With the rise of biopolitical modernity, states justify both the existence of zombies and their monopoly on coercive violence via an imperative to care for the populations within their purview. But biopolitics' intrinsic link to the rise of a neoliberal model of governance, demonstrated by Foucault (2008), places a contradiction at the heart…

The Waiting for Superman (WFS) cultural project and its push to transform the public school system has had great appeal among those sympathetic and unsympathetic to the victims of exclusionary and exploitative school agendas. To address the workings of hegemony in the WFS cultural project the authors examine three general scenes in the WFS trailer…

In a world in which social media, visual images, and instant messaging are the everyday realities of today's young people, films and videos play a crucial role in developing a critical understanding of how social, economic, political, and cultural structures mediate the lives of youth. As teaching tools and cultural media, videos, and films offer…

This article examines the relations between two contrasting education phenomena that occur generally and that have come to light in the geographic location where the author teaches and works. This first phenomenon is the proliferation of interest in issues of diversity and equity through education policies, theories, practices, and initiatives.…

"Elitism" is frequently invoked among the pantheon of "isms" actively to be disavowed. Indeed the charge of elitism often takes the form of reiteration, of identifying yet another manifestation of adherence to traditional standards steeped in discrimination by sex, race, and class, this time in their institutional guises in the merit credited to…

This article presents an interview with Peter Mayo, author and expert in the field of sociology of adult education, on his major influences in this area, his books, and his views on the role of radical adult education and radical scholarship in the future. In the interview, Peter Mayo states that his initial view of adult education was quite a…

This article presents an interview with Gary Olson on the changing contexts of the humanities in this modern world. He emphasizes that the humanities are absolutely essential when it comes to the very real-world problems. He explains that what he is saying not just applies to terrorism and economic crisis; the humanities equip everyone to deal…

One way that people learn to recognize themselves as members of a nation-state is by participating in the ritual of a national census. In the United States acquaintance with such enumerations is cultivated during childhood by the federal government's "Census in Schools" (CIS) program, which distributes a variety of educational materials designed…

In this article, the author explored the increasingly complex articulations of race and education associated with Native American mascots and the struggles over them. The author demonstrates that cultural symbols not only (mis)educate, strengthening racial ideologies and hierarchies, but that they also play a fundamental role in the creation of…

The politics of body size has been the topic of intriguing feminist work. Although in the author's view this issue is still undertheorized, the author has long sought for a way to bring what "does" exist in the literature into her academic activities. The opportunity arose when, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2001, she…

Where the education of subaltern multicultural student collectives is concerned, the case of contemporary developments in the discourse of reform in Spain is particularly poignant. A critical engagement with that discourse and its greater sociocultural context reveals some of the subtle ways in which cultural alterity comes to be represented. And…

A thesis concocted by right-wing ideological watchdogs and advanced with elevated urgency in the wake September 11, 2001, claims that America's college and university students are hostage to a leftist, "moral-relativist" and multiculturalist professoriat. To restore right-thinking to college campuses, the argument continues, academic authority…