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Women’s representation is widely debated within the comic book cannon. Many comic and cultural scholars argue that women characters are overly sexualized, objectified, or excluded from this literary genre (Child, 2013; Danziger-Russell, 2012; Fesak, 2014; Lepore, 2014; Simone, 1999). However, few scholars have adequately addressed how comic book readers make sense of women’s representation within graphic storytelling. The author’s research addresses the issue of women’s representation in comics with special attention to how audiences interpret these supposed images of women’s empowerment. Capitalizing from the author’s time spent working at a local comic book store and a series of 20 in-depth interviews that the author conducted with comic book readers, the author draws from a series of personal field notes, participant observation, and transcribed interviews to understand how gendered relationships in comic books manifest in real-life experiences. Ultimately, the author argues that static comic book stereotypes about hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity shape consumers’ gendered realities. More specifically, this study demonstrates how popular character archetypes like the love interest, the nag, and the slut are redefining readers’ relationship to women both within and outside of comic book culture. By examining this culture, and its audience at large, this research advances a more nuanced understanding of how graphic narratives contribute to gender difference and violence against women, thereby situating women’s empowerment within popular culture.

The use of verbal reinforcement has longstanding support in encouraging desired student responses. For students with learning and behavioral disabilities, the use of verbal reinforcement through behavior specific praise (BSP) and feedback are promising practices for improving academic and behavioral outcomes. While these strategies are relatively straightforward to implement, they are often applied inappropriately. Thus, specific guidelines should be followed to ensure that BSP and feedback are used effectively. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of BSP and feedback related specifically to students with learning and behavioral disabilities, provide theoretical and empirical support for these practices, offer research-based recommendations for implementation, and identify common errors to avoid.

This paper describes the role of the media in a free society and their impact on civic life. Intellectual rigour in journalism is required to assist media to develop and understand itself.

In ICT of October 1977, Duncan Smith's article, “An Advanced Professional Qualification for Trainers” identifies a central problem: namely in what way should we develop, educate and train those executives who themselves are to hold the key role of directing the training activity within employing organisations. His analysis of the problem, and his proposals to solve it, raise some fascinating trains of thought for the management educator who works in the sector of the polytechnics and regional management centres. Where Duncan Smith focuses upon the role and the skills, knowledge and personal qualities necessary to fulfil it, I shall attempt to relate those ideas to the general framework of management education which has developed and is developing in Britain. Taking the point that that framework may well currently be deficient in coping with the demand that Duncan Smith has identified, I shall advance the idea that we can learn from contemporary developments in the USA. Such developments relate to exploiting the potential of the Doctoral programme to accommodate needs of this kind. In Britain we have available the skeleton framework for such action, by virtue of the range available within the Council for National Academic Awards. Within that framework exists the opportunity to pioneer new developments through the medium of the PhD, and a starting point for such pioneering could be established by working from the analysis of the British scene provided by Duncan Smith and drawing upon relevant comparative studies, such as the USA case which I present later.

Training as we know it is basically the product of private industry. It has spread only very slowly, and then not very confidently, into the public sector. And within the public sector itself there is a huge disparity in the training effort. The Armed Services of the Crown have some of the best training in the country, but this is because, in peace‐time, training is their end‐product. Most of the nationalised industries have good training but this is because they brought the training tradition with them from the private sector. In other fields things are not so rosy. The National Health Service was an entirely new institution with training problems which are unique; they have not yet been tackled, let along solved. But it is in the Civil Service itself that the most serious training problems are to be seen and this is because training is inextricably linked with good government. We asked Duncan Smith, as one of the very few people qualified to undertake the task, to set the scene for us by presenting an overall view of training in the public service and setting out the main issues as he sees them.

Towards the end of 1976 the Training Services Agency appointed a Training of Trainers Committee to advise on this important issue. It met for the first time on 2 November 1976 and is required to report within two years. We informed readers about this new development in our issue of January 1977 where the terms of reference and the names of the members of the Committee are set out on page 7. Our present author, at that time Chief Training Officer, National Health Service, is a member of that Committee, whose members were chosen for the personal contributions they could make rather than for the organisations they represent. Since that date Duncan Smith has retired and is now very active in a private capacity as consultant; he remains a member of the Committee. He strongly holds the view that there is a need for a high level qualification for trainers and he has presented a paper to the committee arguing this case. Such a qualification would be an entirely new departure, and it appeared to us that trainers ought to know about what is being proposed and is under active consideration in their profession. The views of trainers on this matter are important; after all, we are preaching the gospel of participation. If trainers have views they wish to represent, they should write to us and we will see that they are passed on to the appropriate quarters.

The last time the British people were united in a common aim — the defeat of Hitler — prodigies of organisation, courage and innovation occurred. There were ups and downs during World War 2, but nothing then seemed impossible. No problem was so great that it could not be solved with imagination and drive. Afterwards, naturally, there was a reaction. Following so great an effort attention shifted to more domestic affairs, and Labour's Welfare State seemed a just reward for the sacrifices that all classes had made. But valuable though this has been in reducing inequalities, ‘welfare’ does not rank high in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It is not surprising, therefore, that the development of a welfare system, even when supplemented by the ‘never so good’ bout of material prosperity, has failed to provide a sense of national fulfilment. There have been grumbles, strikes and frustrations, but no surge of ideas or idealism such as that of 1945. For 30 years, indeed, there was a tacit political consensus about welfare and unemployment, but in other matters the battle between the Ins and Outs artificially polarised opinion and stifled long‐term thinking. And then in 1979 even the limited consensus was shattered.

This paper exposes, analyses, and challenges the revanchism (Smith, 1996) exhibited by ruling elites in austerity Britain. After recapitulating the concept of revanchism in its original form, and discussing some critiques and extensions, it scrutinizes the emergence of revanchist political economy in Britain, with particular reference to the UK housing crisis. In order to explain how revanchism has become so ingrained in British society, the paper analyses the production of ignorance via the activation of class and place stigma, where free market think tanks play a crucial role in deflecting attention away from the causes of housing crisis. It is argued that the production of ignorance carves an economic and political path for gentrification on a scale never before seen in the United Kingdom, where speculation, rentier capitalist extraction, and the global circulation of capital in urban land markets is resulting in staggering fortunes for those expropriating socially created use values.

When things were looking particularly bleak last year for UK politician, Ian Duncan Smith, a national newspaper came up with some joke headlines. These impossible stories were, the paper suggested facetiously, more likely than the Conservative Party Opposition leader ever becoming the UK Prime Minister. One of the best headlines, referring to the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, read: “Paisley attacks incense cutbacks”. For more cynical readers, “Bank expresses concern for staff and customers” might have seemed just as unlikely. That one happens, however, to be true.