Cultural Studies and/of Economic Rights: Neglect and Promise

This article theorizes the historical non-relation between cultural studies and economic rights discourse, tracing it to ideal typical distinctions between economy and culture in early cultural studies; Karl Marx's influence on Left thought generally via his critique of bourgeois rights; and Foucauldian governmentalist treatments of rights as neoliberal technologies of control and treatments of economy as having no agency of its own but rather as an effect of governmentality. It then introduces a case-study conjunctural history of American economic rights as a history of present American citizenship and politics in order to demonstrate the historically contingent articulations of individual freedom, government, and economic relations, which are not easily explained by the Marxist or Foucauldian vocabularies. The conjunctural history provides cultural studies research with a new perspective for attention to radical democracy and critiques of neoliberal capitalist policies without surrendering the utility of rights to (neo)liberalism.     

Cultural Studies Meets Rights Criticism

I would like to use this occasion to ask how thinking about law and human rights would affect the way we do cultural studies, and vice versa. The truth is that the consideration of the effectivity of many different kinds of political mobilizations around issues of rights, from transnational NGOs’ strategies of anti-imperial politics to UN's education to rethink critical legal methods and practices, have not been seriously charted or assessed in cultural studies. I use this occasion to offer a rough outline of a long-term project that tries to look at the intersections of cultural studies, law, and questions of modernity.     

Librarian-Facilitated Problem-Based Learning Course in a School of Dental Medicine

While problem-based learning has been used in medical practice for several decades, dental education was slower to adapt this education model. However, as dental curricula are embracing this pedagogy, dental and other health sciences librarians are in a position to provide important curricular support. This article will detail one dental liaison librarian's experience with facilitating a problem-based, case-based studies course within the curriculum of a dental school.     

The SANU Memorandum: Intellectual Authority and the Constitution of an Exclusive Serbian “People”

Through this essay, I assert that the intellectual authority of prominent cultural intellectuals can affect a form of “cultural pedagogy” that can essentially re-educate an audience through constitutive discourses that can re-articulate that audience's identity, cultural framework, and historical references, and in so doing can normalize mass violence. Serbian intellectuals and cultural elites played a prominent role in initializing the extreme nationalist mindset that increasingly polarized Yugoslavia throughout the 1980s. In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) drafted a Memorandum, the publication of which in the Serbian newspaper Vjecernje Novosti is retrospectively the precipitating event that awakened Serbian national consciousness. This essay critiques the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences with regard to its role in constructing an exclusive and politically charged Serbian identity. Beginning with an examination of the Memorandum's central claims, this essay asserts that the dominant mythic themes that emerge in the document were part of a deliberate teleological reordering of historical events that provided the foundation for the constitutive rhetoric of Serbian intellectuals-turned-politicians. This essay allows for a deeper understanding of the effects of constitutive discourses, rooted in a mythos of victimization, on the emergent nationalism and mass violence in the former Yugoslavia.     

Economy & Pedagogy: Laboring to Learn in Camden County,North Carolina

This paper explores one interview participant's performances of memory as didactic efforts to resist a diverse range of public memories concerning school segregation and desegregation in rural North Carolina. By exploring Mr. Charlie's narratives, this essay provides critical insight into the articulations between capitalism, education, and white privilege, frayed by local resistant memories and community praxis. Mr. Charlie's memories provide the opportunity to reimagine received traditions of race, education, and equality as marked by alternate forms of economic and social relations. Specifically, he articulates a gray education and gray market, and their place outside of traditional white pedagogy and the capitalist economy. These gray pedagogies and economies present larger implications for the ways race has crossed all of our paths.     

A Dialectic With the Everyday: Communication and Cultural Politics on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club

This essay explores the cultural politics of television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. Because women constitute both the primary Oprah television audience and the largest United States book buying public, it focuses specifically on women's involvement in the club and their modes of engagement with its selections. The Book Club's astonishing success was attributable in part to the carefully considered communication strategies through which participants, Winfrey, and Oprah producers collectively articulated the value of books and reading specifically for women. Their de-emphasizing of purely literary considerations, I contend, enabled women to strategize how to use Book Club selections simultaneously to distance themselves from and to engage more intensively with the demands of living in a patriarchal and otherwise socioeconomically stratified society – a relationship I call a “dialectic with the everyday.” This essay thus traces the communicative processes/practices through which those involved in Oprah's Book Club articulated a highly sophisticated economy of cultural value around books and reading and the implications of that economy to a possible feminist cultural politics.     

What contributes to a qualified digital humanities librarian and ideal digital humanities pedagogy? An exploratory qualitative study

Various digital humanities (DH) methods are increasingly being incorporated into the curricula of higher education institutions and the research undertaken in these institutions. Through semi-structured interviews conducted with eight librarians from four universities, along with observation of their actual work and investigation of the library websites, this study explored these librarians' perceptions of DH pedagogy and their understandings about the role of “DH librarian.” The findings show that the role of a DH librarian can be seen as a liaison among different stakeholders, a group of specialists, or a collective title. The importance of humanities versus technical backgrounds and the practical skills a DH librarian needs to support DH pedagogy are discussed. The findings also indicate that an ideal practice of DH pedagogy requires balanced collaboration, a clear framework, a closer partnership, ample investment in human and technical resources, and high valuation of non-book scholarship.     

The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy in Knocked Up,Juno, and Waitress

This essay explores three films from 2007, Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress, which foreground young women's unplanned pregnancies. These movies depoliticize women's reproduction and motherhood through narratives that rearticulate the meaning of choice. Bypassing the subject of abortion, the women's decisions revolve around their choice of heterosexual partners and investment in romantic relationships. Although they question the viability of the nuclear family for single pregnant women, these films represent new iterations of post-feminism that ultimately restore conservative ideas that valorize pregnancy and motherhood as women's imperatives. We conclude by addressing how these movies present a distorted and short-sighted depiction of the politics of reproductive agency and the challenges that single mothers face.     

(Dis)owning Bikram: Decolonizing vernacular and dewesternizing restructuring in the yoga wars

Undertaking analysis in the area of critical yoga studies, this article identifies two strategies of anticolonial resistance to Bikram Choudhury's copyrighting of a sequence of twenty-six yoga poses. First, it examines decolonial vernacular, which contests Western commodification of yoga through the use and misuse of terms and phrases, such as “yoga piracy” and “cultural patents,” derived from intellectual property rights, international human rights, and cultural property regimes. Second, it considers dewesternizing restructuring emerging from the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, a database of information on yogic practice and medicine, which uses non-Western classification systems to interrupt the legal and economic structures through which patents and copyrights are enunciated. Together, these anticolonial strategies force intellectual property rights regimes to integrate Otherness, making space for the recognition of Indian agency in knowledge production.     

What Cultural,Critical and Communication Might Mean—And Why Cultural Studies Is a Bit Like Rave Culture

Responding to the editor's request for reflections on the key terms in the title of this journal, this somewhat autobiographical and possibly self-indulgent piece reflects on their changing meanings and on the ways in which cultural studies has changed and declined since the early 1990s. Cultural studies, the piece asserts, is a bit like rave culture, because like that subcultural formation of music and dance, it was big and quite innovative in the 1990s, but lost its edge in the twenty first century – although interesting offshoots continue beyond the places where it ‘originated’. The piece also suggests some reasons for the decline of cultural studies. More importantly, it tries to understand the term ‘critical’ via politics. It expresses some preferences, in terms of what constitutes good critical writing, and outlines some key elements of good critical analysis of culture.     

国内外博物馆学习研究回顾与启示——基于Citespace的可视化分析

博物馆学习隶属于非正式学习领域,在我国教育研究中处于边缘地位,为了推进国内博物馆学习研究向纵深方向发展,需要把握国际相关研究的热点与前沿趋势。文章采用CiteSpace分析软件对国内外相关文献的发文量、关键词共现、聚类及突现等方面进行可视化分析。总结博物馆学习研究再出发的路径：利用现代信息技术,实现博物馆数字化学习;关注公众参与及影响因素,提高博物馆学习质量;理论与实践相结合,深化博物馆科学学习研究;基于博物馆学习结果多元性,开展纵向研究;立足本土文化,深化馆校合作实证研究。     

Telecommuting as viewed through cultural lenses: an empirical investigation of the discourses of utopia,identity, and mystery

Prior telecommuting research has focused both on teleworkers without comparison to other employee groups and on pragmatic implications of this work arrangement across organizations. In contrast, this investigation situated telecommuting as a socially constructed process and practice within the context of a specific hybrid (federal agency and private sector) organizational culture. We used Martin's (1992) three cultural lenses as a framework for analyzing in-house and telecommuting employees' discourses. These three cultural lenses illuminated how and why telecommuting functions paradoxically in organizations. In the integration lens, members framed FEDSIM as a coherent, innovative, and “employee-centric” utopian culture. Differentiation subcultures diverged from the telecommuter and in-house distinctions that we anticipated based on previous research. Instead, differentiation discourses revealed complex divisions between promotable and non-promotable employees who adhered to different spatio-temporal orientations toward and definitions of work. Through the fragmentation lens, members' talk coalesced around several mysterious processes of the ways things are supposed to and actually do operate. These findings suggest interventions that can assist leaders and members in capitalizing on telecommuting's unique advantages.     

Cultural Policy Studies and the Problem of Political Representation

Since the 1980s, writers in cultural policy studies have used Michel Foucault\rquote s writing on governmentality to rethink the relationship between intellectuals in the humanities and liberal (or neoliberal) states. One of the founding members of the Australian cultural policy studies school, Tony Bennett, has argued for a model of intellectual as a cultural technicisn who works with the state bureaucracies. This article uses Bennett\rquote s work as an entry-point into questions about the role of critical intellectual, the nature of state power and bureaucracy, and function of culture. It argues that if cultural policy studies is going to claim to be doing bureaucratic work for the sake of politics (rather than for purposes of self-interest), then it will have to supplement governmentality with other theories that help sort our relationships among intellectuals, political constituencies, and the state.     

Librarian-facilitated problem-based learning course in a school of dental medicine

While problem-based learning has been used in medical practice for several decades, dental education was slower to adapt this education model. However, as dental curricula are embracing this pedagogy, dental and other health sciences librarians are in a position to provide important curricular support. This article will detail one dental liaison librarian's experience with facilitating a problem-based, case-based studies course within the curriculum of a dental school.     

Rethinking “Difficult” Conversations in Communication Instruction From an Intercultural Lens: Pedagogical Strategies for “SWAP-ping” the Communication Classroom

Intercultural communication offers both theoretical and pedagogical implications for communication instruction. As such, we interweave theories and concepts of intercultural communication and instructional communication in (re)thinking “difficult,” “sensitive,” or “uncomfortable” classroom conversations that involve privilege, power, and intersecting cultural identities (e.g., racism). In juxtaposing these areas side by side, we first interrogate why intercultural and instructional communication scholars have neglected what the other takes as central: pedagogy and diversity. In particular, we ask: Why are certain conversations deemed “difficult” in the mainstream communication classroom? To whom are they difficult conversations? Why might these conversations feel “uncomfortable or risky”? Second, we crystalize how intercultural communication makes strides toward feeling/thinking/understanding difficult conversations in ways that promote social justice by proposing a pedagogy of “SWAP-ping” the communication classroom.     

Turning Silence into Speech and Action: Prison Activism and the Pedagogy of Empowered Citizenship

Based on almost 50 years of combined experience as prison activists and prison teachers, the authors offer three case studies of prison activism and pedagogy in action. The first case study, by Hartnett, details the “artistry of agency” as enacted in poetry workshops in prison and in public poetry events, thus illustrating artistic communication. The second, by Wood, examines how friendship becomes political in the epistolary communication between free and imprisoned correspondents, thus addressing interpersonal communication. The third, by McCann, addresses web-based communication as a tool for advocacy for condemned prisoner/activists on Texas’s death row, and hence political communication. Taken as a whole, the three case studies celebrate different communication strategies as avenues of enlightenment and empowerment while offering powerful arguments for abolishing the prison–industrial complex.     

基于共被引网络群体中心度的我国人文社会科学领域知识扩散网络研究

研究我国人文社会科学各学科间知识扩散网络和路径,可以为开展跨学科研究和促进学科之间的交叉融合发展提供参考。采用群体中心度指标,基于文献的引证关系和共被引网络对不同学科的网络位置进行了测度,探析了以共被引网络群体中心度为测量指标的我国人文社会科学领域知识交叉与知识扩散状况。结果表明经济学、政治学、法学等学科作为我国人文社会科学领域的重点研究领域,在整个科学知识网络中扮演着重要的角色,其研究内容本身具有较强的学科交叉性,且对各学科都有较强的辐射作用。此外,马克思主义学科对经济学、心理学对教育学和体育学、哲学对政治学、环境科学对人文地理学等也有较强的知识扩散能力。     

Challenges & compromises in Spike Lee's Malcolm X

–This study looks at Spike Lee's Malcolm X as an important text in understanding Afrocentric perspectives that challenge the ideological stereotypes of mainstream Hollywood film. Malcolm X intervenes between Lee, the filmmaker, and the powerful media industry and is emblematic of the larger discussion of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views in media culture. This film is not only an interesting case study but a significant part of an ongoing cultural discourse that is as relevant now as when Malcolm X lived. The relevance of this essay lies in its contribution to the discussion of media perspectives with a focus on furthering media literacy. It aids the viewer in understanding the social discourse surrounding a mediated racist ideology and the ongoing cultural work of social equality in the United States. This research finds that in the continuing struggle over media representation, Lee's film is an instrument of media politics, controversy, and commercialization.     

Preparing to Teach in Cyberspace:

Teaching librarians to teach is an ongoing concern for instruction librarians. The literature confirms that many library and information science programs provide no formal coursework to prepare their students for a career in user education. This lack of formal preparation is compounded by additional demands for a grounding in educational technology and pedagogy. On-the-job-training has become the rule rather than the exception for most instruction librarians. This paper addresses practical concerns encountered at the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries in providing resources and empowering education for librarians and staff members who teach, as well as the philosophical adoption of Computer-Based Education (CBE) principles and a modification of Raganathan's five laws of library science to create a flexible teaching and learning environment for real and vitrual libraries.