs & American Arab."Indie Beat (March 8, 2017) ["Our guest is filmmaker/teacher Usama Alshaibi, an Iraqi-American located in Boulder, Colorado. In 2003, the director went to US-occupied Baghdad and shot his first feature-length documentary “Nice Bombs.” Part political non-fiction and part video diary, the movie is both a layered look at the Iraq War and a unique, intimate look at a place (and people) that are unfortunately not offered such a profile in other films observing the post-9/11 world. ... Afterwards Alshaibi made a number of short films and hit another pulse with his second documentary “American Arab” which deals with bigotry in the US. The filmmaker profiles a number of people, discussing their day-to-day experience when everyone thinks you’re the enemy. A considerable portion of the movie also details the brutal assault that Alshaibi experienced, himself a victim of racism. At the moment the director is preparing his third feature, “Boy From War,” which will look back on his time living in Iraq during their war with Iran, and it will feature animation similar to “Waltz With Bashir.” On the podcast we spoke about the negative perception of Arabs and Muslims, film and TV’s role in perpetuating it, the exhaustion of fighting it, filmmaking as a father, and the power of animation."]
Alter, Adam. "The Rise of Addictive Technology."Radio West (April 17, 2017) ["Marketing professor Adam Alter begins his new book by noting that Steve Jobs didn’t let his own children use an iPad, a product he invented, because he was worried they’d get addicted to it. That’s what Alter’s book is about: our increasing addiction to technology. These days, we aren’t just hooked on substances, like drugs and alcohol. We’re addicted to video games, social media, porn, email, and lots more. Alter joins us Monday to explore the business and psychology of irresistible technologies."]
Alwan, Wes, et al. "Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy in America."The Partially Examined Life #152 (November 21, 2016) ["Democracy is in peril! So said Tocqueville in 1835 and 1840 when Democracy is America was published, and so would he likely say now. Democracy is always just one demagogue away from stripping us of our liberties, though certain structural and cultural features can make that more or less likely. Tocqueville liked our spirit of volunteerism, our civic activeness, our energy and inventiveness and competitiveness, and the pervasiveness of religion (at the time) in American culture. But he didn't like our groupthink, our tendencies toward materialism and caring only about our own small circle (what he called "individualism"), our lack of philosophical curiosity, and was in favor of a strong separation between church and state. He thought that people in a democracy value equality over freedom, and that in the absence of a strong spiritual countervailing force, we'd spend more energy pursuing material comfort and so would be more likely to allow a tyrant who promises this to us to take control. He also feared the rise of a new aristocracy out of the business world, with bosses becoming the new de facto lords. Then again, he also feared a race war and thought for sure that if the South tried to secede, the federal government would be too weak to prevent this, so there's that."]
Ansari, Talal, Mike Hayes and Albert Samaha. "Place for Hate, Then it Takes Off."Buzzfeed (March 23, 2017) ["Racist Vandalism In Oregon Is Pulling Residents Into A Free Speech Fight. Oregon was founded as a white haven, and its constitution banned black residents until 1926. A century later, swastikas and other racist vandalism are on the rise statewide, but police are struggling with a surprisingly complicated question: What makes a hate crime?"]
Aronczyk, Amanda, et al. "The Birth of Climate Denial."The United States of Anxiety #2 (May 11, 2017) ["Starting with the 1925 Scopes Trial — also known as the "trial of the century" — we look at one of the most controversial topics in our time: the debate over evolution versus a Fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. It started with a substitute teacher in Tennessee who believed that evolution should be taught in the classroom. What followed was a fiery debate that rocketed around the world. The Scopes Trial reminds us that science has often upset the establishment. Kai Wright explores how the powerful have tried to convince us that science gets it wrong. Then Amanda Aronczyk looks at just when we began to doubt the whole idea of climate change. She’ll take us back to that day in 1988 when NASA scientist James Hansen warned the United States Congress that climate change was real. And she reminds us that Republican President George H.W. Bush touted himself as being pro-environment. 'I’m an environmentalist... And I always will be,' he said. 'And that is not inconsistent with being a businessman. Nor is it with being a conservative.' She then brings us to to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, when action on climate change led to a political divide within the Republican party. Today, President Trump considers climate change a 'hoax' and is considering withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. It's a radical change in 25 years. We'll tell you how we got there."]
Aslan, Reza. "Believer."WTF (March 23, 2017) ["Religious scholar Reza Aslan has spent his life studying the facts and misconceptions about belief and the evolutionary reasons people need to believe in something larger than themselves. Beginning with his family fleeing a religious revolution in Iran, then landing in Oklahoma as a child and growing up in a Latino community in San Jose, Reza talks with Marc about his lifelong exploration of faith, including the findings of his new documentary series, Believer."]
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. (1957) trans. Annette Lavers. Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1972. [Barthes’ 1957 book of previously published short essays on popular culture topics with an extended pioneering essay on semiotics, “Myth Today.” Barthes explains that mass communication images have both a literal, direct, denotative meaning and a connotative one, essentially an ideological one.]
Beauvoir, Simon de. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde. Vintage, 2011.
Becker, Snowden. "Police Body Cameras and Evidentiary Videos."The Cinephiliacs #83 (August 14, 2016) ["While this show has often staked its interest in the kinds of audiovisual materials we come to praise as art, there are many different types of moving image materials out there. None feels more pertinent to our moment today than the discussions around the introduction of police body-worn cameras alongside the amateur videos that display evidence of police brutality toward members of the African American community. To address these topics is often to approach them from one of politics, but a surrounding series of questions deals with many of the same questions that cinema-minded people might find familiar: what can we learn from analyzing how they were made? What elements are manipulation are present? How will these videos be stored? What access should the public have? What is the emotional affect of viewing them?"]
Beckett, Lois. "Don't Blame Shakespeare."On the Media (June 16, 2017) ["Before the shooting at a congressional softball practice this week, right-wing critics were already accusing liberals of advocating political violence, due to a New York City production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", in which the assassinated Caesar is portrayed as Donald Trump. Criticism of the play ultimately led several major backers to withdraw support. But The Guardian's Lois Beckett says that this outrage completely misunderstands the play and the production. Brooke speaks with Beckett about what the critics got wrong, theater in the era of Trump, and why we need art to inform our political discourse now more than ever."]
Berman, Joseph and Ryan Grim. "Criminalizing Critics of Israel: Congress Considers Sweeping Bills to Fine & Jail Backers of BDS."Democracy Now (July 21, 2017) ["U.S. lawmakers are seeking to criminally outlaw support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. If a proposed bipartisan law is passed, backers of BDS could face up to 20 years in prison and a million-dollar fine."]
Bhala, Kara Tan, Raj Bhala and Arun Venugopal. "Whose Kansas Is It Anyway?"The United States of Anxiety (May 9, 2017) ["The city of Olathe, Kansas, has been shaken since February, when a man gunned down two Indian immigrants in a bar there. Witnesses say the shooter yelled, “Go back to your country!” It was the first hate-crime killing after the 2016 presidential election. WNYC’s Arun Venugopal traveled to Kansas to speak with members of the Indian community about how they’re dealing with the deaths, and with their changing status in America. Indian Americans enjoy the highest household income of any ethnic group in America. Their socioeconomic success and status as a ‘model minority’ has increasingly been reflected in American popular culture, as well as Bollywood films, and has played into arguments that America is a meritocracy, rather than one defined by white supremacy. But increasingly, members of the community argue that their wealth will not insulate them from racial bigotry."]
Blyth, Mark and Bill Maurer. "Money, Then and Now."On the Media (October 12, 2018) ["Most schoolchildren learn that money arose when barter proved insufficient for meeting everyday trade needs. People required more complex transactions, so they invented currency: a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. It's a compelling story...but a false one. Instead, most evidence suggests that money arose from recordkeeping — or, as UC Irvine professor Bill Maurer explains to Bob, "in the beginning was not the coin... in the beginning was the receipt." In this segment, Bob speaks with Maurer and Brown University's Mark Blyth about past and present myths about money, and what the history of money might suggest about its future."]
Blyth, Mark, David Kaiser and Vanessa Williamson. "The French Sensation: Income Inequality in the United States, 1910 - 2010."Open Source (May 1, 2014) ["The hottest book everybody is talking about, that no one has read and no can get their hands on, is a giant, data-packed tome on income inequality covering three hundred years of history by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Is there a reason he’s getting the rock star treatment? Is it the symptoms that resonate (our drift into oligarchy), or is it the cure (a progressive tax on wealth)?"]
Boehm, Peter, et al. "The Challenge of Peace."Ideas (February 8, 2017) ["We have the best communications in history, except for the kind that matters - nations and states understanding each other. What values might we agree on? What ideas about society do we have in common? Has there been progress of any sort?"]
Botton, Alain De. "The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships."On Being (February 9, 2017) ["What if the first question we asked on a date were, “How are you crazy? I’m crazy like this”? Philosopher and writer Alain de Botton’s essay “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person” was, amazingly, the most-read article in The New York Times in the news-drenched year of 2016. As people and as a culture, he says, we would be much saner and happier if we reexamined our very limited view of love. How might our relationships be different — and better — if we understood that the real work of love is not in the falling, but in what comes after?"]
Bourke, Joanna. "The Story of Pain."Radio West (February 15, 2017) ["What is pain? You know it when you feel it, but it’s almost impossible to properly describe. And it turns out, our idea of what that suffering is and means has changed significantly over the centuries. Wednesday, Doug’s guest is British historian Joanna Bourke, who has written a book that investigates “The Story of Pain.” We’ll explore how knowing the history of pain helps us acknowledge our own sorrows and the suffering of others."]
Branch, Ashanti, et al. "Man Up."To the Best of Our Knowledge (January 8, 2017) ["Be strong, be tough, don’t cry – boys are bombarded with messages about being a man and the “male code” beginning around five or six years old. By high school, it’s second nature. But it can also be toxic. Because boys in America today aren’t doing so well. Compared to girls, they’re more likely to get diagnosed with a behavior disorder, drop out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, even kill themselves. So is that what it means to “man up”? "]
Bray, Mark. "Antifa: A Look at the Anti-Fascist Movement Confronting White Supremacists in the Streets, Part 1."Democracy Now (August 16, 2017) ["President Trump is facing widespread criticism for his latest comments on the deadly white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. Speaking at Trump Tower on Tuesday, Trump said the violence was in part caused by what he called the "alt-left." President Trump’s comment were widely decried. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter, "No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes." We look at one of the groups who confronted the white supremacists in the streets: the anti-fascists known as antifa. We speak to Mark Bray, author of the new book, "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook."]
Briggs, Charles. "Race and Racial Politics in Health News."Against the Grain (February 15, 2017) ["How are race and ethnicity represented in U.S. news coverage of health and medicine? Charles Briggs argues that whiteness tends to be portrayed as an aspirational state of well-being, while people of color are far too often depicted as deficient, as trapped by culture and thus to be blamed for their own health problems."]
Brookes, Chris, et al. "Vestigial Tales, Pt. 1."Ideas (August 11, 2016) ["Analysing stories is usually territory claimed by writers, critics, and university scholars. But recently, evolutionary psychologists have begun to look at the human propensity for storytelling from a scientific perspective. Why are we humans such suckers for a good story? Literary critics find the answer in story structure, characters, and plotlines. The literary Darwinists find the answer in evolution. Documentary-maker Chris Brookes looks at the evolutionary origins of human storytelling."]
Brown, Alleen and Tara Houska. "Private Mercenary Firm TigerSwan Compares Anti-DAPL Water Protectors to 'Jihadist Insurgency.'"Democracy Now (May 31, 2017) ["An explosive new investigation by The Intercept reveals how international private security firm TigerSwan targeted Dakota Access water protectors with military-style counterterrorism measures. TigerSwan began as a U.S. military and State Department contractor. It was hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. The investigation is based on leaked internal documents, which show how TigerSwan collaborated closely with law enforcement agencies to surveil and target the nonviolent indigenous-led movement. In the documents, TigerSwan also repeatedly calls the water protectors "insurgents" and the movement an "ideologically driven insurgency.""]
Buddicom, Jacintha, et al. "The Orwell Tapes, Pt. 1."Ideas (December 1, 2016) ["He was a brilliant, eccentric, complicated man; a colonial policeman, a critic and journalist, a dishwasher, a fighter in the Spanish civil war, a teacher and a shopkeeper - and one of the most influential writers of our time. His name was Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell. Who was the man who gave us 'big brother', 'thoughtcrime', 'doublethink', whose name looms so large in this era of mass surveillance? Steve Wadhams delves into recordings he made with the people who knew Orwell from his earliest days to his final moments."]
Carcamo, Cindy. "When the Wall is a Metaphor."On the Media (April 28, 2017) ["Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a big proponent of a 2006 law, the Secure Fence Act, that required some 700 miles of "two layers of reinforced fencing." That law passed easily with support from Democrats, but it ran into snags as it became clear that installing that much tough fencing is easier said than done. Bob speaks with Cindy Carcamo, who covers immigration for the LA Times, about why building a fence (or a wall) is so complicated, and what the media miss about realities on the border. Plus: how fixating on a barrier obscures the truth about immigration and attitudes towards immigrants."]
Carlsson, Chris and Susan Rosenthal. "Nowtopia and DIY Activism (Power and Powerlessness #1).Unwelcome Guests #424 (August 17, 20008) ["Susan Rosenthal, a physician and psychotherapist who reached the conclusion after decades of research, observation and activism that social power is necessary for human health. We'll also hear, in a similar vein, an interview with writer and DIY activist Chris Carlsson about his new book "Nowtopia"."]
The Century of the Self (BBC Documentary: Adam Curtis, 2002) ["To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?"]
Conway, Erik M. and Naomi Oreskes. "The Denial of Global Warming."Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured The Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury, 2010: 169-215; 216-239.
Creed, Barbara. "Psychoanalysis and Cinema."The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. Oxford University Press, 1998:
Crips and Bloods: Made in America (USA: Stacy Peralta, 2008: 93 mins) ["With a first-person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods, this film examines the conditions that have lead to decades of devastating gang violence among young African Americans growing up in South Los Angeles." MB here - I've had two students in the last week cite John Sowers' book 'Fatherless Generation: Redeeming the Story' as an authority in making the claim that "fatherlessness" is the main reason we have gangs in America. I found this claim to be problematic and overstated (if not ridiculous - no doubt it could add to the problem, but the primary reason?). A simple perusal of Sowers background and position will clue one in to his obvious agenda, but for the purposes of the learning experience I wanted to discuss what source he was using to make this grandiose claim. He cites Stacy Peralta's 2008 documentary 'Crips and Bloods: Made in America' as the source for his claim. Now I have seen this film at least a dozen times (I teach it) and it is a complex exploration of the historical discrimination, geographical segregation, predatory policing and socioeconomic conditions that have led to the origination and rise of these two gangs in this region. The first 30 minutes of the documentary demolishes Sowers' sloppy argument of fatherlessness as the primary cause - it is a great documentary for those interested in the history of these gangs and urban conditions. https://youtu.be/qN4pP-1NWoA ]
Crow, Scott and Jonathan Katz. "The Red Cross Won't Save Houston. Texas Residents Are Launching Community Relief Efforts Instead."Democracy Now (August 30, 2017) ["Hurricane Harvey has sparked comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans 12 years ago yesterday. The devastating storm killed more than 1,800 people and forced more than 1 million people to evacuate. Both the government and major aid agencies like the Red Cross were widely criticized for failing to respond adequately to the disaster. Instead, local residents took matters into their own hands, launching relief, recovery and mutual aid efforts such as the Common Ground Collective. For more on the Red Cross’s failures and local grassroots relief efforts, we speak with Scott Crow, author and anarchist who helped found the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and Jonathan Katz, director of the Media and Journalism Initiative at Duke University and former Haiti correspondent for the Associated Press. He’s the author of "The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster" and a new article headlined "The Red Cross Won’t Save Houston.""]
Cullors, Patrisse and Robert K. Ross. "The Spiritual Work of Black Lives Matter."On Being (May 25, 2017) ["Black Lives Matter co-founder and artist Patrisse Cullors presents a luminous vision of the spiritual core of Black Lives Matter and a resilient world in the making. She joins Dr. Robert Ross, a physician and philanthropist on the cutting edge of learning how trauma can be healed in bodies and communities. A cross-generational reflection on evolving social change."]
Curtis, Adam. "Hypernormalisation."Film School (March 16, 2017) ["In Adam Curtis’s acclaimed BBC documentary, HyperNormalisation, he employs masterfully edited found footage to investigate how, at a time of confusing and inexplicable world events, politicians and other power brokers construct new, slippery realities. Curtis tells a story that begins in 1975 in New York and Damascus, and ends with today’s world. Adam Curtis on his work and HyperNormalisation: ”Those in power in society – the politicians, the journalists, the experts – maintain their power by telling us stories about the world. Those stories tell us what is true and what is false, what is right and wrong, and what is real – and what is illusion. But there come times when these stories begin to break down. And people start to distrust those in power – and their definition of what is real and what is fake. At that point you enter the Zone. The film Hypernormalisation tells the story of how we got to this place. It is also about the new systems of power that we cannot see – because we are trapped inside the Zone.”]
Deboer, Freddie. "Inequality University."Jacobin (May 22, 2017) ["Ivy League universities fuel social inequality at the same time public colleges are cut to the bone. They deserve to be dismantled."]
Denniss, Richard and Julie Nelson. "It's the Economists, Stupid."Ideas (November 28, 2016) ["Interest rates. Unemployment. GDP. Markets. Austerity measures. Economists tell us what we, as societies, can and can't afford. But how do they decide? What values are at play? IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell speaks with two economists about how modern mantras on the economy limit our choices and shut down civic debate."]
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville Season 36, Episode 15 (PBS, 2018: 55 mins) ["In Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and Pro Publica investigate the white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. This is the first in a series of two Documenting Hate films from FRONTLINE and ProPublica, with the second coming later this fall."]
Documenting Hate: New American NAZIsFrontline (November 20, 2018) ["In the wake of the deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, FRONTLINE and ProPublica present a new investigation into white supremacist groups in America – in particular, a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military. Continuing FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s reporting on violent white supremacists in the U.S. (which has helped lead to multiple arrests), this joint investigation shows the group’s terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally."]
Dowell, Debbie, et al. "This American War on Drugs."On the Media (April 14, 2017) ["Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled that he'd like to revamp the War on Drugs. We take a look at the history of the battle, and how sensational media depictions of crack, heroin, and meth have helped fuel it. Plus: our Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Drugs Edition. Then, a look at how America’s first drug czar used racist propaganda to outlaw marijuana. And why the debate between treatment and law enforcement is blurrier than you might think."]
Dyer, Richard. "Interview."The Cinematologists #43 (April 6, 2017) ["Professor Dyer's writing and scholarship has been extremely influential across Cultural Studies and Film Studies with recurring foci on the politics of representation, ideology and class, gender and sexuality, race, stardom to name just a few. His intellectual curiosity is infused with a identity politics that often centres around the difficult, contradictory relationship between cultural production and social reality. His work is hugely relevant to today's issues and in this interview Professor Dyer is generously self-reflexive in looking back, with a critical eye, over his long and distinguised career."]
Early, Steve. "Richmond vs. Chevron."Against the Grain (April 24, 2017) ["In the age of Trump — and before him, of Obama — change from the top seems far out of reach for progressives. Some have drawn from the past and have struggled from the bottom up for a just city, perhaps the premier case being Richmond, California. Journalist Steve Early talks about Richmond, Chevron, labor — and the challenges of creating socialism in one city. He also discusses the history of leftwing municipal reformism."]
"The Edelweiss Pirates, 1939-1945."Libcom (September 3, 2006) ["An account of the Edelweiss Pirates, a World War II era German anti-Nazi movement of working class youth who fought against the regime."]
Flynn, Tera, et al. "Ireland 1916: How 800 years of British rule led to violent rebellion."Ideas (April 4, 2017) ["On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the streets of Dublin were transformed into a war zone. About 1,200 Irish rebels rose up against 20,000 British troops in a doomed attempt to throw off centuries of British colonial rule. The Easter Rising may have failed in that moment, but the brutality of the British response so disgusted and angered the people of Ireland that Irish independence became inevitable."]
Fox, Neil and Dario Linares. "Knowing Sounds: Podcasting as Academic Practice."The Cinematologists #32 (November 10, 2016) ["Knowing Sounds is an experimental podcast exploring the possibilities and outcomes of using the podcast medium as a creative practice underpinned by conceptual thought to produce and disseminate academic research. The podcast, which more specifically can be defined as an audio essay, is split into three sections. The first is an experimental collage of music, dialogue and sound effects from a selection of films which are interwoven with excerpts from audience members who attended The Cinematologists live screenings. It is designed to open up questions as to the potential for a sonic landscape to tap into the ‘cinematic imagination’ without the use of images. We thus play with aural engagement creating a space for the listener to actively negotiate the binary between the abstract emotions and intended rational meaning inferred through listening. The second section is a spoken analysis of the potential of podcasting as an academic form exploring how the mechanics sound production and dissemination in the digital age can challenge the powerful logocentric link between knowledge and writing. We also interrogate the structural formation that, paradoxically, has given rise to the ubiquity of podcasts in mainstream culture but has undermined its potential development. Furthermore, interweaving illustrative references, we analyse specific film podcasts and how they utilise a developing grammar of sonic writing to expand cultural discourse. The final section brings together other contributors to the journal of disrupted media practice who comment on their alternative methods of production and exhibition aimed at unsettling assumptions about the relationship between practice and theory."]
---. "Professor Richard Dyer."The Cinematologists #43 (April 6, 2017) ["Professor Dyer's writing and scholarship has been extremely influential across Cultural Studies and Film Studies with recurring foci on the politics of representation, ideology and class, gender and sexuality, race, stardom to name just a few. His intellectual curiosity is infused with a identity politics that often centres around the difficult, contradictory relationship between cultural production and social reality. His work is hugely relevant to today's issues and in this interview Professor Dyer is generously self-reflexive in looking back, with a critical eye, over his long and distinguished career."]
Friere, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Continuum, 2005.
Frillman, Karen, Jim O'Grady and Kai Wright. "America's Allergy to Intellect: Why It Keeps Flaring Up."United States of Anxiety #3 (May 16, 2017) ["Talking to Trump voters during the campaign, we'd sometimes hear what felt like a unified sentiment bubbling up beneath the popular, and populist, reasons for supporting their candidate. Retired truck mechanic Fiore Napolitano from Long Island put it this way: "You talk to these idiots, supposed to be doctors and this and that, scientists, they got [expletive] for brains," he said. "They have no common sense.” Trump was Napolitano's man because he did not speak like a credentialed expert or someone with an Ivy League degree — the type of person whose depth of learning might actually make them dumb. About those kinds of people, Napolitano added, "I got more brains in my little thumb." What's up, America? Why the qualms about erudition and expertise? Where does this wariness spring from, and what role did it play in the rise of Donald Trump — opposed by just about every intellectual associated with either party but whose supporters simply did not care about that?"]
"From Tree to Shining Tree."Radiolab (July 30, 2016) ["A forest can feel like a place of great stillness and quiet. But if you dig a little deeper, there’s a hidden world beneath your feet as busy and complicated as a city at rush hour. In this story, a dog introduces us to a strange creature that burrows beneath forests, building an underground network where deals are made and lives are saved (and lost) in a complex web of friendships, rivalries, and business relations. It’s a network that scientists are only just beginning to untangle and map, and it’s not only turning our understanding of forests upside down, it’s leading some researchers to rethink what it means to be intelligent."]
Garfield, Bob. "Breaking News Consumers Handbook: Political Violence Edition."One the Media (June 16, 2017) ["After the politically-charged shooting on a Virginia baseball field this week, the media and politicians fell into familiar traps: uninformed judgment, divisive blaming, political opportunism."]
Gergen, Mary and Kenneth J. Gergen. "Social Construction of the Real and the Good: Introduction." Social Constructionism: A Reader. ed. Mary Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen. Sage, 2003: 2-3.
Goodman, Barak. "Ruby Ridge."Radio West (February 14, 2017) ["In August 1992, a tense and disastrous event took place at Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho. The family of Randy Weaver had been holed up for months with a cache of firearms at their mountaintop home. He was wanted for a federal offense, and when U.S. Marshals surveilling the property crossed paths with the Weavers, a firefight broke out. The ensuing standoff mesmerized the country and inflamed anti-government sentiment. ... we’re talking about what happened at Ruby Ridge and its resonance today."]
Gooley, Tristan. "The Lost Art of Natural Navigation."Radio West (November 23, 2016) ["Nowadays, there are all kinds of devices to help us find our way through the world. But before all that stuff, before even cartography, humankind was navigating with nature as the guide. The adventurer Tristan Gooley is committed to recovering and teaching the lost arts natural navigation. Rocks, trees, grass, ducks, puddles, clouds, and the wind are all compass hands to him. Gooley joins us Wednesday to share what he’s learned about natural navigation and the joys of learning nature’s subtle signs. Tristan Gooley is the author of several books about natural navigation, including The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs and his newest, How to Read Water. He is the only living person to have piloted small aircraft and sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic, and he’s a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Geographical Society."]
Gottlieb, Anthony. "On Pierre Bayle."Philosophy Bites (December 2, 2016) ["Pierre Bayle was one of the most famous and respected philosophers of his day, but few today know much about him. Anthony Gottlieb, author of a recent book about the early Enlightenment, The Dream of Enlightenment, argues that Bayle should be better known, particularly for his views on religious toleration, scepticism, and the secular state."]
Gross-Loh, Christine. "A Better Way to Teach History."The Atlantic (February 8, 2016) ["One professor is borrowing a method from Harvard Business School to engage students and inspire better decision-making skills."]
Hamm, Larry and Scott Kurashige. "The Rebellions That Changed U.S. History: Looking Back at the 1967 Newark & Detroit Uprisings."Democracy Now (July 25, 2017) ["Fifty years ago this month, rebellions broke out in the cities of Newark and Detroit. It all began in Newark on July 12, 1967, when two white police officers detained and beat an African-American cabdriver. Shortly after, on July 23, police officers raided an after-hours club in an African-American neighborhood of Detroit, sparking another mass rebellion. Forty-three people died in Detroit, and 26 were killed in Newark, while 7,000 people were arrested. The rebellions reshaped both Newark and Detroit and marked the beginning of an era of African-American political empowerment."]
Harris, Mark, et al. "Before and After, Live."The Film Comment Podcast (February 21, 2017) ["In his 1985 film God’s Country, Louis Malle visits a small town in Minnesota both before and after Reagan’s election, documenting the stark economic despair that the agricultural community was forced to face. Following a screening of God’s Country in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s screening series Film Comment Selects, we conducted a live the Film Comment Podcast about how we differently perceive certain films before and after the election. To discuss this fraught political moment, we invited Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and FC‘s Cinema ’67 Revisited column; Genevieve Yue, critic and assistant professor at the New School’s Eugene Lang College; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker, critic, and Production Manager for Field of Vision to join FC Editor Nicolas Rapold and FC Digital Producer and podcast host Violet Lucca. Films discussed include those by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Jason Osder, Alexander Payne, and more."]
Hartley, Andrew, Cecilia Peek and Brian Vaughan. "The Politics of Julius Caesar."Radio West (June 21, 2017) ["Julius Caesar the man, Shakespeare’s play, and the relationship between art and politics."]
Hedges, Chris. "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."Approaches to Peace: A Reader in Peace Studies. 2nd edition. ed. David P. Barash. NY: Oxford UP, 2010: 24-26. Heldt, Guido.Music and Levels of Narration in Film. Intellect, 2013. ["This is the first book-length study of the narratology of film music, and an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology. It surveys the so far piecemeal discussion of narratological concepts in film music studies, and tries to (cautiously) systematize them, and to expand and refine them with reference to ideas from general narratology and film narratology (including contributions from German-language literature less widely known in Anglophone scholarship). The book goes beyond the current focus of film music studies on the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic music (music understood to be or not to be part of the storyworld of a film), and takes into account different levels of narration: from the extrafictional to ‘focalizations’ of subjectivity, and music’s many and complex movements between them."] "Higher Education and Capitalism."Young Democratic Socialists (ND) Hinderaker, Eric. "What Really Happened in the Boston Massacre."WBUR (March 21, 2017) ["Competing narratives put out in the immediate aftermath of an historic event. Various sides trying to be the first to win hearts and minds. That battle, of course, continues on today."]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation tells the extraordinary story of how we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion - where those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - and have no idea what to do. And, where events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control - from Donald Trump to Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, and random bomb attacks. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them. The film shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us, we accept it as normal."]
Isenberg, Nancy. "'White Trash' and Class in America."On the Media (June 22, 2016) ["As the media have watched the ascent of Donald Trump with disbelief-going-on-horror, pundits have returned frequently to the question of who exactly his supporters are. Terms like "angry" and "white working class" are mentioned frequently, but the National Review several months ago put it the most pointedly and viciously. In an article lambasting Trump supporters, Kevin Williamson characterized them as lazy drug addicts, compared them to animals, and even suggested that they deserved to die. Though he did not say it directly, the implication was clear: these people were white trash. We took that opportunity to take a deeper look at the idea of "white trash," with the help of writer and professor Nancy Isenberg, author of the forthcoming book, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Isenberg described to Brooke how the notion of "white trash" has been around for a long time, belying the idea that America is a "classless" society. White Trash comes out this week, and we're re-running our conversation in honor of it."]
Jacobsen, Annie. "Phenomena."Radio West (May 11, 2017) ["If you’re a skeptic, you’re going to be outraged by the “scientific projects” conducted by the U.S. government into mind reading and other paranormal phenomena. For more than 40 years the government hired magicians and hypnotists to try to figure out what the enemy was up to."]
Johnson, Grace Sanders. "Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: An Interview With Gina Athena Ulysse."AAIHS (November 6, 2016) ["On October 4, 2016, Hurricane Matthew roared through Haiti’s southwest peninsula taking with it homes, centuries-old structures, and over 800 lives. In the storm’s wake, media outlets observed the undeniable damage of this specific natural event by projecting recycled, dehumanizing, and ahistorical narratives of Haiti to the world. InWhy Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, Haitian-born feminist anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse writes: “if there is one thing we know for certain, it is that without destruction, sensationalism, and violence, there is no Haiti story.” Ulysse’s trilingual collection of essays is a balm to wounds that are reopened each time the black republic is (mis)represented. The book is a timely reminder of the need to critically interrogate the historical implications of this current moment."]
Johnson, Kirsten. "Through the Lens: Cameraperson."Radio West (February 27, 2017) ["Kirsten Johnson’s 25-year career as a documentary film cinematographer has taken her around the world, often to regions of conflict. Her own film, Cameraperson, is a memoir of her life’s work assembled from a collage of cutting-room-floor footage. It’s also a keen examination of the dilemmas and blind spots that riddle documentary filmmaking."]
Joseph, Peniel. "The Radical Democracy of the Movement for Black Lives."AAIHS (September 18, 2016) [Black Lives Matter has cast a strobe-light on contemporary myths of racial progress, arguing correctly that the criminal justice system represents a gateway to a panoramic system of racial and class and gender and sexuality oppression.”]
Kiely, Eugene. "Trump's Press Conference, In Context."Fact Check (August 16, 2017) [His response to the aftermath of violence/murder at the Charlottesville, VA protests of taking down Robert E. Lee statue.]
Kiely, Kathy. "What a California Refinery Town Can Teach America?"Moyers & Company (December 13, 2016) ["A soon-to-be-published book by a longtime labor organizer chronicles how a grass-roots democracy movement overcame corporate money."]
Kinzer, Steven. "How the Press Gets Seduced By War."On the Media (April 12, 2017) ["... President Trump ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Syria in retaliation against the chemical attack allegedly committed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against his own people. The coverage of the strikes appeared to present a stark choice between good and evil, rather than a Gordian knot of geopolitics, regional politics, domestic politics, and the proliferation of terror. But is it really that easy?"]
Kolk, Bessel Van Der. "How Trauma Lodges in the Body."On Being (March 9, 2017) ["Human memory is a sensory experience, says psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Through his longtime research and innovation in trauma treatment, he shares what he’s learning about how bodywork like yoga or eye movement therapy can restore a sense of goodness and safety. What he’s learning speaks to a resilience we can all cultivate in the face of the overwhelming events — which, after all, make up the drama of culture, of news, and of life."]
Lear, Norman. "Just Another Version of You: The Life, Art and Activism of Legendary TV Producer Norman Lear."Democracy Now (October 25, 2016) ["Ninety-four-year-old legendary TV producer and longtime political activist Norman Lear has led a remarkable life. He helped revolutionize sitcom television with a string of hit shows including "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son," "The Jeffersons," "Good Times" and "Maude." In 1999, President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts, saying, "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." Norman Lear is also a longtime activist, earning him a place on Richard Nixon’s enemies list and the scorn of the Christian right. His life, art and social activism is the subject of the new "American Masters" documentary, "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You," which premieres tonight on PBS. We spoke with Norman Lear in studio last week."]
Lemle, Mickey. "The Last Dalai Lama?"Film School Radio (August 11, 2017) ["For over a thousand years, Tibetan Buddhist psychology has taught techniques for overcoming negative, afflictive emotions, such as anger, greed, jealousy, sloth and ignorance. In the film THE LAST DALAI LAMA?, His Holiness explains that Tibetan Buddhism is both a religion and a “science of the mind”; he also shares his crystallized understanding of the nature of mind, and its part in the creation and alleviation of all of our suffering. Believing that this precious wisdom belongs to the world, twenty years ago The Dalai Lama challenged a select group of world-renowned Neuroscientists and Mind/Brain researchers to look into the workings of the mind, and to prove scientifically that “Tibetan Buddhist technologies” for overcoming afflictive emotions are skills that can be learned by anyone. The Dalai Lama commissioned Dr. Paul Ekman and his daughter Dr. Eve Ekman to come up with an “Atlas of Emotions” as a way of understanding the effects of emotions on having a tranquil mind. Being able to recognize the patterns, triggers and responses to emotions is the first step in dealing with them. In a moving sequence with a high school class in British Columbia, His Holiness The Dalai Lama is able to share his passion for the subject. His urgency and dedication come through in THE LAST DALAI LAMA? as he now turns 82, and must deal with the questions of aging and death, and whether he will reincarnate as The Dalai Lama, or if he will be the last of the lineage that has existed for a millennia. Director Mickey Lemle joins us to talk about his three decade friendship with His Holiness and the profound impact he has had on politics, culture and a deeper understanding of our shared human nature."]
Liddington, Jill, et al. "Rebels in the Archive."The British Library (March 8, 2017) ["Rebels in the Archives took place at the British Library on International Women’s Day 2017. The event considered the power and potential of archiving stories of sexism, sisterhood and struggle, raising issues about how identity and privilege impact upon the personal and public stories that get archived, as well as who can access them. The panel discussed their own use of archives in relation these issues; archives which relate to the Suffragette movement were a particular topic of discussion. "]
Lorber, Judith. "Believing as Seeing: Biology as Ideology."Gender and Society (December 1, 1993) ["Western ideology takes biology as the cause, and behavior and social statuses as the effects, and then proceeds to construct biological dichotomies to justify the “naturalness” of gendered behavior and gendered social statuses. What we believe is what we see—two sexes producing two genders. The process, however, goes the other way: gender constructs social bodies to be different and unequal. The content of the two sets of constructed social categories, “females and males” and “women and men,” is so varied that their use in research without further specification renders the results spurious."]
Marvin, Carolyn and David W. Ingle. "Introduction."Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. Cambridge University Press, 1999: 1-10.
Maur, Renée In der, Jonas Staal and Dilar Dirik. ed. Stateless Democracy. BAK and New World Academy, 2015. [“New World Academy, an alternative learning platform for art and politics established by artist Jonas Staal and BAK has entered its fifth sequence. Developed together with the Kurdish Women’s Movement as a nomadic platform that unfolding throughout 2015, the fifth sequence of the New World Academy explores—from artistic, activist, and scholarly perspectives—the proposition of delinking democracy from the nation-state: the notion of “stateless democracy.” On this occasion, the fifth reader of the New World Academy, titled Stateless Democracy, has been published. If initially the Kurdish struggle, led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), had aimed to establish an independent state, since the 1990s PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, together with the Kurdish Women’s Movement, have turned to questioning the patriarchal and capitalist nature of the very concept of the nation-state itself. Within this process the Kurdish revolutionary movement developed an alternative model called “democratic confederalism” or “stateless democracy” that invoked a confederate composition in which gender-equality, self-governance, secularism, cultural diversity, communal economy, and social ecology form key pillars. Since 2012 this proposition has been put fully into practice in Rojava, Western Kurdistan in Syria, in alliance with the peoples of the region. New World Academy Reader #5: Stateless Democracy provides key texts that offer an overview of both the political and cultural dimensions comprising what has now come to be known to history as the Rojava Revolution. The texts in the reader are as much an introduction to the model of stateless democracy practiced in Rojava, as a potential political paradigm through which to confront the many related crises in politics, economy, and ecology that we face across the world.”]
Media History Digital Library ["The Media History Digital Library is a non-profit initiative, led by David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound for broad public access."]
Meed, Rebecca. "Margaret Atwood, The Prophet of Dystopia."The New Yorker (April 17, 2017) ["Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression, and environmental havoc. These visions now feel all too real."]
Montoya, Ruby and Jessica Reznicek. "Meet the Two Catholic Workers Who Secretly Sabotaged the Dakota Access Pipeline to Halt Construction."Democracy Now (July 28, 2017) ["Two Iowa-based Catholic Worker activists revealed they secretly carried out multiple acts of sabotage and arson in order to stop construction of the controversial $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. We speak with Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya about how they set fire to heavy machinery being used to construct the pipeline. They say their actions were inspired by the anti-nuclear Plowshares Movement which used nonviolent direct action to target nuclear warheads and military installations."]
Moser, Friedrich. "A Good American."Film School (February 3, 2017)[" Friedrich Moser’s eye-opening A Good American soberly unfolds the deeply disturbing story of how corruption, lies and personal ambitions led to the closure of a cheap and effective monitoring system that demonstrably could have stopped the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "]
Natarajan, Priyamvada. "Calculating Women."The New York Review of Books (May 25, 2017)
Narula, Neha and Lawrence Weschler. "Ceci N'est Pas Un Dollar."On the Media (October 12, 2018) [When I discuss/lecture about the social construction of reality an initial touchstone is money - this short (12 mins) episode from On the Media is a good intro to thinking about this through money (also a provocative discussion of art).]
New Arrivals: Refugee Resettlement in Lexington, Kentucky (Posted on Youtube: November 28, 2016) ["The story of America is the story of immigration. There are more than 20 million refugees in the world. Fewer than 1% will ever be resettled. In 2016 over 300 refugees found a new home in Lexington, Kentucky. NEW ARRIVALS is an in depth profile of Kentucky Refugee Ministries and the Refugees from all over the world whom they assist in overcoming long odds to find peaceful lives in Lexington."]
Perlstein, Rick, et al. "Ghosts."On the Media (November 25, 2016) ["A special hour on memory, both historical and personal, and how what we remember shapes our world."]
Peabody, Fred. "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone."Film School (November 4, 2016) ["ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone is a timely documentary for audiences who are increasingly seeking alternatives to news media owned by large corporations. News events and journalistic trailblazers stretching over many decades are linked together to tell this important story. This film will resonate with audiences in the US and worldwide, as news media ownership increasingly falls into the hands of a few giant corporations."]
Pirsig, Robert and Tim Wilson. "The Motorcycle is Yourself: Revisiting Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."Ideas (April 25, 2017) ["Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been called the most widely read book of philosophy ever written. Forty years after its publication, contributor Tim Wilson revisits an extraordinary interview he did with its author, for still vital advice on how to live."]
Popova, Maria. "Alain de Botton on How to Think About Sex More."Brain Pickings (February 14, 2013) [“The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.”]
Price, David. "Cold War Anthropology: The C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology."Live! From City Lights (February 1, 2017) ["In Cold War Anthropology, David H. Price offers a provocative account of the profound influence that the American security state has had on the field of anthropology since the Second World War. Using a wealth of information unearthed in CIA, FBI, and military records, he maps out the intricate connections between academia and the intelligence community and the strategic use of anthropological research to further the goals of the American military complex. The rise of area studies programs, funded both openly and covertly by government agencies, encouraged anthropologists to produce work that had intellectual value within the field while also shaping global counterinsurgency and development programs that furthered America’s Cold War objectives. Ultimately, the moral issues raised by these activities prompted the American Anthropological Association to establish its first ethics code. Price concludes by comparing Cold War-era anthropology to the anthropological expertise deployed by the military in the post-9/11 era."]
Project Censored [Website: "Project Censored educates students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. We expose and oppose news censorship and we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking. An informed public is crucial to democracy in at least two basic ways. First, without access to relevant news and opinion, people cannot fully participate in government. Second, without media literacy, people cannot evaluate for themselves the quality or significance of the news they receive. Censorship undermines democracy. Project Censored’s work—including our annual book, weekly radio broadcasts, campus affiliates program, and additional community events—highlights the important links among a free press, media literacy and democratic self-government."]
"Punkfest Cornell: Anarchy in the Archives."Cornell University (2017) ["Despite its changing referents, “Punk” always points to something disruptive to norms—the norms of behavior, of social institutions, of the music industry. However, this long and secret history of “Punk” suddenly transformed into a visible and audible movement in the mid-1970s, when punk culture burst out from underground theater and rock scenes in New York and London. As it spread around the world, Punk set the stage for independent music, third-wave feminist politics and musical activism up to the present day. From the Sex Pistols to Bad Brains to Bikini Kill to the Downtown Boys, punk has consistently provided a noisy megaphone for ideas, attitudes and people that would otherwise be muted. “Anarchy in the Archives” walks the viewer through the history of punk culture, from its aesthetic and political origins in the Situationists through its musical meanings and ongoing revisions in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. This exhibition draws on material from Cornell Library’s Punk Collections, part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. The Punk Collections contain hundreds of fliers and posters, more than 1,500 fanzines, along with sound recordings, clothing, photographs, and original art documenting Punk’s regional interpretations and influences both nationally and internationally."]
Puschak, Evan. "Children of Men: Don't Ignore the Background." (Posted on Youtube: September 9, 2015) [MB: This was a powerful film that looked to the future to examine the global politics of 2006 when it was released (highlighted even more by the collection of philosophers/theorists that provided commentaries on the imagery/narrative in the original DVD edition), and, as Evan Puschak demonstrates in this video essay, its relevance has only increased over the next decade. This analysis includes references to our current social/political issues to demonstrate its continuing relevance. Don't ignore the background (context) - could be applicable in our own attempts to understand the issues of the world.]
---. "Donald Trump: Magician-In-Chief." (Posted on Youtube: November 30, 2016)
Quinn, Susan. "Eleanor and Hick."Radio West (April 14, 2017) ["the story of the unconventional relationship that deeply influenced Eleanor Roosevelt. When FDR entered the White House in 1932, Eleanor feared her independent life would take a back seat to the ceremonial role of first lady. But on the campaign trail she had met Lorena Hickok, a feisty reporter who would become her advisor, confidante, and lover. Biographer Susan Quinn joins Doug to explain how Eleanor and “Hick” used their bond to better depression-ravaged America."]
Range, Peter Ross. "Mein Kampf."Radio West (February 18, 2016) ["Mein Kampf was Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, a kind of campaign biography. He wrote the first draft of it while in prison for leading a failed coup, and historian Peter Ross Range says the book crystallized Hitler’s “faith in himself as Germany’s coming redeemer.” Mein Kampf was recently republished in Germany for the first time since WWII. Range will join us Wednesday to talk about the notorious book’s history, influence, and future."]
"Raoul Peck."WTF #789 (February 27, 2017) ["Filmmaker Raoul Peck spent more than a decade putting together the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, a powerful film illuminating the words and life of writer and social critic James Baldwin. But as Marc learns in this conversation, Raoul’s own backstory of living under dictatorships, studying across four continents, and learning how to engage activism through art is just as important in understanding how to respond to the world today."]
Richards, Jill. "Pussy Wars."Los Angeles Review of Books (March 24, 2017) Richardson, Vanessa and Carter Roy. "Socrates."Remarkable Lives, Tragic Deaths #22 (December 13, 2016) ["Socrates was a Greek philosopher who is credited as one of the founders of Western Philosophy. He was born circa 470 BC in Athens, Greece. We know of his life through the writings of his students, including Plato and Xenophon. His "Socratic method," laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy. Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning in 399 BC."]
Richter, Brent. "Culture warrior - How anthropology can save the world."North Shore News (September 10, 2016) [Wade Davis: "“The great revelation of anthropology was that the world that you’re born into is just one model of reality, the consequence of one set of choices your cultural lineage made, however successfully,” Davis said. “The other peoples of the world remind us there are other ways of thinking, other ways of being, other ways of orienting yourself in social, physical, even spiritual space.”]
Robinson, Kim Stanley. "Kim Stanley Robinson and the Drowning of New York."The Coode Street Podcast (April 17, 2017) ["This week we're joined by the delightful and provocative Kim Stanley Robinson, to discuss his new novel New York 2140, his “comedy of coping” about dealing with catastrophic climate change in the next century, as well as how his previous novel Aurora challenged one of the cherished ideas in science fiction, the literary and artistic function of exposition in fiction, the relationship of science fiction writers to “futurists” or to MFA programs in creative writing, and his own distinguished career in the context of both science fiction and contemporary environmental literature."]
---. "How To Restore Your Faith in Democracy."The New Yorker (November 11, 2016) ["In dark times, it’s tempting to give up on politics. The philosopher Charles Taylor explains why we shouldn’t."]
Scahill, Jeremy. "On Trump's Embrace of Duterte's Deadly War on Drugs in the Philippines."Democracy Now (May 25, 2017) ["In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested he might impose martial law across the country, after declaring it this week in his native island of Mindanao. This comes as a transcript of the call of Trump praising Duterte for his controversial drug war was leaked and published by The Intercept. According to the leaked transcript, Trump said, "I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing, and I just wanted to call and tell you that." Duterte’s bloody war on drugs has led to the deaths of nearly 9,000 people, most of whom are poor. Human rights groups have blasted Duterte for the way he’s waged his anti-drug campaign, defined by extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers and users. "]
Secrets, Politics and Torture (PBS Documentary: May 19, 2015) ["From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk (United States of Secrets, Losing Iraq, Bush’s War, The Torture Question) comes the dramatic story of the fight over the CIA’s controversial interrogation methods, widely criticized as torture. Based on recently declassified documents and interviews with key political leaders and CIA insiders, the film investigates what the CIA did — and whether it worked."]
Snyder, Timothy. "On Tyranny: How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism."Democracy Now (May 30, 2017) ["Is the United States sliding toward tyranny? That is the question posed by Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder in his new book that draws on his decades of experience writing about war and genocide in European history in order to find 20 key lessons that can help the United States avoid descending into authoritarianism. "I was trying to get out front and give people very practical day-to-day things that they could do," Snyder says. "What stood behind all of that was a lifetime of working on the worst chapters of European history, a sense of how things can go very wrong."]
Soldier, Layli Long. "The Freedom of Real Apologies."On Being (March 30, 2017) ["A single voice of integrity and searching can be a window into a whole world. Layli Long Soldier is a writer, a mother, a citizen of the U.S. and of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Her book of poetry, WHEREAS, is an innovative response to the congressional resolution of “Apology to Native Peoples,” which was tucked inside the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act. She offers entry points for us all — to events that are not merely about the past, and to the freedom real apologies might bring."]
Spong, John Shelby. "Biblical Literalism."Radio West (September 2, 2016) ["Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong presents a provocative idea in his latest book. Reading the Bible literally, he says, is heresy. He bases his argument on a close reading of the Gospel of Matthew, which he argues was written by Jews for Jews. Spong says the gospel was not written as a literal account of Christ’s life, but rather as an interpretative portrait of God’s love. Spong joins us Friday to talk about biblical literalism and his uniquely progressive approach to Christianity. John Shelby Spong is the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark. He has lectured at more than 500 universities, colleges, and theological seminaries around the world. He is the author 25 books, including his newest, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy.]
Stavans, Ilan. "Don Quixote."Radio West (November 23, 2015) ["Today, Don Quixote is regarded as one of the most important novels ever written. But when it debuted 400 years ago, Miguel Cervantes’ book was deemed unworthy of serious artistic consideration. Ilan Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino Culture, has a profound affection for the tale of don Quixote de la Mancha, and he says the wandering knight’s adventure through life mirrors our own. Stavans joins us Monday to explore how Don Quixote rose to global success and gave rise to modernity."]
Stonebridge, Lyndsey. "Thinking and Friendship in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now."On Being (May 18, 2017) ["Along with George Orwell, the 20th-century political theorist Hannah Arendt is a new bestseller. She famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” and wrote towering works like The Origins of Totalitarianism. She was concerned with the human essence of events that we analyze as historical and political. Totalitarianism she described as “organized loneliness,” and loneliness as the “common ground for terror.” The historian, she said, always knows how vulnerable facts are. And thinking is not something for elites; it is the human power to keep possibility alive."]
Stravers, Jon, et al. "The Mississippi."To the Best of Our Knowledge (July 31, 2016) ["The Mississippi River is an American icon. It's a body of water that’s been shaped as much by cultural processes as by environmental ones. From the state lines it draws to its role in literature and the arts, it’s a river that flows deep in the American psyche. This episode is about the boundaries and horizons of the Mississippi — its deep geologic past, its history as a route to freedom, and its meaning today. "]
Streeck, Wolfgang. "Surviving Post-Capitalism: Coping, hoping, doping & shopping."Ideas (February 9, 2017) ["The signs are troubling: the ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Mass protests. Political upheaval and social division. It looks as though the rocky marriage between capitalism and democracy is doomed, at least according to Wolfgang Streeck, who directs the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, where he is also a professor of sociology. In conversation with Paul Kennedy about his book How Will Capitalism End?, he makes the unnerving case that capitalism is now at a point where it cannot survive itself."]
Suffern, Ryan. "Finding Oscar."Film School (April 20, 2017) ["FINDING OSCAR is the feature-length documentary about the search for justice in the case of the Dos Erres massacre in Guatemala in 1982. That search leads to the trail of two little boys, Oscar and Ramiro, who were abducted during the slaughter and raised by some of the very soldiers who had murdered their families. These boys offer the only living evidence that ties the Guatemalan government to the massacre. FINDING OSCAR follows the men and women who have spent nearly two decades looking for answers—from the human-rights worker who first heard the story to the forensic anthropologists trying to identify victims and contact families. The film profiles the young Guatemalan prosecutor who took on her own government, and the U.S. immigration agents who began rounding up war criminals found living in the States. In a country built on impunity, it will take this dedicated team to find justice more than thirty years later, and uncover a truth more significant than anyone could have imagined."]
"Telling a Life."To the Best of Our Knowledge (October 23, 2016) ["How do you tell the story of your life? Do you focus on meaning, accomplishment and hope - or on failure and loss? Psychologists say telling a good life story can make you happier. But do we also create an inauthentic version of ourselves if we turn everything into a narrative? We explore the idea of life stories, and hear why poet and singer Patti Smith chose to "write about nothing" when writing about her own life."]
Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies, Volume 1 and Volume 2. Trans. Erica Carter, et al. University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ["These two volumes center upon the fantasies that preoccupied a group of men who played a crucial role in the rise of Nazism. Theweleit draws upon the novels, letters, and autobiographies of these proto-fascists and their contemporaries, seeking out and reconstructing their images of women. 'Theweleit’s study of the fascist consciousness in general and the bodily experience of these former soldiers in particular, easily detected in their hatefilled, near-illiterate books, was well received. Theweleit used Wilhelm Reich, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for his basic theory, but also empirical research, especially of the leading German left-wing historian of Weimar unrest, his friend Erhard Lucas and he was always discussing his findings with his wife, who has professional clinical experience. Theweleit writes in an anti-academic, highly personal style.'"]
Thompsett, Fern. "Free Universities."Against the Grain (January 30, 2017) ["As universities become increasingly infiltrated and transformed by capitalist logics, what do free universities add to the educational, social, and political landscape? Fern Thompsett, a Ph.D. student at McGill University, co-founded a free university in Australia; she’s also researched more than two dozen free university projects in North America. Thompsett describes both the free-of-charge and radical-emancipatory aspects of free universities."]
Thompson, A.C. "Documenting Hate: New Doc Lays Bare the Violent White Supremacy that Exploded in Charlottesville."Democracy Now (August 7, 2018) ["This week marks one year since white supremacists and neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally to protest the city’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park. It became the biggest and deadliest white supremacist rally in the United States in decades. We look back at the deadly rally in Charlottesville with a new documentary by Frontline PBS and ProPublica titled “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville.” We speak with A.C. Thompson, the reporter who produced the investigation, which premieres tonight on PBS."]
---. "New American Nazis: Inside the White Supremacist Movement That Fueled Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting."Democracy Now (November 20, 2018) ["Neo-Nazis are on the rise in America. Nearly a month after a gunman killed eleven Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we look at the violent hate groups that helped fuel the massacre. On the same day that shooter Robert Bowers opened fire in the synagogue, a neo-Nazi named Edward Clark that Bowers had been communicating with online took his own life in Washington, D.C. The man’s brother, Jeffrey Clark, has since been arrested on weapons charges. The brothers were both linked to the violent white supremacist group Atomwaffen. We speak with A.C. Thompson, correspondent for FRONTLINE PBS and reporter for ProPublica. His investigation “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” premieres tonight on PBSstations and online."]
---. "New Charlottesville Doc Exposes Neo-Nazi Leaders & Their Ties to U.S. Military & Weapons Contractors."Democracy Now (August 7, 2018) ["When hundreds of white supremacists arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a deadly “Unite the Right” protest last August, local authorities were unprepared for the violence that terrorized the city, largely standing back during bloody encounters between white supremacists and counterprotesters. One year later, we speak with investigative reporter A.C. Thompson on his work to track down and identify white supremacists from Charlottesville and other extremist rallies across the country."]
---. "Portland Protest Shows New Far-Right Trend: Multi-ethnic Groups with Fascist Heroes Like Pinochet."Democracy Now (August 7, 2018) ["We continue our interview with A.C. Thompson, correspondent for Frontline PBS and reporter for ProPublica. His new investigation is titled “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville.” He discusses how he was there in Portland, Oregon, when anti-racist, anti-fascist protesters faced off against members of the far-right-wing group “Patriot Prayer” during a protest and counter protest Saturday. Hours into the competing protests, police officers attacked the left-wing, anti-fascist counter protesters with pepper spray and stun grenades. Portland’s police chief has ordered a review of the use of force at the protest."]
Toobin, Jeffrey. "American Heiress."Radio West (September 8, 2016) ["Jeffrey Toobin, who’s written a book about the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst. Hearst was 19 and heir to her family’s fortune when the “Symbionese Liberation Army” took her, and it soon seemed that she had adopted their incoherent, revolutionary cause. We’ll explore the controversy over Hearst’s involvement in their crimes, the atmosphere that gave birth to the SLA, and why Toobin says the story sheds light on a time when America was on the brink of a nervous breakdown."]
Tragos, Tracy Droz. "Abortion: Stories Women Tell."Film School (August 11, 2016) ["In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade recognized the right of every woman in the United States to have an abortion. Since 2011, over half the states in the nation have significantly restricted access to abortions. In 2016, abortion remains one of the most divisive issues in America, especially in Missouri, where only one abortion clinic remains open, patients and their doctors must navigate a 72-hour waiting period, and each year sees more restrictions. Awarding-winning director and Missouri native Tracy Droz Tragos sheds new light on the contentious issue with a focus not on the debate, but rather on the women themselves – those struggling with unplanned pregnancies, the providers who show up at clinics to give medical care, as well as the activists on both sides of the issue hoping to sway decisions and lives. Tragos’ illuminating documentary Abortion: Stories Women Tell offers an intimate window into the lives of these women through their personal stories. Some are heartbreaking and tender some are bleak and frightening; some women, on both sides of the issue, find the choice easy to make due to their own circumstances and beliefs, while others simply inform us of the strength and capacity of women to overcome and persevere through complicated and unexpected circumstances. Director and producer Tracy Droz Tragos joins us for a conversation on one of the most contentious and intractable issues facing women and her beautifully balanced, heart wrenching and moving documentary."]
Vágnerová, Lucie. Sirens/Cyborgs: Sound Technologies and the Musical Body. (Ph'D Dissertation for the Music Department, Columbia University: 2016) ["This dissertation investigates the political stakes of women’s work with sound technologies engaging the body since the 1970s by drawing on frameworks and methodologies from music history, sound studies, feminist theory, performance studies, critical theory, and the history of technology. Although the body has been one of the principal subjects of new musicology since the early 1990s, its role in electronic music is still frequently shortchanged. I argue that the way we hear electro-bodily music has been shaped by extra-musical, often male-controlled contexts. I offer a critique of the gendered and racialized foundations of terminology such as “extended,” “non-human,” and “dis/embodied,” which follows these repertories. In the work of American composers Joan La Barbara, Laurie Anderson, Wendy Carlos, Laetitia Sonami, and Pamela Z, I trace performative interventions in technoscientific paradigms of the late twentieth century. The voice is perceived as the locus of the musical body and has long been feminized in musical discourse. The first three chapters explore how this discourse is challenged by compositions featuring the processed, broadcast, and synthesized voices of women. I focus on how these works stretch the limits of traditional vocal epistemology and, in turn, engage the bodies of listeners. In the final chapter on musical performance with gesture control, I question the characterization of hand/arm gesture as a “natural” musical interface and return to the voice, now sampled and mapped onto movement. Drawing on Cyborg feminist frameworks which privilege hybridity and multiplicity, I show that the above composers audit the dominant technoscientific imaginary by constructing musical bodies that are never essentially manifested nor completely erased."]
Ware, Syrus Marcus. "All That We Touch, We Change."Canadian Art (April 10, 2017) ["In the 1990s, Octavia E. Butler wrote an unfinished sci-fi trilogy that appears to predict many aspects of the world in which we now live. But Butler’s books aren’t just uncanny prophecy—within them lie potential tools of resistance and survival."]
West, Erica. "The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism."Jacobin (July 9, 2017) ["Fighting capitalism remains the only path toward women’s full liberation."]
---. "The Ethics of Ambiguity." Philosophize This! (July 29, 2017) [Steven West discusses Simone Beauvoir's book 'The Ethics of Ambiguity'. A great examination/explanation of one of the books that profoundly influenced my thinking of/action in the world (and what it means to be a free human with responsibility for/to others). "... Simone De Beauvoir and her book The Ethics of Ambiguity. There are some thinkers who are, from the very beginning, unambiguously identified as philosophers (e.g., Plato). There are others whose philosophical place is forever contested (e.g., Nietzsche); and there are those who have gradually won the right to be admitted into the philosophical fold. Simone de Beauvoir is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word. That place is now uncontested. The international conference celebrating the centennial of Beauvoir’s birth organized by Julia Kristeva is one of the more visible signs of Beauvoir’s growing influence and status. Her enduring contributions to the fields of ethics, politics, existentialism, phenomenology and feminist theory and her significance as an activist and public intellectual is now a matter of record. Unlike her status as a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s position as a feminist theorist has never been in question. Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status." Part 2 ]
---. "The Frankfurt School - Introduction."Philosophize This #108 (August 17, 2017) ["The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), is a social and political philosophical movement of thought located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is the original source of what is known as Critical Theory. The Institute was founded, thanks to a donation by Felix Weil in 1923, with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. The Institute eventually generated a specific school of thought after 1933 when the Nazis forced it to close and move to the United States, where it found hospitality at Columbia University, New York."]
---. "Michel Foucault (Part 1)."Philosophize This (August 15, 2018) ["Foucault himself would never describe [Discipline and Punish] as a 'history' of anything. Foucault hated the word history and almost never used it in his writing. He used words to describe this book more like, a geneology of the way we’ve treated criminals, or an archaeology of how criminals have been punished over the years. He hates the word history…because so often the word history brings with it a connotation… that we exist in our modern world at the end of this long historical timeline of events that have led to near constant progress. This idea that, hey, we used to be these barbaric savages that followed the playbook of Machievelli, the ends justify the means, we used to believe that it was morally acceptable for the king or the people in power to brutally torture and kill someone that was guilty of a heinous crime…but then HISTORY happened. Time went on…progress was made. Great political theorists came along…great leaders, great ethical philosophers did their work and we all realized the error of our ways and brought into existence a more modern world where everyone is much more free…the people in power inhibiting the lives of the average citizen far less than they used to . Foucault is going to call this assumption about history into question and really dig deeper into the idea of: how much has really changed when it comes to the fundamental relationship between those in power and the citizens?"]
---. "Structuralism and Context."Philosophize This (January 28, 2018) ["On this episode, we talk about the origins of Structuralism. Included is a discussion on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, (born Nov. 26, 1857, Geneva, Switz.—died Feb. 22, 1913, Vufflens-le-Château), Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century."]
---. "Structuralism and Mythology (Part 1)."Philosophize This! (March 18, 2018) ["On this episode, we talk about the mythology that underlies the media we consume and how it serves as an access point to the structures of culture."]
Williams, Roger Ross. "Life, Animated."The Treatment (July 6, 2016) ["Roger Ross Williams has made a career of giving a voice to the voiceless. In his documentary Life, Animated, an adaptation of Ron Suskind’s book of the same name, he highlights Owen, an autistic child who identifies with and ultimately finds his own voice through animated Disney movies. Today, Roger discusses his long time struggle for representing the underdogs as well as what he learned, not only about raising a child with autism, but about the world of Disney."]
Wu, Tim. "The Attention Merchants."Radio West (May 25, 2017) ["Wherever you turn these days, commercials, sponsored social media, and other advertising efforts await your attention. The influential thinker Tim Wu says we have the “attention merchants” to thank for that. In a new book, Wu argues that the concerted efforts of advertisers to attract our attention at every opportunity has made us more distracted and less focused than ever before. Wu joins us to explore the rise of the attention merchants and the human costs of their efforts."]
"The Zazous (1940-1945)."Libcom (October 1, 2006) ["An account of the French anti-Nazi cultural youth movement who opposed the Vichy regime in occupied France. Influenced by jazz and swing they met in basement clubs and scuffled with fascists on the streets."]
Zirin, Dave. "Stand with NFL Star Michael Bennett, Who Refused to Be Silent About Racial Profiling."Democracy Now (September 8, 2017) ["As the National Football League begins its new season, one of its most outspoken players has revealed he was recently detained and assaulted by police in Las Vegas. Seattle Seahawks star Michael Bennett issued a statement on Twitter Wednesday, writing that an officer threatened to "blow my f****** head off" and that "Las Vegas police officers singled me out and pointed their guns at me for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time." The incident took place outside a boxing match last month in Las Vegas while police were responding to reported gunshots."]
