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Telotte, J. P. The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 221 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-25207540-7. $20.00. How did Disney evolve into a cultural powerhouse that [...]

Learning management systems (LMS) are fixtures on higher education campuses. As LMS use continues to increase, faculty development professionals should consider how system use is encouraged and implemented on campus, especially amongst faculty. Using Ely's (1990) technology-specific conditions that facilitate the implementation of an innovation, this study presents in-depth interview responses of key campus stakeholders who oversaw a campus-wide LMS adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are under-represented in disciplines related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans are also under-represented in these careers. Communication scholars have considered the role that media representations may play in this imbalance, as well as whether or not a shift in how STEM careers are portrayed in the media could help to address it. In this audience-based study, STEM professionals and students interested in STEM-related careers were asked about their lifelong media consumption. Responses from people from under-represented populations are analyzed. Their comments provide insights into the influence of the "symbolic annihilation" of women and minority populations in entertainment media. The interviewees' responses to specific characters provide support for Greenberg's drench hypothesis (1988), which suggests that one powerful portrayal can offset the overall dearth of positive characters in the media landscape. In particular, the character of Lieutenant Uhura from the original run of Star Trek was frequently noted by female respondents as an influential character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thousands of people were secretly kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Argentina's military dictatorship from 1976–1983. Since concrete information about this period of repression remains scarce, history must be cobbled together from fragments: photos, memories, and stories. In the period since the dictatorship, filmmakers have contributed to this fractured history by telling stories of the Desaparecidos through documentaries. This essay analyzes several specific types of visual representation utilized in these films. These include testimonial interviews, personal photographs, visual evidence of events, visual documentation of pilgrimages to significant places, and symbolic representations of family legacy. Using these techniques, the films under consideration become part of a process towards the creation and transmission of social memory about the traumatic and contested past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]