Screening for Our Fathers: Representations of Native American Masculinity in American Film

In this work, I examine representation of Native American masculinity in the American film industry. The American film industry began just over a century ago, and one of its earliest subjects was the Native American. Throughout its history, the American film industry has maintained a steady trajectory of exploitation and erasure of Native American men and their subsequent masculine qualities. While there are notable historical outliers and critical exceptions in the 21st century, Native American men in film have been continually reduced to corpses, devoid of significant social presence, and denied meaningful explorations of their sexuality and interpersonal identity. The representations of Native Americans in film have received a moderate amount of a critical attention, but rarely are films analyzed for their specific treatment of men and their masculinity. This work seeks to fill this analytical space by employing a combination of psychoanalytical theory and postcolonial criticism to isolate key moments of erasure, exploitation, and recovery in select films over the last century. First, we will look at the early attempts at reducing the Native American man to an abject corpse, absent any complex characterization and examine the evolution of this corpse into recent films that have given the body new life and vibrancy while still acknowledging the reality of mortality. Second, we will look at the historical complications of presenting the Native American as a socially situated figure capable of heroism and examine the unique demands of culture heroes and modern Native American spaces. Finally, we will look at treatment of Native American sexuality as one of many modes of interpersonal identity that has been either been erased or treated with hostility in early treatments, but which is now finding new modes of expression and subversion in recent films. Ultimately, this work concludes that the film industry has the power to revitalize Native American representation under the right conditions, despites its problematic history

Maximal funnel-node flows in an undirected network

M.S.J. J. Jarvi

Improve your bid for CRP

Landowners will be able to sign up for the next round of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) between January 18 and February 11, 2000. The CRP is designed to improve natural resources by protecting millions of acres of topsoil from erosion. Landowners participate in CRP by taking crop and grazing land out of production and planting vegetative cover in its place. Planting cover restores habitat for wildlife and improves water quality in streams, ponds, lakes, and rivers

Aspirations of Rural Youth

The purpose of this study was to determine the aspirations of rural youth and to identify perceived support for and barriers to achieving their goals. The population included all seniors enrolled in public and private high schools in a five county area of northwest Iowa. The students were asked to indicate their educational and occupational aspirations. Likert-type scales were used to measure perceptions regarding support for and barriers to achieving their goals. Tenets of achievement motivation theory were observed in the rural students. Town and farm students alike had diverse educational and occupational aspirations. A high level of congruence was observed between the students\u27 occupational aspirations and their educational goals, revealing that many students were following career paths. Students perceived that the environment provided by their schools was supportive of their aspirations. Barriers to achieving their goals were perceived as minimal

Contextuality, Contextualization and the New Christians of Tunis

In the last few decades a substantial number of Tunisians have converted to Christianity. This article seeks to better understand their context and based on two weeks of fieldwork in Tunis in the summer of 2014, this article outlines the history of three of the principal churches in the city—one Catholic, one Anglican, and one Reformed—describes some facets of their worship and spiritual life, and then, based on interviews with church leaders and members, explores key challenges facing the churches. Utilizing the framework of Shoki Coe’s contextual theology, the findings are then analyzed in order to better understand the priorities, aspirations and ministry strategies of the local churches

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN ISRAEL-PALESTINE: MAY MUSLIMS BECOME CHRISTIANS, AND DO CHRISTIANS HAVE THE FREEDOM TO WELCOME SUCH CONVERTS?

This research represents a continuation and elaboration on Miller’s research for the Christianity and Freedom project, presented in Rome in December of 2013. This article seeks to understand the challenges and context of Christians who are also ex-Muslims in the HolyLand. Attention is paid to the difference between the contexts in the West Bank and Israel, and how the established Christian Churches sometimes safeguard their own precarious sense of security by turning away Muslims who seek to know more about the Christian faith and converts from Islam

Living among the breakage : contextual theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians

Since the 1960’s there has been a marked increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. This thesis asks whether certain of these ex-Muslim Christians engage in the process of theology-making and, if so, it asks what these theologies claim to know about God and humans’ relation to God. Utilizing the dialectic of contextuality-contextualization of Shoki Coe, and the sociology of theological knowledge of Robert Schreiter, the thesis seeks to answer these questions by the use of two case studies and an examination of some of the texts written by ex-Muslim Christians. Lewis Rambo’s theory of religious conversion and Steven Lukes’ theory of power will be used to clarify the changing dynamics of power which have helped to foster modern contexts wherein an unprecedented number of Muslims are both exposed to the Christian message and, if they choose to do so, able to appropriate it through religious conversion. The two case studies are of a Christian community which founded a Muslim-background church in the Arabophone world and some Iranian Christian congregations in the USA and UK Diaspora. Aspects of the contexts of these believers are investigated in some detail, including motives for religious conversion, numbers and locations of the converts, how apostates may be treated by Muslims, changes in migration and communications, and the Christian concept of religious conversion. The concept of inculturation which helps to describe the meeting of a specific community with the Christian message will aid in analyzing the communities and individuals being studied. The final chapter brings together the various threads which have been raised throughout the thesis and argues that ex-Muslim Christians are engaged in theology-making, that areas of interest to them include theology of the church, salvation and baptism, and that the dominant metaphor in these theologies is a conceptualization of love and power that sees the two divine traits as inseparable from each other; they represent a knowledge about who God is and what he is like, which, in their understanding, is irreconcilable with their former religion, Islam