Inventing the Egghead

Inventing the Egghead
Author: Aaron Lecklider
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812244869

Throughout the twentieth century, popular songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels alternated between representing intelligence as empowering and as threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, Aaron Lecklider cracks open this paradox by examining representations of intelligence to reveal brainpower's stalwart appeal and influence.

Gender, Heteronormativity, and the American Presidency

Gender, Heteronormativity, and the American Presidency
Author: Aidan Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351798782

Gender, Heteronormativity and the American Presidency places notions of gender at the center of its analysis of presidential campaign communications. Over the decades, an investment in gendered representations of would-be leaders has changed little, in spite of the second- and third-wave feminist movements. Modern candidates have worked vigorously to demonstrate "compensatory heterosexuality," an unquestionable normative identity that seeks to overcome challenges to their masculinity or femininity. The book draws from a wide range of archived media material, including televised films and advertisements, public debates and speeches, and candidate autobiographies. From the domestic ideals promoted by Eisenhower in the 1950s, right through to the explicit and divisive rhetoric associated with the Clinton/Trump race in 2016; intersectional content and discourse analysis reveals how each presidential candidate used his or her campaign to position themselves as a defender of traditional gender roles, and furthermore, how this investment in "appropriate" gender behaviour was made manifest in both international and domestic policy choices. This book represents a significant and timely contribution to the study of political communication. While communication during presidential elections is a well-established research field, Aidan Smith’s book is the first to apply a gendered lens over such an extended historical period and across the political spectrum.

Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre

Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre
Author: James F. Wilson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3031340132

This timely and accessible book explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in plays and performances primarily from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States. Examining various historical and recurring types, such as spinsters, schoolmarms, presumed sexual deviants, radicals and communists, fascists, and emasculated men teachers, Wilson shines the spotlight on both well-known and nearly-forgotten plays. The analysis draws on a range of scholars from cultural and gender studies, queer theory, and critical race discourses to consider teacher characters within notable education movements and periods of political upheaval. Richly illustrated, the book will appeal to theatre scholars and general readers as it delves into plays and performances that reflect cultural fears, desires, and fetishistic fantasies associated with educators. In the process, the scrutiny on the array of characters may help illuminate current attacks on real-life teachers while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars.

Popularizing the Past

Popularizing the Past
Author: Nick Witham
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2023-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226826988

Popularizing the Past tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history. What’s the matter with history? For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past, Nick Witham challenges this interpretation by telling the stories of five historians—Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner—who, in the decades after World War II, published widely read books of national history. Witham compellingly argues that we should understand historians’ efforts to engage with the reading public as a vital part of their postwar identity and mission. He shows how the lives and writings of these five authors were fundamentally shaped by their desire to write histories that captivated both scholars and the elusive general reader. He also reveals how these authors’ efforts could not have succeeded without a publishing industry and a reading public hungry to engage with the cutting-edge ideas then emerging from American universities. As Witham’s book makes clear, before we can properly understand the heated controversies about American history so prominent in today’s political culture, we must first understand the postwar effort to popularize the past.

Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales

Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales
Author: Joan Passey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2024-02-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350361127

The first dedicated exploration of the short fiction of Shirley Jackson for three decades, this volume takes an in-depth look at the themes and legacies of her 200-plus short stories. Recognized as the mother of contemporary horror, scholars from across the globe, and from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds, dig into the lasting impact of her work in light of its increasing relevance to contemporary critical preoccupations and the re-release of Jackson's work in 2016. Offering new methodologies to study her work, this volume calls upon ideas of intertextuality, ecocriticism and psychoanalysis to examine a broad range of themes from national identity, race, gender and class to domesticity, the occult, selfhood and mental illness. With consideration of her blockbuster works alongside later works that received much less critical attention, Shirley Jackson's Dark Tales promises a rich and dynamic expansion on previous scholarship of Jackson's oeuvre, both bringing her writing into the contemporary conversation, and ensuring her place in the canon of Horror fiction.

The Year's Work in Nerds, Wonks, and Neocons

The Year's Work in Nerds, Wonks, and Neocons
Author: Jonathan P. Eburne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2017-04-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253026873

Essays on intellect, passion, alienation, and America’s geeky subcultures. What happens when math nerds, band and theater geeks, goths, sci-fi fanatics, Young Republican debate poindexters, techies, Trekkies, D&D players, wallflowers, bookworms, and RPG players grow up? And what can they tell us about the life of the mind in the contemporary United States? With recent years bringing us phenomena from #GamerGate to The Big Bang Theory, it’s clear that nerds, policy wonks, and neoconservatives play a major role in today’s popular culture. The Year’s Work in Nerds, Wonks, and Neocons delves into subcultures of intellectual history to explore their influence on contemporary American intellectual life. Not limiting themselves to describing how individuals are depicted, the authors consider the intellectual endeavors these depictions have come to represent, exploring many models and practices of learnedness, reflection, knowledge production, and opinion in the contemporary world. As teachers, researchers, and university scholars continue to struggle for mainstream visibility, this book illuminates the other forms of intellectual excitement that have emerged alongside them and found ways to survive and even thrive in the face of dismissal or contempt.

Hope & Scorn

Hope & Scorn
Author: Michael J. Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2020-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 022672770X

Intellectuals “have been both rallying points and railed against in American politics, vessels of hope and targets of scorn,” writes Michael J. Brown as he invigorates a recurrent debate in American life: Are intellectual public figures essential voices of knowledge and wisdom, or out-of-touch elites? Hope and Scorn investigates the role of high-profile experts and thinkers in American life and their ever-fluctuating relationship with the political and public spheres. From Eisenhower’s era to Obama’s, the intellectual’s role in modern democracy has been up for debate. What makes an intellectual, and who can claim that privileged title? What are intellectuals’ obligations to society, and how, if at all, are their contributions compatible with democracy? For some, intellectuals were models of civic engagement. For others, the rise of the intellectual signaled the fall of the citizen. Carrying us through six key moments in this debate, Brown expertly untangles the shifting anxieties and aspirations for democracy in America in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Hope and Scorn begins with “egghead” politicians like Adlai Stevenson; profiles scholars like Richard Hofstadter and scholars-turned-politicians like H. Stuart Hughes; and ends with the rise of public intellectuals such as bell hooks and Cornel West. In clear and unburdened prose, Brown explicates issues of power, authority, political backlash, and more. Hope and Scorn is an essential guide to American concerns about intellectuals, their myriad shortcomings, and their formidable abilities.

Zombie History

Zombie History
Author: Peter Charles Hoffer
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 047205452X

Fake history is not a harmless mistake of fact or interpretation. It is a mistake that conceals prejudice; a mistake that discriminates against certain kinds of people; a mistake held despite a preponderance of evidence; a mistake that harms us. Fake history is like the Zombies we see in mass media, for the fake fact, like the fictional Zombie, lives by turning real events and people into monstrous perversions of fact and interpretation. Its pervasiveness reveals that prejudice remains its chief appeal to those who believe it. Its effect is insidious, because we cannot or will not destroy those mischievous lies. Zombie history is almost impossible to kill. Some Zombie history was and is political, a genre of what Hannah Arendt called “organizational lying” about the past. Its makers designed the Zombie to create a basis in the false past for particular discriminatory policies. Other history Zombies are cultural. They encapsulate and empower prejudice and stereotyping. Still other popular history Zombies do not look disfigured, but like Zombies walk among us without our realizing how devastating their impact can be. Zombie History argues that, whatever their purpose, whatever the venue in which they appear, history Zombies undermine the very foundations of disinterested study of the past.

The Audit Value Factor

The Audit Value Factor
Author: Daniel Samson
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351983407

The Audit Value Factor: Making Management’s Head Turn empowers readers with a systematic method to build and maintain a value-centric internal audit organization. The book explores how to identify, quantify, and articulate value for customers. It details six critical success factors: Value propositions that link directly to customer needs Fostering customer relationships using the CREATE model Talent development using the TEAM model Risk expertise that raises awareness, understanding, and action Change management and process optimization using the SMART model Data analytics that provide powerful insights to operations The Audit Value Factor offers easy to use tools and practical strategies that deliver tangible and immediate benefits for the internal audit team. Praise for The Audit Value Factor: Making Management’s Head Turn "Daniel Samson, the inspiring and forward-thinking CAE at SRI International, has created an essential guide to adding value through Internal Audit in his new book The Audit Value Factor. It's an important addition to any internal auditor's toolkit, with helpful suggestions on topics ranging from talent planning to data analytics. I highly recommend it to any internal audit professional looking to "up their game." Laurie A. Hanover, CIA, CAE Sunrun Inc. "Internal Auditors often strive for a ‘seat at the table,’ be it with Business Leaders, Senior Management, the Board, or really, any significant decision maker in an organization. In The Audit Value Factor, Dan Samson provides the roadmap to ensuring that Internal Audit gets not only that seat at the table, but also that role of a critical business partner that is valued in facilitating change and helping an organization achieve its goals." Brian Tremblay, CAE Acacia Communications "Great audit functions generate value and build leadership capacity from staff to CAE. The Audit Value Factor’s compelling examples, data, and actionable tools enable auditors at every level to build relationships of trust, ask the right questions, and deliver powerful insights to their organization." Dr. Kathryn Bingham, Executive Coach and CEO, LEADistics LLC

Contemporary Poetry Archive

Contemporary Poetry Archive
Author: Anderson Linda Anderson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2019-05-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 147443245X

Explores critical and creative responses to the contemporary poetry archiveProvides an innovative new dialogue between critics and creative writers on the value and practice of the literary archiveExpandes the scope for understanding perspectives on, and the opposition between, creative and critical relations to archival materialsOpens up a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking the archive as both a source for scholarship and a source of inspiration for creative practiceThese 13 newly commissioned chapters examine the impact of archival poetry collections on both literary scholarship and poetic practice. They examine what we can learn from the drafts, notebooks and personal libraries left behind by poets and look at the ways in which the growth of poetry archives has changed the way poets think about their work. The contributing poets and scholars - including Susan Howe, Sean O'Brien and George Szirtes - present an in-depth account of the significance of poetry archives for contemporary literature. The collection provides a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking about the archive as both a source for scholarship and inspiration for creative practice.