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1 – 10 of 70The narrative of The Americans weaves together a spy thriller and a family drama, though it drives home the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of…
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The narrative of The Americans weaves together a spy thriller and a family drama, though it drives home the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of the central characters, Philip and Elizabeth, a couple whose marriage is a cover for their work as Soviet spies. This chapter provides a queer reading of their marriage, drawing from the real history of the Cold War politics of sexuality that associated American values with the hetero- and gender normative, white, and middle-class nuclear family. In contrast, the Soviet Union was understood to have disrupted this natural order by installing the state as an overbearing patriarch. Philip and Elizabeth’s fictional cover as a nuclear family requires them to perform American marriage, family, and selfhood. In doing so, they reflect the centrality of the family in America’s Cold War self-image in which the family serves as the anchor of the American order, enabling economic and political self-sufficiency. Their performance of the family challenges our ability to differentiate between real, authentic family that can serve as the legitimate source of social reproduction and between the counterfeit, fake family that disrupts the social order. The queer family, refusing to be placed beyond realm of the political by the moral language of family values, subverts our ability to distinguish between genres since the family drama is already a political thriller.
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Susan Frelich Appleton and Susan Ekberg Stiritz
This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation…
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This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.
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Ruth Heilbronn and Rosalind Janssen
Research suggests that parentally bereaved children are likely to experience lower academic success and may need long-term support through tertiary education. Gender matters …
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Research suggests that parentally bereaved children are likely to experience lower academic success and may need long-term support through tertiary education. Gender matters — boys bereaved of fathers and girls bereaved of mothers are at increased risk. Boys also exhibit higher levels of emotional and behavioural issues following bereavement. Age is another factor and exam results of children bereaved before the age of five or at twelve are significantly more affected than those bereaved at other ages. Circumstances affecting these achievements concern the relationship between the child’s emotional state and how it plays out in behaviour and motivation in school.
Significantly, Freddie Pargetter, the subject of the chapter, has a twin sister, Lily. The twins had just turned 12 when their father was killed. Comparing the twins’ General Certificate of Education (GCSE) results fits the research patterns — Lily managed well and Freddie did not. Freddie recognises that the academic environment of Felpersham Cathedral School did not support him well and chooses Borchester FE College to continue his studies. This choice raises controversy in the family, indicative of well-rehearsed, real-world educational arguments. Social media responses to other Archers plot lines reveal the extent of how educational issues in the programme resonate with listeners.
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This chapter aims to provide insight into conceptualizing and understanding the experience of civic engagement through voluntary service for high school students in the United…
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This chapter aims to provide insight into conceptualizing and understanding the experience of civic engagement through voluntary service for high school students in the United States today. Unlike prior studies of youth civic life that are predominately quantitative and rely on correlates of youth civic engagement, this qualitative research explores the meanings and rationale youth attribute to being members of their communities. Youth service work emerges in two general forms. Some young people have an altruistic orientation: they are dedicated to help the less fortunate in their communities, but at the same time, they lack strong ideological investment. Other students have an activist orientation: they are committed to activist politics, but cannot connect their political concerns to school-based service. These two orientations to service develop in the context of school programs that encourage – or require – episodic single acts of volunteerism as a form of civic education. Diffuse associational forms and loose, individually based networks thus shape the context and content of youth volunteerism. These associational forms imply the practice of “networked democracy” by young Americans. Although networked associational ties offer young people weaker forms of collective organization, they also allow students to connect to and experiment with many different ideas, issues, and forms of expression.
Social movement scholarship convincingly highlights the importance of threats, political opportunities, prior social ties, ideological compatibility, and resources for coalition…
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Social movement scholarship convincingly highlights the importance of threats, political opportunities, prior social ties, ideological compatibility, and resources for coalition formation. Based on interviews with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists involved in two transnational coalitions in Israel/Palestine, this chapter illustrates the emergence of transnational coalitions, particularly those that cross polarized ethno-national divides, depends not only on such facilitators, but also, and critically, on the belief that such diverse cooperation is strategic. I argue these unique coalitions intentionally formed with individuals and organizations situated in different national communities out of a strategic decision by the Palestinian initiators, given the closed political opportunity structure they faced domestically, to enlarge the scope of conflict by drawing in new people and communities who may have some leverage on the Israeli government. Consequently, this chapter also makes clear that partners in the Global South make intentional choices about who to partner with, and that the agency is not solely linked with their more privileged partners in the Global North (cf., Bob, 2001; Widener, 2007). Finally, it illustrates that coalition partners are recruited not only because of social ties, prior histories of interaction, ideological similarity, and shared organizational framing, but also due to key considerations including perceptions of what the ethno-national diversity, varying networks, and differing privileges make available.
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Danuta A. Nitecki and Eileen G. Abels
The honor of editing the 30th volume of Advances in Librarianship posed a challenge of how to acknowledge changes in the profession over three and a half decades, while continuing…
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The honor of editing the 30th volume of Advances in Librarianship posed a challenge of how to acknowledge changes in the profession over three and a half decades, while continuing a tradition of identifying new trends and innovations. The series aims to present a variety of aspects of the field of librarianship through the publication of critical articles and surveys, based on the published literature, research in progress, and current developments, relating to all segments of the profession and related topics. Contributing authors are encouraged to address provocative and stimulating topics that will ensure that trends are identified and research results of interest are made available quickly in a rapidly changing profession. Though authors in the past have been encouraged to add an historical perspective, those contributing to this volume were invited especially to celebrate the history of the past 36 years by reflecting, as appropriate, on advances made in their topic since the first volume of the series was published in 1970.
Throughout centuries, Latin America has faced a paradox. On one hand, the abundance of resources has attracted immigrants who find a suitable place to undertake profitable…
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Throughout centuries, Latin America has faced a paradox. On one hand, the abundance of resources has attracted immigrants who find a suitable place to undertake profitable business ventures in the region. On the other hand, the limited entrepreneurial resources of most countries of the region have motivated the migration of talented people, among them entrepreneurs, to non-Latin American countries. This chapter explores this paradox through the analysis of entrepreneurs' motivations to immigrate to, and migrate from Latin America, the influence of their profile on their business ventures, as well as the role played by both the home and the host countries' institutional conditions. The findings of this analysis underline the diversity of migrant entrepreneurs in terms of personal resources and survival versus opportunity-driven migration decisions. They also reveal the kind of mechanisms migrant entrepreneurs use to counteract their host country's institutional challenges.
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Elizabeth A. M. Searing, Daniel Tinkelman and
In 2009 and 2010, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) adopted new accounting standards for nonprofit mergers and acquisitions. The new accounting standards are an…
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In 2009 and 2010, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) adopted new accounting standards for nonprofit mergers and acquisitions. The new accounting standards are an example of the constitutive role accounting can play in how people think about economic events, since the FASB defined a new concept (the “inherent contribution”) and required valuation of intangible assets that were often previously unrecognized.
The FASB’s stated goals included minimizing “pooling” accounting and maximizing transparency regarding fair value information, acquired identifiable intangible assets, and the relation between consideration paid and the fair values of identifiable assets acquired. The FASB expected many combinations would involve little or no consideration. It also expressed concern that some organizations would undervalue assets acquired, especially intangible assets.
For a sample of 2012–2017 nonprofit hospital combinations, we find general agreement with the FASB’s expectations. Almost all combinations were accounted for as acquisitions, not mergers, even though there was frequently no consideration paid. More acquirers recorded “inherent contributions” than goodwill, because the net fair value of the acquired hospital’s identifiable assets exceeded the consideration paid. Acquirers ascribed value to assets, such as intangible assets, that would have gone unreported under the prior accounting rules, although lower levels of intangible assets were recognized in nonprofit business combinations, relative to total non-goodwill assets acquired, than in public companies’ acquisitions.
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