Building political economic literacy in an unexpected place: Some curriculum suggestions for communication students

How important is it for journalism, media, public relations and communication studies students more generally to acquire literacy in political economy? How possible is it for this to happen while maintaining now established specialized communication, journalism, media, public relations degrees or at least professional strands within communication degrees? A recent media campaign in Australia over a proposed mining tax throws into relief communication professionals' need for literacy in the orientations and positions of political economy. A recently implemented course gives some indicators of what can be achieved in this area. The article is thus about the spread and purchase of a culturally informed political economy rather than knotty questions within it. The article, first, sets out in brief key aspects of the media campaign in question and one journalist's reflection on the challenges it posed. It discusses what might be involved in equipping students with how to meet those challenges, placing this in the wider context of a course that introduces communication students to a non-reductionist, interdisciplinary political economy

The importance of social and political literacies: In defence of cultural and media studies

In 1991, teaching in a BA (Communication) in South Australia, we wrote the following: Cultural & Media Studies\u27 major concern is with the historical formation, social organisation and cultural communication of meaning (the forms of, say, information and pleasures/ entertainment ) which have definite social and political effects or outcomes for different sorts of audiences of such media as television, film, video, radio, the printed press, magazines, literature, etc. Toput this in another wa:y, Cultural & Media Studies describes and analyses the government or management of the human and technological resources and techniques used in the production of socially effective meanings... Cultural & Media Studies undertakes specific rather than generalising or universalising work on particular, limited topics concerning the material ways in which people operate and change various cultural and media institutions and technologies. It does not offer, prescribe or claim to explain everything about the entirety of life or the whole of society or culture, or to identify some proposed essences of these. Its intellectual work aims to describe and analyse these in historically informed and socially useful ways. It is a professional field of teaching and research equipping and empowering its practitioners with advanced skills of composition and reading in flexibly specialised ways. It does not claim to be \u27objective\u27 in any scientific or absolute philosophical sense but neither is its professional framework \u27biased\u27

From shadowy zone to daily routine: Finance culture in Australia

This paper contributes to accounts of the role of finance and financialization in Australia. We examine recent signs of disenchantment with financialization, then show how it is difficult to yoke contemporary instabilities in a dominant, finance-led governmental regime to wider projects for change given the normalization of finance culture in Australia. The paper describes and analyzes this normalization, paying particular attention to the part various media play in Australians' acquisition of a finance rationality. While we aim to add to historicizations of finance and finance culture that interpret financialization, its various actors, its rationality and its technologies as something other than the natural habitat of people in the 21st century, we do so by looking at the problems counter-inscriptions and arguments currently face in building constituencies for alternative and oppositional finance policies

Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865

Not until the eighteenth century was the image of the tender, full-time mother invented. This image retains its power today. Inventing Maternity demonstrates that, despite its association with an increasingly standardized set of values, motherhood remained contested terrain. Drawing on feminist, cultural, and postcolonial theory, Inventing Maternity surveys a wide range of sources--medical texts, political tracts, religious doctrine, poems, novels, slave narratives, conduct books, and cookbooks. The first half of the volume, covering the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries, considers central debates about fetal development, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbearing. The second half, covering the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, charts a historical shift to the regulation of reproduction as maternity is increasingly associated with infanticide, population control, poverty, and colonial, national, and racial instability. In her introduction, Greenfield provides a historical overview of early modern interpretations of maternity. She concludes with a consideration of their impact on current debates about reproductive rights and technologies, child custody, and the cycles of poverty. Honorable Mention for collaborative work from the Society for Early Modern Women Susan C. Greenfield is associate professor of English at Fordham University. Carol Barash is the author of English Women\u27s Poetry, 1649-1714 and co-editor of Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England. These essays offer fresh and vigorous arguments for the challenges maternal roles present to social values. —Choice It is extremely difficult to capture and convey the complex richness of this volume. Taken together, the constitutive essays offer a historical analysis of the making of modern maternity that is sure to appeal to a wide variety of readers. —Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering Makes a timely and valuable contribution to the current scholarly conversation concerning maternity, reproduction, and the gendered body in which histories of imaginative narrative are profitably understood in conjunction with theories of gender, sexuality, race, and class. —Julia Sternhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_gender_and_sexuality_studies/1005/thumbnail.jp

Letter from John Roost to A. C. V. R.

A letter from John Roost to A.C.V.R. Roost is apparently selling bonds [for the Holland Harbor?] and discusses business matters with A.C.V.R.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1850s/1062/thumbnail.jp

Wireless Mesh Networks for Small Satellites Subsystems

Wireless mesh networks are a network topology where all the nodes of a system are able to communicate with every other node in the network. This enables an adaptable network that is scalable and has the capability to self-repair and self-configure. The Modular Rapidly Manufactured Small Sat (MRMSS) Project is a small satellite project where we are developing a modular CubeSat architecture. One of the goals of the project is to develop a system that is quick and simple to integrate with a minimal amount of wiring involved. Wireless mesh networks are well suited for this configuration because of the self- configuring and self-repairing aspects of the network. This enables a satellite developer to add subsystem nodes to the network without the need for much hardware re-design. This paper will detail the background of wireless mesh networks, the advantages and limitations of using wireless mesh networks for space applications, and the technical progress of the wireless mesh network development of the MRMSS project

Gender Equality, Drinking Cultures and Second-Hand Harms from Alcohol in the 50 US States.

BackgroundGender inequality and cultures of binge drinking may increase the risk of second-hand harms from alcohol.MethodsUsing the 2014-2015 National Alcohol Survey and 2015 National Alcohol's Harm to Others Survey (N = 7792), we examine associations of state-level gender equality measures (contraceptive access, abortion rights, women's economic equality) and binge drinking cultures (rates of men's and women's binge drinking) with individual-level indicators of second-hand harms by drinking strangers and partners/spouses.ResultsIn main effects models, only male binge drinking was associated with greater odds of harms from drinking strangers. There were significant interactions of gender equality with male binge drinking: High male binge drinking rates were more strongly associated with stranger-perpetrated harms in states low on contraceptive access or abortion rights compared to states high on these measures. Conversely, male binge drinking was more strongly associated with spouse/partner-perpetrated second-hand harms in states with more economic equality, compared to states lower on this measure.ConclusionsDetrimental effects of high male binge drinking rates may be modified by gender equality. Targeted interventions may reduce alcohol-related harms experienced by women in states with high rates of male binge drinking. Restrictions in access to contraception and abortion may exacerbate harms due to men's drinking

Decline in Methylmercury in Museum-Preserved Bivalves from San Francisco Bay, California

There are ongoing efforts to manage mercury and nutrient pollution in San Francisco Bay (California, USA), but historical data on biological responses are limited. We used bivalves preserved in formalin or ethanol from museum collections to investigate long-term trends in methylmercury (MeHg) concentrations and carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures. In the southern reach of the estuary, South Bay, MeHg in the Asian date mussel (Musculista senhousia) significantly declined over the study duration (1970 to 2012). Mean MeHg concentrations were highest (218 ng/g dry weight, dw) in 1975 and declined 3.8-fold (to 57 ng/g dw) by 2012. This decrease corresponded with closure of the New Almaden Mercury Mines and was consistent with previously observed declines in sediment core mercury concentrations. In contrast, across all sites, MeHg in the overbite clam (Potamocorbula amurensis) increased 1.3-fold from 64 ng/g dw before 2000 to 81 ng/g dw during the 2000s and was higher than in M. senhousia. Pearson correlation coefficients of the association between MeHg and δ13C or δ15N provided no evidence that food web alterations explained changing MeHg concentrations. However, isotopic composition shifted temporally. South Bay bivalve δ15N increased from 12‰ in the 1970s to 18‰ in 2012. This increase corresponded with increasing nitrogen loadings from wastewater treatment plants until the late 1980s and increasing phytoplankton biomass from the 1990s to 2012. Similarly, a 3‰ decline in δ13C from 2002 to 2012 may represent greater utilization of planktonic food sources. In a complimentary 90 day laboratory study to validate use of these preserved specimens, preservation had only minor effects (\u3c 0.5‰) on δ13C and δ15N. MeHg increased following preservation but then stabilized. These are the first documented long-term trends in biota MeHg and stable isotopes in this heavily impacted estuary and support the utility of preserved specimens to infer contaminant and biogeochemical trends