Parents of gifted children are often faced with challenges as to how to process images, labels, and stereotypes of youth with special abilities. Just as books can provide healing for the troubled soul by reflecting on the stories of people experiencing similar challenges, cinema and video can help examine one's strengths and weaknesses while…

The act of laughing, which is thought to be related with the body rather than the mind and identified with rudeness, has been attributed to outcast segments of society, such as women, children, slaves, or the common-people, while humor requiring supremacy of the mind is believed to be associated with the ruling elite class of society, and mostly…

In this article, Erica Edwards and Jennifer Esposito review the fourth season of "Love and Hip Hop New York," which is just a small part of the larger "Love and Hip Hop" reality TV series, which characterizes love through narrow representations of race, gender, and sexuality. Their analysis reports that this television program…

This article examines the perceptions of education in Turkey, which refer to a nebulous package of formal education and a cultured stance. Guided by the literature on symbolic violence, we argue that underprivileged groups misrecognize arbitrary hierarchies by considering them just and inevitable. Elite tastes have been internalized by other…

The Texas Board of Education's sweeping approval of roughly one hundred changes to the social studies and history curriculum, a ban on so-called ''interpretive history'' in Florida, and a vitriolic campaign of book-banning in Arizona, indicate the extent to which American education and curriculum is currently under assault…

Despite a significant increase in gay representation in contemporary television fiction, many media scholars argue that the representation of gay men and women is governed by heteronormativity. They postulate that even rounded and heterogeneous representations of gay men and women are characters that desire to participate in institutions,…

This article explores how storied representations of characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are typified in a world that is increasingly influenced by popular media. Twenty commercially published children's picture books, popular novels, mainstream television programs, and popular movies from 2006-2012 were selected using purposive,…

This paper analyses the linguistic construction of the televisual character Sheldon--the "main nerd" in the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" (CBS, 2007-), approaching this construction of character through both computerised and "manual" linguistic analysis. More specifically, a computer analysis of dialogue (using concordances and keyword analysis) in…

This article offers a joint reading of two cultural texts that reflect the contest over victim-oriented characterizations of queer youth in contemporary culture. The first text is a representation of queer youth taken from the popular UK television series "Shameless" (2004). The second text is an online discussion about representations…

At present Americans are fascinated by a particular kind of monstrosity, by vampires and zombies condemned to live an eternity by feeding off the souls of the living. The preoccupation with such parasitic relations speaks uncannily to the threat most Americans perceive from the shameless blood lust of contemporary captains of industry, which Matt…

This paper explores a representation of overlapping categories of gender, disability and cyborgs in "Bionic Woman" (2007). The television show "Bionic Woman" (2007) is a popular culture representation that uniquely brings together these categories. Three themes emerged from an analysis of blogger discourse surrounding the show. The themes reveal…

Prime-time animation is a television genre that frequently reflects on issues that are significant in contemporary society, including aging issues. Using such programs to present aging-related content can be a constructive pedagogical device, offering a means of actively engaging students. This article provides a brief overview of the use of…

Popular media such as films, television programmes/commercials and magazines have become the dominant source through which children learn about others and their world, develop attitudes and beliefs as manifested in media expressions, and formulate their sense of identity. Popular media have enormous influence on children who are constantly…

Gay and lesbian adolescents are marginalized at many levels. Their needs and interests are slighted in the balance of advocacy work that purports a concern for the welfare of minority children. Their presence is overlooked in studies of youth and the mass media. Their existence is excluded from American popular culture. The symbolic annihilation…

Describes the efforts of authorities to respond to the burgeoning youth culture of the 1950s. Details the censorship efforts aimed at those aspects of youth culture (comic books, rock and roll) that were viewed as dangerous and subversive. Identifies these effort within the corresponding social, political, and cultural climate. (MJP)