“A banquet for all the world”: democracy and consumerism in Disney’s Food Will Win the War

This essay considers Food Will Win the War, an animated short made early in World War II by Disney Studios for the United States Department of Agriculture. Through a fantastical catalogue of hyperbolic images, the film shows how the mass production of American agriculture becomes the first wave of a new American-style consumerism of plenty that will transform the social order. The analysis blends contemporary theories of affective politics to show Food Will Win the War as a threshold text, revealing the post-war economy at its formation. Using food as a symbolic field, this film ultimately links the endless expansion of consumer desire to national identity and global colonization.     

Identifying the causal mechanisms of the quiet eye

Abstract

Scientists who have examined the gaze strategies employed by athletes have determined that longer quiet eye (QE) durations (QED) are characteristic of skilled compared to less-skilled performers. However, the cognitive mechanisms of the QE and, specifically, how the QED affects performance are not yet fully understood. We review research that has examined the functional mechanism underlying QE and discuss the neural networks that may be involved. We also highlight the limitations surrounding QE measurement and its definition and propose future research directions to address these shortcomings. Investigations into the behavioural and neural mechanisms of QE will aid the understanding of the perceptual and cognitive processes underlying expert performance and the factors that change as expertise develops.     

Interrogating Discursive Data: How News Media Narratives Assemble Truths About the Teaching Profession

This project provides a framework for interrogating the language often used in media reporting on education, and making those often hidden ideological underpinnings more visible. Explored through this analysis are the language, metaphors, logic, and rhetorical devices used by various news media reporting on educational concerns, and in particular the concerns revolving around teacher quality and teacher preparation, which allow the construction and circulation of specific kinds of knowledge and assert certain kinds of truths. This analysis is guided by the premise that education writ large, which includes the profession of teaching as well as the field of teacher preparation, is charged with helping students, our youngest citizens, develop an understanding of the practices and problems of people-power, self-rule, and shared governance in our democratic society. If education primarily involves preparing students for democratic citizenship, as a long history of scholarship has established (Barber, 2001 Barber, B. (2001). An aristocracy of everyone. In S. J. Goodlad (Ed.), The last best hope: A democracy reader (pp. 11–22). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]; Bean &; Apple, 1995 Beane, J. A., &; Apple, M. W. (1995). Democratic schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. [Google Scholar]; Beard, 1937 Beard, C. (1937). The unique function of education in American democracy. Washington, DC: National Education Association. [Google Scholar]; Dewey, 1916 Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Free Press. [Google Scholar]; Bode, 1937 Bode, B. H. (1937). Democracy as a way of life. New York, NY: Macmillan. [Google Scholar]; Giroux, 1989 Giroux, H. (1989). Schooling for democracy: Critical pedagogy in the modern age. London, England: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Gore, 1993 Gore, J. (1993). The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feminist discourses as regimes of truth. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Gutman, 1999 Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; McLaren, 2001 McLaren, P., &; Farahmandpur, R. (2001). Educational policy and the socialist imagination: Revolutionary citizenship as a pedagogy of resistance. Educational Policy, 15(3), 343–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904801015003002.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Nussbaum, 2010 Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]), educating citizens to critically examine, analyze, and understand social worlds is essential to democracy.     

Book reviews

SPEAKING CHICANA: VOICE, POWER, AND IDENTITY. Edited by D. Letticia Galindo & Maria Dolores Gonzales. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999; pp. viii + 226. $45.00 cloth; $19.95 paper.

CULTURAL BOUNDARIES OF SCIENCE: CREDIBILITY ON THE LINE. By Thomas Gieryn. Chicago: University Press, 1999; xiv + 398. $58.00 cloth; $16.80 paper.

ILLNESS AND CULTURE IN THE POSTMODERN AGE. By David B. Morris. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1998. $19.25 cloth.

DANCING IN CHAINS: NARRATIVE AND MEMORY IN POLITICAL THEORY. By Joshua F. Dienstag, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997; pp. 1–268. $45.00; $16.95 paper.

CIVIC WARS: DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN THE AMERICAN CITY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By Mary Ryan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 376 pp. $40.00 cloth; $14.36 paper.

TELLING THE SUCCESS STORY: ACCLAIMING AND DISCLAIMING DISCOURSE. By P.J. Benoit. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997. $39.50 cloth; $12.95 paper.

BLOOD SACRIFICE AND THE NATION: TOTEM RITUALS AND THE AMERICAN FLAG. Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999; pp. 398. £50.00 hardback; £18.95.     

Production Texts

Gerald Millerson's The Technique of Lighting for Television and Motion Pictures (New York: Hastings House, 1972—$17.95)

Kenneth Kenecht's Designing & Maintaining the CATV & Small TV Staio (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1972—$12.95

Harry F. Olson's Modern Sound Reproduction (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1972—$17.50)

Daniel M. Costigan's FAX: The Principles and Practice of Facsimile Communication (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Co., 1971—$10.00)

Edmund C. Arnold's Ink on Paper 2: A Handbook of the Graphic Arts (New York: Harper & Row, 1972—$10.95)

David L. Grey's The Writing Process: A Behavioral Approach to Communicating Information and Ideas Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1972—$2.95, paper)

Hadley Read's Communication: Methods for All media (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972—$6.95)     

Ally McBeal as Allegory: Setting the Eating-Disordered Subject in Opposition to Feminism

This essay examines the use of moral allegories to represent eating-disordered individuals in the popular television program Ally McBeal and the subsequent controversy surrounding its star, Calista Flockhart. As both fictional character and actor were coded within the vocabulary of eating disorders and feminism, a discourse of disease, detection, authenticity, and correction emerged that portrayed the eating-disordered individual as a moral contagion that threatened to undermine progressive gender politics. It is further suggested that the process of allegoresis can be productively refigured to combat the stigma that emerged from these destructive cultural distinctions.     

Using digital and paper diaries for learning and assessment purposes in higher education: a comparative study of feasibility and reliability

The incorporation of diaries and journals as learning and assessment vehicles into programmes of study within higher education has enabled the further growth of reflection, creative writing, critical thinking and meta‐cognitive processes of students’ learning. However, there is currently little research that aims to compare how different types of diary are used and for what specific learning and teaching purposes, so, with this in mind, a study was carried out to investigate digital diary use within a group of undergraduates, to some of whom the authors allocated Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which they used to contribute to a blog (digital diaries), and to some of whom hard‐backed format (paper diaries) were given. This paper is the first of two from this study. The findings indicated that whilst students found both forms of diary acceptable and convenient, differences emerged in the way that the diaries were being used on a day‐to‐day basis, both in the frequency of entry and in the length of entries made. Throughout the study, the digital diaries were used more frequently, although the entries were often brief and incomplete. Conversely, students completing the paper diaries made significantly fewer entries in total, but those that were made were longer and more discursive in nature. Further, it was found that the paper diaries possessed positive qualities related to handling and attractiveness that promoted more prolonged use, whilst the negative qualities of the digital diaries were linked to technical limitations. The implications of this work are considered in relation to more general notions of using dynamic devices to encourage students to engage in reflexive criticism.