Kim Kardashian is my new BFF: Video games and the looking glass celebrity

Mobile-based celebrity games are a by-product of a new, more feminized video game industry. Within celebrity games, the player engages with celebrity culture in a variety of ways, often being transformed into their own brand of celebrity. Celebrity games are a form of hypertrophic media, based on the dyadic interactions between the player and celebrity. Within this, one becomes a looking-glass celebrity—an enculturation process by which the celebrity text situates the player as closer to the titular star than the player actually is. In turn, the player uses this position to reflexively construct what the player believes constitutes a successful celebrity. The path to fame, however, is a hollow one, wherein the player can never really lose and never really win.     

Cultural Diplomacy,Branding and the American Film Institute's Project: 20/20

The Global Cultural Initiative (GCI) was a flagship cultural diplomacy effort introduced by the Bush Administration in the mid-2000s; one project of this initiative was the American Film Institute's Project: 20/20, a program of 19 films from five continents scheduled to tour the United States and abroad. This paper is a historical exploration into how the Bush Administration reconstructed American identity and culture through framing, and how that framing was embedded within cultural diplomacy initiatives like the GCI. This paper contributes to an understanding of how intercultural dialogue is often based on key messages and constructed ideas.     

Introducing Multicultural Education to the Digital Age: A Review of Culture,Difference, & Power

Teacher candidates must metaphorically "step out of their own skins," challenging stereotypical cultural metanarratives, to teach effectively. This study describes results of collegian mentoring 1stthrough 12th-grade students representing diverse ethnic and/or socioeconomic status groups in conjunction with a sophomore-level course on diversity taught at a university in the Northwest area with less than 10% ethically diverse populations. Analysis of surveys administered to participants, comments, and participant observations showed that some students developed more understandings of diversity than others by semester's closing. Discussion of the results and recommendations for integration of diversity throughout the teacher education curricula are presented.