after school dance party

From the article:

“In some respects, they couldn’t be less alike. Raised by fundamentalist Christians, Thompson is a preternaturally gifted illustrator, less comfortable with text than a brush. “Drawing is the more obsessive and easy part,” he explained. “The writing is a lot of sweat.”

“I think I feel the opposite,” Bechdel admitted. “The more fun, exciting part for me is the writing. I love the drawing, but it’s work.” Sixteen years Thompson’s senior, the Oberlin graduate was raised by a high school English teacher and an actress, liberal academics. At 232 pages, Fun Home is by far the longest work of her career. Blankets is practically epic by comparison, clocking in at 582.

And yet both books describe inquisitive, artistic children in small-town America; both books, like their authors, defy easy categorization; both will be read for years to come.”

About Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, from Powell’s Books’ description:

“Meet Alison’s father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family’s Victorian house, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter’s complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned “fun home,” as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift…graphic…and redemptive.”

About Craig Thompson’s Blankets, from Top Shelf Productions’ description:

“Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith. A profound and utterly beautiful work.”

From the book’s Amazon page:

“Journalist Scheeres offers a frank and compelling portrait of growing up as a white girl with two adopted black brothers in 1970s rural Indiana, and of her later stay with one of them at a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. The book takes its title from a homemade sign that Scheeres and the brother closest to her in age and temperament, David, spot one day on a road in the Hoosier countryside, proclaiming, “This here is: JESUS LAND.” And while religion is omnipresent both at their school and in the home of their devout parents, the two rarely find themselves the beneficiaries of anything resembling Christian love. One of the elements that make Scheeres’s book so successful is her distanced, uncritical tone in relaying deeply personal and clearly painful events from her life. She powerfully renders episodes like her attempted rape at the hands of three boys, the harsh beatings administered to David by her father and the ceaseless racial taunting by schoolmates; her lack of perceivable malice or vindictiveness prevents readers from feeling coerced into sympathy. The same can be said for Scheeres’s description of their Dominican school, where humiliation and physical punishment are meant to redeem the allegedly misguided pupils. Tinged with sadness yet pervaded by a sense of triumph, Scheeres’s book is a crisply written and earnest examination of the meaning of family and Christian values, and announces the author as a writer to watch. “

Jesusland is a 2006 Alex Award winner, which “are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18”.

More info on Jesusland at Julia Scheere’s site. 

From the documentary’s site:

“Kidnapped for Christ is a feature-length documentary film, which follows the stories of several American teenagers who were sent to an Evangelical Christian reform school located in The Dominican Republic called “Escuela Caribe.” The school is run by Americans and is advertised as a “therapeutic Christian boarding school” whose mission is to “help struggling youth transform into healthy Christian adults.” While many have praised the school for saving the lives of hundreds of troubled teens, in the past several years many former students have begun to speak out against the school, claiming that they suffered both psychological and physical abuse during their time there. The film’s director, Kate Logan, set out to document the experiences of the students at this remote boarding school and was given unprecedented access to film for seven weeks on campus in the summer of 2006. Through candid interviews with distressed students, footage of staff imposing extreme discipline and punishments, and finally the attempted rescue of a student being held at the school illegally past the age of 18, she was able to reveal the shocking truth of what was actually going on at Escuela Caribe.”

Found via boingboing.

From the article, Lego & Gender, Part 1: Lego Friends:

“In part 1 of my two part LEGO and Gender series, I’ll explore how LEGO went terribly wrong with LEGO Friends and provide a brief history of LEGO’s ridiculous and slightly hilarious attempts to market to girls since the late 70′s.  In part 2 I’ll delve into LEGO’s intentional strategy to market almost exclusively to boys since the mid 80′s by developing and marketing sets that are male identified and male centered.  In conclusion, I’ll offer LEGO a couple of suggestions that they can consider when creating and marketing new products.”

From the article, Lego & Gender, Part 2: The Boys Club:

“In part 2, I delve into how LEGO shifted their products from their initial relatively, gender neutral building experience to a more male dominated and male identified one.  The LEGO group intentionally did this in three ways: 1. Marketing exclusively to boys, 2. Producing male identified and centered themes and sets and 3. Focusing on stereotypical boys play scenarios with an emphasis on combat.  The strong focus on boys has effectively kicked girls out of the LEGO club house. Keep watching until the end where I provide a few suggestions to LEGO on how to fix their gender segregation problem.”

From the call, deadline 05.01.12 for 500 word abstract and brief CV:

“In the last decade, stories of dystopian societies have become increasingly prevalent in young adult fiction, and almost all question young people’s places within such societies. Works such as Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Lauren Oliver’s Delirium, Ally Condi’s Matched, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone are particularly concerned with how their adolescent female protagonists’ navigation of social mores and structures give them virtually no control over the outcome of their lives. For example, in The Hunger Games Trilogy, Katniss Everdeen has learned from growing up in Panem, a country that willingly sacrifices its children to maintain control of their parents, that masking emotion is key to survival. Other protagonists, such as Matched’s Cassia and Delirium’s Lena, directly confront experiences of love and desire in societies that have eradicated such feelings.

While these female protagonists challenge the audience’s preconceptions of what it means to be a young woman—someone who is preoccupied with consumer culture, dating dilemmas, and high school cliques—the use of the dystopian genre raises the stakes of adolescent struggles regarding identity, agency, and community. These authors specifically place female protagonists in settings where they must rebel against society to take any control over their own lives and to improve the societies in which they live. Thus, through the realm of dystopian fiction, these authors argue that rebellion against authority allows young women to defy both social and gender expectations in order to become active agents in their own lives, rather than being passive recipients of social mores.

This proposed anthology seeks papers that consider how female protagonists are represented in contemporary young adult dystopian fiction. How are the authors of young adult dystopian fiction consciously (or unconsciously) reinforcing or challenging stereotypical characterizations of female protagonists?

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

•young women as rebels, leaders, or instigators
•young women as the head of the family
•war and its impact on young women
•young women who reject/question socially-constructed feminine virtues
•young women who challenge what it means to be a young women in their individual societies
•role of environment and circumstance in YA dystopian fiction
•claiming female agency in a dystopian society
•female protagonists in YA dystopians compared to female protagonists in more conventional YA novels (i.e., Gossip Girl, The It Girl, or Uglies)
•adolescent female rebellion in YA fiction

We are currently seeking a book contract for this anthology. Please submit a 500-word abstract and a brief CV by May 1, 2012 to: Sara K. Day, Miranda Green-Barteet, and Amy L. Montz at yadystopianfiction@gmail.com.”

From the call, deadline 03.01.12 for 500 word abstract and brief biography:

“Bruce Babington and Noel Brown, editors

We are seeking contributions to a co-edited anthology which addresses global manifestations of children’s films and family films outside the Disney milieu.

There have been many scholarly works which focus on the historical, commercial and textual aspects of Disney films, yet the children’s films and family films produced elsewhere – whether in the Hollywood, European or other international cinemas – have been comparatively neglected. This collection aims to redress the balance by examining the production and reception of these films.

We invite original research on any aspect of non-Disney children’s films and family films, whether historically-oriented or more contemporary in scope. Essays may address key industrial and/or commercial issues attached to international children’s films and family films, or examine the production and reception of important individual texts (or filmic cycles).

A non-proscriptive list of possible topics includes:

• The relationship between children’s films and family films
• The relationship with children’s cultural studies
• Their relationship with other ‘crossover’ media, such as books, comics and video games
• The dialectical relationship, either textual or in terms in reception, between Disney and non-Disney children’s/family films
• The status of children’s films and/or family films in terms of genre
• The development of children’s and family film movements in film industries internationally, particularly in the French, Eastern Europe and Japanese cinemas
• The commercial and/or aesthetic aspects of the family blockbuster
• The reception of children’s films and family films globally
• The role of festivals and conventions in bringing lower-budget children’s films and family films to wider attention

We would ask prospective contributors to submit a 500-word abstract by 1 March 2012. Please include a brief biographical note. Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be notified by 1 April 2012, and will be expected to deliver completed essays (of no more than 7,500 words, inclusive of references) by 1 August 2012.

Bruce Babington is the author of Launder and Gilliat (2002), A History of the New Zealand Feature Fiction Film (2007) and the forthcoming The Sports Film: Games People Play (2013). He is also the co-author of Blue Skies and Silver Linings: Aspects of the Hollywood Musical (1985), Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes (1989), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema (1993) and Carmen on Film: A Cultural History (2007), and editor/co-editor of British Stars and Stardom: from Alma Taylor to Sean Connery (2001) and The Trouble With Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema (2004). Noel Brown is the author of the forthcoming The Hollywood Family Film: A History, From Shirley Temple to Harry Potter (2013).

From the article:

“As debate continues over whether schools invest wisely in technology — and whether it measurably improves student achievement — Mooresville, a modest community about 20 miles north of Charlotte best known as home to several Nascar teams and drivers, has quietly emerged as the de facto national model of the digital school…

The district’s graduation rate was 91 percent in 2011, up from 80 percent in 2008. On state tests in reading, math and science, an average of 88 percent of students across grades and subjects met proficiency standards, compared with 73 percent three years ago. Attendance is up, dropouts are down. Mooresville ranks 100th out of 115 districts in North Carolina in terms of dollars spent per student — $7,415.89 a year — but it is now third in test scores and second in graduation rates…

Start with math lessons: each student’s MacBook Air is leased from Apple for $215 a year, including warranty, for a total of $1 million; an additional $100,000 a year goes for software. Terry Haas, the district’s chief financial officer, said the money was freed up through “incredibly tough decisions.”

Sixty-five jobs were eliminated, including 37 teachers, which resulted in larger class sizes — in middle schools, it is 30 instead of 18 — but district officials say they can be more efficiently managed because of the technology. Some costly items had become obsolete (like computer labs), though getting rid of others tested the willingness of teachers to embrace the new day: who needs globes in the age of Google Earth?”

This article is from Grading the Digital School, a New York Times series which “explores the push to digitize the American classroom and whether the promises are being fulfilled.”

Thought Catalog’s Stephanie Georgopulos makes incisive observations about the fantastic impossibilities in teen television characters, especially in regards to education and variations on orphan tale tropes. Selections from the article:

“Jordan Catalano, My So Called Life

I’ll accept that somewhere on earth, there’s a dyslexic, song writing (curious dynamic, there) Calvin Klein model who still shows up for school even though ~13 years passed before anyone noticed he couldn’t read…

 Shawn Hunter, Boy Meets World

On what planet do orphaned kids move in with their teachers?…

Ryan Atwood, The OC

…His lawyer basically pulled the “Ain’t he cute? Can we keep him?” on his moneyed wife until she agreed that Ryan could stay for a while (like, five years or something). Because kids from broken families are exactly like puppies in that if you find one on the street, you can basically just pick it up and bring it home with you, no questions asked. Bonus points if it’s adorable!”

From the article:

“This dramatic situation started when Jordan discovered a Facebook post from Hannah, complaining about her daily life at home. The note, which Jordan read and analyzed in his sit-down chat with the camera, takes issue with the slew of chores she’s forced to do each day. “To my parents: I’m not your damn slave,” the note begins. The teenage angst bleeds from the note, as Hannah proposes that her parents pay her for the chores that she does. This point, in particular, sets off Jordan, an IT worker from Albemarle, N.C., who proceeds to delineate how entitled Hannah sounds in the note. But that wasn’t the only punishment he planned for his daughter’s supposedly “hard” life.

“That right there is your laptop,” he explains, filming the newly-upgraded computer perched vulnerably in the grass. “This right here is my .45.” A quick cock of the gun, and Hannah’s laptop takes a shot through the screen. In the next 30 seconds, he proceeds to empty his gun, and the bullets shatter the computer’s plastic shell.

Naturally, the video has inspired an onslaught of commentary, from shocked teens distraught that a father could do such a thing, to praise from other parents equally annoyed at their children’s complaints. But Jordan has affirmed on Facebook that it’s outside observers that are the most outraged – enough to inspired Child Protective Services to show up at his home.”

From the article:

“Michigan State University surveyed more than 700 employers seeking to hire recent college graduates. Nearly one-third said parents had submitted resumes on their child’s behalf, some without even informing the child. One-quarter reported hearing from parents urging the employer to hire their son or daughter for a position. Four percent of respondents reported that a parent actually showed up for the candidate’s job interview.”