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A collection of articles that analyses the role of the media in America from a deconstructionist viewpoint. This collection of original essays is a response to the paradigm shift that has taken place in cultural studies in the wake of postmodernism and poststructuralism. Such concepts as 'truth' or 'reality' have been increasingly called into question, since the realization that our experience of 'the real' is always mediated through an "empire of signs," as Roland Barthes put it. After a predominantly optimistic evaluation of the effects of the media in the 1960s (by Marshall McLuhan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and others), a growing awareness of the total manipulation of society by mass-med...
"Living and aging as a productive antagonism. Aging and growing older are processes which cannot be reduced to the chronology of years but which are shaped by the individual's interaction with the changing circumstances of life."--Publishers website
Trained as a cultural historian, Thomas R. Cole is one of the most influential scholars of his generation, with his work moving beyond and impacting many other fields and disciplines. His work includes The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Cole also published No Color Is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Integration of Houston, creating along with the book an accompanying film, The Strange Demise of Jim Crow, which was nominated for a regional Emmy and a National Humanities Medal. Cole created a number of other films as well. In all of his work, there is an emphasis on religion, spirituality, and moral meaning. Cole is also a Jewish spiritual director, and this work has become a major focus for him in retirement. This edited volume engages or responds to Cole’s work, which spans cultural history, oral history, aging studies, film, medical humanities, religious studies, and more. As such, this book is not about Cole per se, but the impact of his ideas and subsequent inspirations.
The Becoming of Age is an examination of the ways that aging and old age are represented in popular film. Arguing that the ideas behind cinematic depictions of aging are historical and open to revision, the author looks at how movies both promote negative portrayals of aging and challenge its persistent cultural devaluation. Movies are a site of struggle where the representation and the reality of aging intertwine, and they have the power not only to reflect but to reconstruct our understanding.
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Comparing apples and oranges frequently, this is what we do when we talk about similarities and differences regarding higher education in the United States and Europe. Based on the assumption that higher education policy texts are cultural texts to be interpreted, this book deconstructs four US American cultural narratives within higher education (co-opetition, the frontier myth, McDonaldization, and the narrative of security), and compares these to discourses prevailing in Europe. Disputing the prevalent claim that both the recent European higher education transformation initiative, the Bologna Process, and the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have had absolutely no impact on US institutions of higher learning, this study proves that cultural narratives in the last decade have strongly determined political and structural developments in higher education on both sides of the Atlantic. This book therefore adds another facet to the transatlantic dialogue on higher education by providing a cultural critical perspective, including the Foucauldian theory of governmentality as well as aspects of postcolonial theory.
Acculturating refers to the interchange of patterns of behaviour, perceptions and ideas between groups of individuals who have different cultural backgrounds. This book, which is the result of collaboration between specialists from different disciplines from around the world, allows the comparison of systems of dependency, mediation skills, empathy and social understanding and cultural attitudes towards people who experience the stages of aging.
Deconstructs fiction and nonfiction to further understandings of how aging and old age are created. In lively, accessible prose, this book expands the reach and depth of age studies. A review of age studies methods in theory, literature, and practice leads readers to see how their own intersectional identities shape their beliefs about age, aging, and old age. This study asks readers to interrogate the texts of menopause, self-help books on aging, and foundational age studies works. In addition to the study of these nonfiction texts, the poetry and prose of Doris Lessing, Lucille Clifton, and Louise Erdrich serve as vehicles for exploring how age relations work, including how they invoke readers into kinships of reciprocal care as othermothers, otherdaughters, and otherelders. The literary chapters examine how gifted storytellers provide enactments, portrayals, and metaphorical uses of age to create transformative potential.
"Of all humanities disciplines, none is more resistant to the program of positive psychology or more hostile to the prevailing discourse of human flourishing than literary studies. The approach taken in this volume of essays is neither to gloss over that antagonism nor to launch a series of blasts against positive psychology and the happiness industry. Rather, the essays are attempts to reflect on how the kinds of literary research the contributors themselves are doing, the kinds of work to which they are personally committed, might become part of an interdisciplinary conversation about human flourishing. The authors' specific fields of work are wide ranging, covering literary aesthetics, bo...