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Secrets and lies

Tony Shaw

in Hollywood's Cold War

This chapter explores why and how the Hollywood Cold War deviance in the 1950s had developed a sharper edge by the mid-1970s. It specifically addresses Peter Davis' Vietnam documentary Hearts and ... More

This chapter explores why and how the Hollywood Cold War deviance in the 1950s had developed a sharper edge by the mid-1970s. It specifically addresses Peter Davis' Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. ‘New Hollywood’ played in the generational shift within the film industry. Hearts and Minds is at once starkly frank yet indirect in its propagandistic approach. It exhibits the degree to which the American intervention was driven by a long-standing, nationwide anti-Asian racism. It is considered today as a masterpiece of political documentary filmmaking, and is widely regarded as the definitive American documentary about the war in Vietnam. Three Days of the Condor contains all the trademark features of the 1970s ‘paranoid’ movie. Its political vision had its limits. Neither these two could be described as anti-capitalist, still less pro-communist.Less

Resources for Historical Background

Jeannette Brown

in African American Women Chemists

Many historians have written about the history of African Americans in science, but most of the articles focus only on the men and very little is written about the women. It would take additional ... More

Many historians have written about the history of African Americans in science, but most of the articles focus only on the men and very little is written about the women. It would take additional research to find information pertaining only to the women. However, since both men and women lived through the same era, much of what affected the men also affected the women. The background information about black women chemists could probably fit into another book or at least a paper, but that was not within the scope of this book. Dr. Wini Warren, author of Black Women Scientists in the United States, did some extensive research on the background history of black women in science, which she planned to put into a future book; due to health problems it was never written. However, the Introduction to Dr. Warren’s book is well worth reading for some of the background history of the women. The endnotes in that chapter provide an extensive bibliography about the history of blacks in science. In addition, Dr. Warren includes an extensive discussion about the background history of black women scientists in the introduction of her thesis, “Hearts and Minds: Black Women Scientists in the United States 1900–1960.” Sisters in Science by Diann Jordan features author interviews of black women scientists, some of whom are chemists. The Introduction of her book, discusses the background history. Dr. Jordan also includes a history of black colleges in the section “The Role of the Black College in Educating African American Scientists.” Since many of the women in this book had their first college education in a black college, it is worth reading. Information about several of the African American women chemists in this book can be found in Contributions of Black Women to America, Volume 2. The Introduction and Chapter 1 in the “Science” section give some background information about the history of women in science. Less

Continuity Skepticism in Doubt: A Radically Enactive Take

Daniel D. Hutto and Glenda Satne

in Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World

Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special ... More

Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are capable of content involving forms of cognition. This paper addresses criticisms that have been leveled at REC’s vision of how content-involving cognition may have come on the scene. It responds, in the first section, to the charge that REC faces a fatal dilemma when it comes to accounting for the origins of content in naturalistic terms—a dilemma that arises from REC’s own acknowledgment of the existence of a Hard Problem of Content. In subsequent sections, the paper addresses the charge that REC entails continuity skepticism, reviewing this charge in its scientific and philosophical formulations. It is concluded that REC is not at odds with evolutionary continuity, when both REC and evolutionary continuity are properly understood. It is also concluded that although REC cannot completely close the imaginative gap that is required to answer the philosophical continuity skeptic it is, in this respect, in no worse a position than its representationalist rivals and their naturalistic proposals about the origins of content.Less

Animated Documentary and Mental Health

Stella Bolaki

in Illness as Many Narratives: "Arts, Medicine and Culture"

The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, ... More

The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and self-harm. These documentaries were created in a collaborative manner, and use real testimony for their soundtrack and various animation techniques by professional animators. By bringing together scholarship on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent, and the ethical encounters it stages for viewers. As the only chapter of this book to explicitly discuss mental health issues, it also returns to common critiques of narrative/narrativity in the field of illness narratives, specifically the problematic assumption that certain forms of mental distress are inherently ‘anti-narrative’. By looking closely at the Animated Minds audio testimonies, the chapter underlines the urgency of paying attention to such narratives and the experiences they document, many of which are surrounded with stigma, beyond an emphasis on pathology.Less

Between Two Solitudes: Self-Deception, Consciousness and the Other Mind

Charles Barbour

in Derrida's Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath

This chapter takes up a number of issues around the question of secrecy and deception that have vexed recent analytic philosophers, and shows how Derrida might contribute to the debates. In ... More

This chapter takes up a number of issues around the question of secrecy and deception that have vexed recent analytic philosophers, and shows how Derrida might contribute to the debates. In particular, if focuses on ‘the problem of other minds’, and takes Derrida’s reading of Gadamer as a way into that problem.Less

All the President's Men

in Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief

“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national ... More

“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national television to deliver an address invoking “the great silent majority of Americans.” As a presence in the American psyche, Elvis had no show business rival; yet his movie career, while certainly a part of his fame, was more a tribute to his popularity than a major contributor to it. In his autobiography, Starmaker, Hal Wallis, who first signed Elvis to a movie contract and produced nine of his films, nicely illustrates Mordden's Old Cinema/New Age dichotomy. Like most of the characters he played onscreen, Elvis came from just the kind of patriotic, working-class, southern background that Nixon saw as the foundation of the new majority he successfully brought together in 1972, the new majority he hoped would replace the one Franklin Roosevelt had made the dominant factor in presidential politics forty years earlier.Less

Lord, How Dare We Celebrate: Colorblind Hegemony and Genre in the 1990s

Justin Gomer

in White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights

The final chapter examines teacher films, those movies in which a (typically) suburban white woman accepts a job teaching student of color in low-income urban neighborhoods. Although the late 1980s ... More

The final chapter examines teacher films, those movies in which a (typically) suburban white woman accepts a job teaching student of color in low-income urban neighborhoods. Although the late 1980s and 1990s certainly do not mark the first instances of teachers as protagonists in American cinema, it was during these years that films centered around white teachers and their inner-city nonwhite pupils became increasingly popular and developed specific themes and tropes that were inherently informed by the logic of colorblindness. This analysis of this genre is situated, most notably the 1995 film Dangerous Minds, within the context of the War on Drugs, urban blight, the dismantling of affirmative action, and, most importantly, neoliberal educational reform in arguing that colorblindness ultimately produced entirely new film genres that are inherently colorblind.Less

Imagination and Creativity: The School-Based Paradox

Gena R. Greher and Jesse M. Heines

in Computational Thinking in Sound: Teaching the Art and Science of Music and Technology

People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes of our educational system is ... More

People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes of our educational system is the strange fact that it does little to encourage a child’s imaginative and subsequent creative potential. As discussed by Judith Groch in her book The Right to Create, one reason might be a strongly held belief that creativity is innate and something one is born with. You either have it or you don’t. Another reason might be the difficulty in assessing creativity objectively. Unlike questions and problems with only one right answer, how can you make an objective value judgment on a student’s creative output? But imagine a young Pablo Picasso growing up in 21st-century America and attending a public school dominated by high-stakes testing. According to a case study by Howard Gardner in Creating Minds, our young Picasso had great difficulty mastering his numbers. Other than his artistic inclinations, which were nurtured by his family, he was an unremarkable student. In most of today’s public schools, Picasso would be force-fed a fairly prescribed curriculum that would ensure mastery of test-taking techniques but would be mostly devoid of opportunities for personal self-expression. In fact, in a climate focused on high-stakes testing, little attention would even be given to the arts. Picasso’s unique and imaginative vision of the world would probably be squelched for not conforming to the accepted adult views of how one draws the sun, trees, or sky. According to Feldman, Csikszentmihlayi, and Gardner, in Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity, creative people are shaped as much by their early experiences as by the natural abilities they are born with. Absent a home life where artistic insights are valued and nurtured, how many future Picassos are walking around America’s schools right now who will never know their potential because they will never come into contact with those experiences? Consider the following scenario. If Gena and Jesse walked into a cocktail party, who would be considered the more “creative” of the two? Why, certainly you would pick Gena. Less

Dodds and Educational Policy for a Defeated Germany

David Phillips

in Rediscovering E. R. Dodds: Scholarship, Education, Poetry, and the Paranormal

This chapter examines the work of E.R. Dodds during preparations for the post-war occupation of Germany. In 1940, Dodds joined Arnold Toynbee’s ‘Foreign Research and Press Service’, which had moved ... More

This chapter examines the work of E.R. Dodds during preparations for the post-war occupation of Germany. In 1940, Dodds joined Arnold Toynbee’s ‘Foreign Research and Press Service’, which had moved to Oxford, and he began to work on the history of education in Germany. Arnold’s group eventually became the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD), and Dodds produced for it lengthy memoranda to inform others working on the subject. He also lectured at many meetings and published a pamphlet, Minds in the Making, a study of the hollowness and barbarity of Nazi ideology and its effects on education. For FORD he also chaired committees on re-education and on textbook production. In 1947, he led a delegation to Germany of the Association of University Teachers, which produced a damning report on the state of German universities. He proved to be one of the most significant people involved in shaping educational policy as it developed in the British Zone of Germany.Less

Artisans of Hope

Samy Cohen

in Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the Israeli Peace Movements

As the Israeli right has become firmly ensconced in power and the left shows signs of fatigue, a host of small peace organizations have proliferated that display amazing vitality. The most remarkable ... More

As the Israeli right has become firmly ensconced in power and the left shows signs of fatigue, a host of small peace organizations have proliferated that display amazing vitality. The most remarkable are reconciliation NGOs, which show an almost unbelievable dynamism. In a context that is increasingly difficult for the peace camp, these organizations simply refuse to give up and continue to fight for peace as though it were close at hand. They belie the most pessimistic diagnoses about the state of the dovish left. Their objective is ambitious and in many respects revolutionary. Their aim is to establish a partnership for peace on an equal footing. These NGOs strive to help Israelis and Palestinians live together and work towards mutual understanding by combating negative stereotypes and prejudices on either side. They view this form of action as a prerequisite to any political settlement of the conflict and make it the very cornerstone of their identity. This innovative position is an even greater challenge given that many Palestinian organizations feel they should adhere to the call to boycott Israel, while the large majority of Israelis either ignore them or look down on them.Less

Narrative Hospitality: Three Pedagogical Experiments

Richard Kearney and Melissa Fitzpatrick

in Radical Hospitality: From Thought to Action

This chapter illustrates how the model of hospitality as translation and narrative exchange (presented in the previous chapter) applies to three recent pedagogical experiments: the Guestbook Project ... More

This chapter illustrates how the model of hospitality as translation and narrative exchange (presented in the previous chapter) applies to three recent pedagogical experiments: the Guestbook Project of exchanging stories; the Twinsome Minds project of “Double Remembrance”; and the “Exchanging memories” project of the Irish Famine Memorial in New York. It ends with a brief discussion on ethics, narrative, and memory in light of Ricoeur’s understanding an ethic of flexibility, which resists the fixation of an historical event in dogma by showing how each event can be told in different ways by different narrators in different generations. This does not mean that everything becomes relative and arbitrary. On the contrary, acts of trauma and suffering call out for justice, and the best way of achieving this is often to invite empathy with strangers and adversaries by hosting a plurality of narrative perspectives.Less

Plato and Modern Leadership Models

Dominic Scott and R. Edward Freeman

in Models of Leadership in Plato and Beyond

This chapter looks at the relation between Plato’s models and modern leadership approaches. Unlike many recent theorists, Plato avoids trying to find a single definition, but seeks to isolate the ... More

This chapter looks at the relation between Plato’s models and modern leadership approaches. Unlike many recent theorists, Plato avoids trying to find a single definition, but seeks to isolate the different strands in the complex phenomenon of leadership. In this way, his approach anticipates Wittgenstein’s idea of ‘family resemblances’: leadership is not treated as a simple ‘universal’, but a complex with several overlapping strands. Another feature of Plato’s approach is the importance of ethics to leadership. To compare Platonic and modern approaches to leadership more specifically, this chapter looks at four recent theories, and shows that each one has close affinities with one or more of Plato’s models: Burns’ ‘transformational’ leadership resembles the artist and the navigator; Collins’ ‘Level 5’ leadership the weaver; Greenleaf’s ‘servant’ leadership the doctor and teacher; Gardner’s ‘thought’ leadership (in his book, Leading Minds) the sower.Less