"Responding to the growing epidemic of academic dishonesty, this authoritative text lays the groundwork for a positive school makeover. This guide--which culled research from six high schools in Connecticut that indicated that more than 90 percent of students participate in some form of cheating during the average school year--provides teachers, school administrators, and parents with a toolkit of resources and strategies needed to engender a culture of scholastic honesty. With reproducible handouts and instruction on establishing an Academic Integrity (...) Committee, this unique resource provides a plan and policies that support a climate of honesty and hard work. A CD-ROM with copies of each handout and additional references is also included"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the institutional environments of cultural (...) studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce donc que la musique des aliens ou pour les aliens? Des cinq notes de la mélodie de Rencontres du troisième type aux explorations sonores de Sun Ra ou des intelligents dansants de l’électro, elle n’est peut-être que l’expression la plus accomplie d’une tendance très humaine à projeter sur l’extraterrestre certains reflets plus ou moins déformés de soi, surjouant quelque insaisissable mystère, révélation ou écart incompressible venu de l’ailleurs pour retrouver finalement, tout là-bas, une bribe d’ici.

Presents the fundamental ideas of Indian thinkers that have shaped the mind of Indian from 1770 to the post-modern era in the middle of 20th century in India. Lists the most Indian influential figures in the field of philosophy, political theory, activicism such as Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Once upon a time, an ugly duckling became famous in the history of European fairy tales. It was said of him that "… the poor duckling, who had come last out of his eggshell, and was so ugly, was bitten, pecked, and teased by both ducks and hens.… The poor thing scarcely knew what to do; he was quite distressed because he was so ugly."Today, in America—the mecca of MakeOver culture—that ugly duckling would know exactly what to do: (...) tell his pitiful tale and be accepted for an "Extreme Makeover" that would be televised around the world. This paper uses Foucault's rich and complex notion of an Apparatus to examine how weight-loss surgery is migrating into the repertoire of "normalized procedures" listed under .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the (...) experiences of young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)

This essay examines the connections between the Miss America pageant and reality makeover television shows. We argue that televised performances of gender have shifted focus from the intensely scripted, out-of-touch Miss America to reality makeover shows that normalize cosmetic surgery as a means to become the ‘ideal’ woman. While both spectacles offer their viewers performances of femininity, these performances need to be understood as emerging from the cultural and political conditions in which they are produced. This difference in (...) presentation of the subjects of beauty pageants and makeover programmes speaks respectively to the changing role of media in the normalization of performances of femininity, as well as to the affiliation of many young women with post-feminist politics in the United States. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stanley Cavell and Criticizing the University from WithinMichael FischerStanley Cavell has spoken often of his "lifelong quarrel with the profession of philosophy" but he has said less about the university as a whole and its pressures on all academic disciplines, philosophy included. 1 In Cavell's work, "academic" or "professional" philosophy takes shape in an institutional context he has not yet fully analyzed. I want here to extrapolate from Cavell's (...) work a critical, yet sympathetic, response to the university that I think is especially needed today, when the rise of the so-called corporate university is intensifying some of the professional pressures that Cavell resists.Cavell's discomfort with academic philosophy stems in part from what he regards as its narrowness, specifically, its marginalization of Ludwig Wittgenstein and other philosophers, not to mention Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the comedies of remarriage, and other work that Cavell cares about. In his view, the professional marginalization of these writers partly results from their exemplifying what can seem to be a vague moral seriousness, even at times a prophetic urgency, that calls for something akin to conversion rather than issuing in specific conclusions or reforms. According to Cavell, academic philosophy, by contrast, subsumes moral concerns under ethics, a separate field in which the "point of conversation is getting the other to agree to, or to do, something." 2Although Cavell does not systematically analyze the institutional pressures on academic philosophy, he does drop some hints. As befitting a subject seeking legitimacy in the university, academic philosophy has aligned itself with teachable subjects such as science, as opposed to more elusive pursuits such as painting and creative writing, which [End Page 471] have been less at home in the university and where the necessity of university instruction may be less clear and the line between success and failure harder to draw. 3 What can be taught in academic philosophy is a method of analysis, mastery of which can be certified in students by professors and in professors by journals, promotion and tenure committees, and administrators. Subdividing philosophy into discrete fields such as ethics makes it even more manageable, or less susceptible to sweeping pronouncements that cannot be tested by experts. Finally, the interest in getting "the other to agree to, or to do, something" associates academic philosophy, or at least ethics, with measurable results and maybe even progress.The rise of the so-called corporate university has exacerbated the emphasis on teachable expertise and definable outcomes that I have been describing. Take the largest private university in the United States—the University of Phoenix—as a model that some state and non-profit private universities may be emulating as they struggle to cut costs, meet external expectations, and work with reduced budgets. At the University of Phoenix, the interest in measurable results gets recast as learning outcomes that teachers enable students to reach as efficiently as possible. Specialization narrows these learning outcomes to sharply defined skills, such as writing business memos, which students can master and build on. Finally, the emphasis on method does not simply depersonalize instruction; it reduces the need for instructors. Each instructor is tasked with teaching as many students as possible, sometimes through distance learning, with class size reaching a limit only when the learning outcomes cannot be delivered. Lacking tenure, these instructors can be replaced, like interchangeable parts, when they wear out or their student customers become too dissatisfied with them. At another rapidly growing for-profit university, DeVry, students unhappy with their instructors are assured, in the words of a campus dean, that "weak links" will be "fixed" in a "total quality management" environment. 4Along similar lines, Lindsay Waters has recently explored how "the corporate makeover of the university" and "the commercialization of higher education" have affected academic publishing. 5 Universities compete in an increasingly cutthroat marketplace and face an escalating insistence on results from state legislatures, federal agencies, accrediting associations, and boards. Capitulating to this "accountability culture" (EP, p. 20), bottom-line driven administrators have stepped up demands for faculty productivity, measured in quantitative terms by numbers of students taught, grants won, and, what most concerns Waters, books and [End... (shrink)

This very long book sets out to track and trace the working-class men and, less commonly, women who, against the limited expectations of their social position, learned Greek and Latin as an aspiration for personal change. The ideology of the book is clear and welcome: these figures “offer us a new ancestral backstory for a discipline sorely in need of a democratic makeover.” The book's twenty-five chapters explore how classics and class were linked in the educational system of Britain (...) and in its cultural performativity: Is he a gentleman? Does he have Greek? became the paradigmatic questions, as the study of classics became a sign of cultural attainment and social exclusion. This book sets out to explore the counterstory of the cobblers and shepherds who, like Jude the Obscure, fought against society's oppressiveness to access classical learning.The book's breadth is exemplary. It looks at the issue through genres and media, through different communities and national identities, through the prosopography of ragged-trousered philanthropists, beggar-lecturers, body-building performers, and through other institutions and people who helped, including adult-education teachers, kind bosses, supportive vicars, and fiery communists. This breadth, and the fascinating research that it encapsulates, will make this book a fantastic resource for future scholarship: it outlines the richness of a field that has been all too rarely explored properly. If you do not know Stephen Duck, “the thresher poet,” or Hawkie, the crutch-wielding beggar who performed from the books he sold on the streets of Glasgow, then this book is the place to the meet them. The cast list alone is worth the entrance ticket.Yet this very breadth is also the source of the book's limitations. The sheer number of cases listed, treated at similar length and depth, repeatedly conceals the complexity and even the interest of individual figures or events. So, the numerous representations of Vesuvius in shows around London in the first half of the nineteenth century—after the discoveries at Pompeii—are duly noted as a source of excitement and knowledge about antiquity, but against the recent treatment by Clare Pettitt in Serial Forms (which came out the same year) this mere noting looks desperately thin. There is little discussion of how the characters themselves talked about or negotiated class. This deficiency is particularly important for someone like Charles Kingsley, who was very active in the Chartist movement but also became Queen Victoria's chaplain and the professor of history at Cambridge. There are hilarious descriptions of Kingsley's stammering engagement with the working-class leaders he actively supported, which capture how awkward the interaction of classes could be even and especially when the participants shared a goal of transformation. (Ed Richardson's Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in the Pursuit of Antiquity is good on these moments of awkwardness but is one of several books whose absence from the notes looks pointed.) The authors list cases of working men who were picked up by fashionable society as poets or scholars, many of whom were dropped almost as quickly back into penury—but the telling description of such a case in Kingsley's Alton Locke is passed over, although it reveals an acute self-consciousness about such narratives in a best-selling novel.The very structure of the book tends toward listing cases rather than analyzing them in depth. It is not clear why “Shoemaker classicists” should take up a chapter, bar there having been some. Nor is it clear why some figures are not included. John Brown was an uneducated Scottish shepherd who taught himself Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He was discovered by a professor, one John Pringle, when he went into a shop to buy a secondhand Greek Testament (though his own church thought this newfound and inexplicable linguistic brilliance suspicious or even satanic). Brown went on to write the wonderfully titled The Self-Interpreting Bible, which remained in print and sold very widely for more than a century after its publication in 1778—especially after it was championed by the evangelical preacher Charles Simeon. It is a pity that Brown escaped the authors’ net, but religion, one of the main reasons to learn the classical languages, is downplayed throughout this study, although its imbrication with classics is everywhere in evidence. The book, significantly enough, leads rather toward a rosy-eyed depiction of posh classical communists like Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and George Thompson, and other such heroes of the authors.The authors are much more at home in the years of ardent republicanism in the decades on either side of the turn of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century, when socialism and communism became embedded in British life. The last half of the nineteenth century, when classics really established itself institutionally as a discipline, and its revolutionary potential moved away from the zeal of the Romantic philhellenists into the artistic idealism of a Richard Wagner or the sexual freedom of an Oscar Wilde, are less adequately explored. The huge attendance at art galleries and the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace as a route to encountering the past of antiquity in material form are barely addressed (Kate Nichols's Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace would have helped); nor do shows like Astley's Circus get air time (Rachel Bryant Davies's Troy, Carthage, and the Victorians is revealing). It is particularly noticeable in such a voluminous study that there is no discussion of how turning to Greek was a crucial route for the self-understanding of what was considered transgressive male sexuality—and for a particular engagement between the classes. To understand the social force of classics requires a deeper appreciation of the dynamics between conservatism and transformation, disciplinarity and self-discovery. The big picture of how classics matters is lost in the gems picked out by the authors. Gems they are, but their facets need more attention and their setting a broader perspective. (shrink)

The eminent Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu confronts the paradox that while Western cultures recoil from claims of universality, previously colonized peoples, seeking to redefine their identities, insist on cultural particularities.

Extreme Curriculum Makeover: A Hands-On Guide for a Learner-Centered Pedagogy explores how to develop a learner-centered pedagogy through specific strategies that can be implemented in any classroom, at any grade level, and that can transform the traditional learning environment into one where the students themselves acquire the tools, the skills, and, more importantly, the motivation to become lifelong learners.

Is the cultural evolution of morality fairly contingent? Could cultural evolution have easily led humans to moral norms and judgments that are mostly false by our present lights? If so, does it matter philosophically? Yes, or so we argue. We empirically motivate the contingency of cultural evolution and show that it makes two major philosophical contributions. First, it shows that moral objectivists cannot explain the reliability of our moral judgments and thus strengthens moral debunking arguments. Second, it shows that the (...) reliability of our moral judgments is evidence for theism over metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

Ugar and Malele write that generic machine learning (ML) technologies for mental health diagnosis would be challenging to implement in sub-Saharan Africa due to cultural specificities in how those conditions are diagnosed. For example, they say that in South Africa, the appearance of ‘schizophrenia’ might be understood as a type of spiritual possession, rather than a mental disorder caused by a brain dysfunction. Hence, a generic ML system is likely to ‘misdiagnose’ persons whose symptomatology matches that of schizophrenia in the (...) South African context. The authors thus claim that ‘a generic or universal design cannot be effective given the heterogeneity of value judgements in defining what mental health disorders are in different contexts’.1 Should we take this to mean that ML systems ‘should not be designed with a generalised perception of mental disorders,’1 as the authors suggest? On the contrary, my view is that generic ML can be useful, with the caveat that issues of cultural sensitivity may engender translational challenges in various national and cultural contexts. Yet, if it can be demonstrated that a generic ML system can reliably and accurately pick up on shared symptomatologies across cultures despite what any individual or community might believe about their actual causes, this aspect is surely the function and value of diagnostic ML which we should take to matter. Cultural gaps in aetiological understandings of mental health conditions make it all the more important to advance generic ML as a calibrating diagnostic tool. In this commentary, therefore, I will endeavour to make a case for generic ML in mental healthcare. ### Aetiological (mis)understanding across cultures The fundamental complexity to which Ugar and Malele direct our attention is the fact that mental health conditions are attributed to variable causal explanations, rather than a …. (shrink)

In their paper ‘Designing AI for mental health diagnosis: challenges from sub-Saharan African value-laden judgements on mental health disorders’, Ugar and Malele focused on the challenges and considerations surrounding the design and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for diagnosing mental health disorders in South Africa. Although the authors recognise the application of AI and ML in healthcare, they put forward the challenges, particularly in adopting Wakefield’s hybrid theory, where elements of naturalism and normativism are combined (...) in defining mental disorders. They argue that a generic or universally designed AI or ML would not be appropriate in countries with strong and varied local contexts. Hence, they believe that current and future AI developers should consider the cultural nuances, value systems and contextual factors in designing and implementing AI technologies for mental health diagnosis in Africa. When the authors argue that a universal definition of mental health may not be appropriate in Africa, we would like to offer something in contrast. If nomenclature like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can be widely accepted, why does AI, which relies on these codes, encounter scepticism? Recognising the significant influence of culture on all aspects of patient care in psychiatry, the DSM-IV introduced the …. (shrink)