Patricia Leavy

American Reporting of School Violence and `People Like Us': A Comparison of Newspaper Coverage of the Columbine and Red Lake School Shootings:

The 1999 shootings at Columbine High School received saturation coverage by the American media. How did newspaper reporting of the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation School shootings, the largest school killing since Columbine, compare with the presss representations of Columbine? In this article we perform a qualitative content analysis of three newspapers (The New York Times as the national paper of record, and local papers in the communities in which the events occurred) over a two-week period following each event. We found that the reporting of Columbine and Red Lake differed in terms of quantity, content, and form. Columbine was immediately marked with social significance and became a national story while Red Lake received significantly less coverage, mostly local. Red Lake reporting was explicitly raced and classed while the prominent role of race and gender in the Columbine killings was largely ignored by local and national media.

The Memory-History-Popular Culture Nexus: Pearl Harbor As a Case Study in Consumer-Driven Collective Memory

In this paper I examine the fusing of collective memory, history and popular culture by analyzing current trends in American-made commercial films with historical events as subject matter that have also been distributed to a global audience. Pearl Harbor is the primary case study. Analysis shows that dominant historical narratives are reified by the use of what I term an ‘anticipatory-driven’ film experience where audience members engage in an interaction with pre-existing mainstream collective memory while their anticipation for impending climactic trauma is systematically heightened. Comparisons are made to other widely released US films about national and international events and ‘non-events.’ Questions are also raised about the increasing global importance of the memory-history-popular culture nexus post 9-11, and, how US produced films about 9-11 may or may not engage in the practices detailed in this analysis. In this vein the paper concludes with a discussion of how Pearl Harbor was marketed, edited and received in Japan, the second largest audience for Hollywood films and what this implies about social memory construction in a global commercial context.

Eleanor and Mary

If the hotel lobby is any indication, the conference will be packed. I hope it trickles into my book signing. Sometimes I think women are afraid to be seen buying a book about female orgasm. Pretty sad. We can’t even be interested in our own bodies without shame.

Using the Lessons Outside of the Classroom

Let’s return to our opening discussion about Merida from the film Brave and her short-lived Disney Princess makeover. One of the major takeaways from that example is that groups of people have the power to enact cultural change. The petition, started by A Mighty Girl, worked quickly to allow people to voice their concerns about the newer, sexier version of the character and, indeed, change Disney’s marketing of Merida.