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Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American culture since the early decades of cinema. A range of nontheatrical sponsors and creators in the US made films to serve practical functions in society—to inform, to organize, to persuade, to promote, etc. The US federal government was a major sponsor of many of these films, which provided American and foreign audiences depictions of race that differed considerably from popular commercial images. For example, Men of the Forest, a film made in 1952 by the United States Information Service focuses on the Hunters, a Black family who owns land and a forestry business in rural Georgia. A documentary of sorts, the film highlights Black life, work, and land ownership in the South in ways not seen in popular feature films of the day. Yet, in the film and others like it, histories of institutional racism are woven into cinematic form and content in ways that are distinct from the entertainment industry. The creators of Men of the Forest omit details of segregation in the South to emphasize the Hunter family as examples of American democracy, a choice suited to the film's Cold War purpose: to counter the anti-American message of Soviet propaganda for foreign audiences. On one hand, by producing and distributing the film, the federal government acknowledged Black farmers and landowners in the Jim Crow South. On the other hand, it avoided the structural inequality surrounding the Hunters to frame their reality as an example of American democratic progress for international circulation. Today, government films like Men of the Forest prompt contemporary reflection on the institutional histories they represent and their evolution into the present. The film and many others are available online due to the digitization of collections from the National Archives, Library of Congress, and elsewhere. With this increase in access, contemporary scholars have the ability to investigate how the federal government and its various internal entities mediated racial ideologies with moving image technologies. As an example of such research, this essay examines Men of the Forest by focusing on the past and present contradictions that arise from its depiction of a Black family with land and an agricultural business in rural Georgia. Two recent events shed light on the histories reflected in the film and their contemporary significance. In 2018, Descendants of Men of the Forest, The Legacy Continues—a documentary created by family members of the film's original participants—contextualized the original production as evidence of the Hunter family's legacy in the community of Guyton, Georgia. Underlying this local effort, Men of the Forest serves as an important historical event and record of the family and the community. On a broader scale, in March 2021, Congress passed a large relief package for disadvantaged minority farmers, intended to help alleviate decades of systemic racism in government agricultural programs. Lawsuits from white farmers and conservative organizations followed quickly, challenging the provision of government aid based on race. In this federal context, Men of the Forest exposes an institutional image of individual success that downplays the structural racism facing people of color, especially those with agricultural livelihoods. Even as politics and legislation evolve, this vision of democracy once exported by the federal government has widespread currency and accumulating effects. The connections between Men of the Forest and these recent events reveal the racial politics at play in government films and the ways in which they take shape in the real world beyond the screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Swedish heritage politics from the 1920s up to the present by studying official inquiries during this period. Through a critical, historical and empirical discussion, it reveals how the meaning of the word kulturarv (heritage) has been adjusted to correspond to wider changes in Swedish politics. It shows how a relatively neutral understanding of the word kulturarv has been turned into an ambiguity. In this essay I suggest from the material at hand that this trajectory of change results from the development of global capitalism, which turned identity into a commodity. This essay concludes that in a post-heritage future we therefore need a new understanding of identity, an open identity, and that we need to take existential responsibility for our lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Lynn White, jr. is best known for the critical aspects of his disputed 1967 essay, 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,' this article combines archival research and findings from his lesser-known publications in an attempt to reconcile his thought on democracy with the Earth Charter and its assertion that 'we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny' (2000, Preamble). Humanity is first and foremost, White believed, part of a 'spiritual democracy of all God's creatures' in which humans and nonhumans should treat each other with mutual compassion and courtesy. It is argued that the Christian, animal-inclusive 'biodemocracy' envisioned by White is both compatible with, and potentially in conflict with, the tenets of the Earth Charter. This article also considers further implications of these findings for the larger fields of ecotheology and religion and ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a lesson plan to help students understand the role of freedom songs in modern civil rights movement in the United States. The author describes the time frame of the plan and enumerates its objectives. The benefits that can be provided by the plan to students and teachers of history are also discussed by the author. Some of the freedom songs included in the lesson plan are "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "Over My Head I See Freedom in the Air."

The article provides information on the two unpublished lectures of Leo Strauss which includes "What Can We Learn from Political Theory?," delivered in July 1942 and "The Re-education of Axis Countries Concerning the Jews," delivered in November 7, 1943. The author inferred that Strauss' discussions focused on the relation of political philosophy and political practice in the first lecture. He averred that the second lecture focused on the prospects of liberal democracy in postwar Germany.

The next issue, that of November 2012, will be the last for the “UCLA” team—which now includes Harvard, Ohio State, and Stanford—as (now former) co-editors of APSR. The new University of North Texas (UNT) editors are already receiving all papers submitted after June 30, 2012 (at the rate of almost twenty per week, John Ishiyama tells us) while we are handling the “conditional accepts” and “revise and resubmits” that were in the pipeline and have invited referees for the submissions that arrived through June 30. So far, all seems to be running smoothly at both ends, for which we express our gratitude to Aries (which runs Editorial Manager), to the North Texas editorial team, and especially to the professionals who make the whole enterprise run—Joseph Riser, who has served as a superb senior editor at UCLA—and his successor at UNT, Meagan Williams. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]