Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age

From Ken Burns’s documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E’s Biography series to CNN, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined—or ignored—by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, but also institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years. The authors explore the tensions between popular history and professional history, and the tendency of some academics to declare the past “off limits” to nonscholars. Several of them point to the tendency for television histories to embed current concerns and priorities within the past, as in such popular shows as Quantum Leap and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The result is an insightful portrayal of the power television possesses to influence our culture. Winner of the 2001 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Outstanding Textbook given by the Popular Culture Association Offers much food for thought in this highly visual age. —Alliance (OH) Review As an example of well-reasoned, original research, Television Histories makes an important contribution to the study of the medium. —Anthony Slide, Classic Images This book is even more timely and provocative because much of the material discussed is being rebroadcast now that digital television is opening even more new channels. —Choice An engrossing collection that slides the thorny subject of television, history, and memory under a microscope. . . . Digs deep into a contemporary phenomenon, and its many conclusions are right on target. —Film & History Helps those of us who care about history think more clearly about how television can shape historical thinking among our friends, neighbors, and students. —Florida Historical Quarterly Television Histories, a pioneer work, weaves an inspired and informed interdisciplinary analysis of television and history. The chapters are enlightening, readable, and entertaining; the editors and the authors have produced a work that enriches and strengthens the study of film and history. —Michael Schoenecke The stuff serious thinkers in a media age should read, mark and remember. —Rockland (ME) Courier-Gazette An insightful and important addition to the literature that sheds light on an often controversial subject for professional historians. —Southern Historian Most of the essays are likely to be of considerable value to any attentive student of television. —Television Quarterly Working from the thesis that people learn about history through television more than any other medium, Edgerton and Rollins look at what TV subliminally teaches us by what is shows and does not show. —Varietyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1020/thumbnail.jp

Hollywood\u27s White House: The American Presidency in Film and History

Winner of the 2003 Ray and Pat Browne Book Award, given by the Popular Culture Association The contributors to Hollywood’s White House examine the historical accuracy of these presidential depictions, illuminate their influence, and uncover how they reflect the concerns of their times and the social and political visions of the filmmakers. The volume, which includes a comprehensive filmography and a bibliography, is ideal for historians and film enthusiasts. The essays are supported by numerous sources that provide some good leads . . . the chronological filmography will come in handy. Recommended. -- Library Journal This well-written book, with contributions by both film critics and historians, is an interesting study of the real presidency and the reel presidency. -- USA Today Magazine An excellent example of the American theater. . . . We are the audience. We will be a much more informed audience after reading the essays in this book. -- Ray Browne, Journal of American Culture A scholarly examination of the portrayal of the American presidency in film. -- Choice Winner of the 2004 Ray and Pat Browne Award given by the Popular Culture Association.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_american_popular_culture/1005/thumbnail.jp

Why We Fought : America\u27s Wars in Film and History

Film moves audiences like no other medium; both documentaries and feature films are especially remarkable for their ability to influence viewers. Best-selling author James Brady remarked that he joined the Marines to fight in Korea after seeing a John Wayne film, demonstrating how a motion picture can change the course of a human life—in this case, launching the career of a major historian and novelist. In Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History, editors Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor explore the complexities of war films, describing the ways in which such productions interpret history and illuminate American values, politics, and culture. This comprehensive volume covers representations of war in film from the American Revolution in the 18th century to today’s global War on Terror. The contributors examine iconic battle films such as The Big Parade (1925), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), From Here to Eternity (1953), and Platoon (1986), considering them as historical artifacts. The authors explain how film shapes our cultural understanding of military conflicts, analyzing how war is depicted on television programs, through news media outlets, and in fictional and factual texts. With several essays examining the events of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath, the book has a timely relevance concerning the country’s current military conflicts. Jeff Chown examines controversial documentary films about the Iraq War, while Stacy Takacs considers Jessica Lynch and American gender issues in a post-9/11 world, and James Kendrick explores the political messages and aesthetic implications of United 93. From filmmakers who reshaped our understanding of the history of the Alamo, to Ken Burns’s popular series on the Civil War, to the uses of film and media in understanding the Vietnam conflict, Why We Fought offers a balanced outlook— one of the book’s editors was a combat officer in the United States Marines, the other an antiwar activist—on the conflicts that have become touchstones of American history. As Air Force veteran and film scholar Robert Fyne notes in the foreword, American war films mirror a nation’s past and offer tangible evidence of the ways millions of Americans have become devoted, as was General MacArthur, to “Duty, honor, and country.” Why We Fought chronicles how, for more than half a century, war films have shaped our nation’s consciousness. Peter C. Rollins is Regents Professor Emeritus of English and American Film Studies at Oklahoma State University and is former editor of the journal Film & History. He is the coeditor of numerous books, including Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. John E. O’Connor is professor emeritus of the Federated Department of History at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University. He is also a founding editor of Film & History and the coeditor of several books. “Why We Fought is not only a thoughtful reading of war films and history, but it is a significant contribution to scholarship. Understanding why we fight is more relevant today than ever before since Americans continue to explore their national identity, their country, and themselves.”—Michael K. Schoenecke, coeditor of All-Stars and Movie Stars: Sports in Film and History Although it is sometimes waged for selfish and extraneous ends, warfare is fundamental to developing human cultures. Regardless of its end, warfare continues to be depicted in documentaries and analyzed more in the imagination than on the battlefield. Battles that are re-created on the stage and silver screen depict the motivations, actual experiences, and consequences of combat. . . . This penetrating collection of essays by two of the best editors of history and film looks deeply into movies\u27 interpretations of why we have fought and examines the ways in which war has been presented to us. --Ray B. Browne, Professor of Popular Culture, Emeritus, Bowling Green State University Peter C. Rollins and John E. O\u27Connor have compiled a historically sound, inclusive, and diverse, interdisciplinary portrait of American wars in film. Each essay has its own bibliography, and the ending filmography is nothing short of superb. Technically and conceptually, this book is, perhaps, the most powerful of its kind produced to date, and it will doubtlessly be lauded as a breakthrough in the studies of war films. --Robert C. Doyle, author of Voices from Captivity: Interpreting the American POW Narrative “This wide-ranging and sophisticated anthology incorporates a broad spectrum of analytical perspectives that establish major film treatments of America’s wars in cinematic and historical contexts, while demonstrating the synergistic relationships between the two approaches.”—Dennis Showalter, Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century “A useful addition to an academic, arts, or film library, this book covers films based on every war fought by the United States.” --Xpress Reviews Rollins and O’Connor’s finished product is a great resource. It is chronologically organized, and uses a variety of mediums and types of analysis. This collection provides an appropriately complete illustration of how war has been depicted and its role in understanding American history. --David R. Buck, southwestjournalofcultures.blogpsot.com Rollins and O’Connor have assembled a rich, varied collection of essays that explore all US wars in order, from the American Revolution to Iraq. Essential. --R. D. Sears, Choice Not only will you learn a lot about the movies, but you’ll also re-examine the context of the film’s creation. . . . A fascinating book. --Book Bit for WTBF- AM/FM These outstanding essays provide proof of the war film genre’s lasting legacy in American history and cinema. --History News Network, hnn.us “The book takes on depictions of every conflict from the American Revolution to September 11 and its aftermath, showing how films have shaped America’s understanding of its history.” --Colloquy “An excellent compilation of essays on war films.” --VVA Veteran Rollins and O’Connor have provided a starting point with which to analyze the influence of wars and conflicts in movies, documentaries, and television shows. --On Point The methodology is to examine a particular film, a pair of films or series to explore the reasons given for having to fight it, the portrayal of combat, and the other political and social implications. --NYMAS Named as a Choice Outstanding Academic Titles. Winner of the 2008 Ray and Pat Browne Award.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1023/thumbnail.jp

Hollywood\u27s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film

Offering both in-depth analyses of specific films and overviews of the industry\u27s output, Hollywood\u27s Indian provides insightful characterizations of the depiction of the Native Americans in film. This updated edition includes a new chapter on Smoke Signals, the groundbreaking independent film written by Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre. Taken as a whole the essays explore the many ways in which these portrayals have made an impact on our collective cultural life. Raises interesting issues and challenges readers to consider the complex realities of American Indian cultures and Indian/non-Indian relations that major motion pictures often fail to communicate. -- American Graduate Important and groundbreaking work. -- Bookman News Enables readers to construct a cinematic chronology of the Hollywood Indian and to comprehend the larger cultural forces at work interpreting the Indian-white past on screen. -- Choice Rollins and O’Connor have skillfully blended a variety of thoughtful veiwpoints. -- Chronicles of Oklahoma A collection of quality essays, put together by two of the leading experts in this particular topic area. -- Communication Booknotes Quarterly Hollywood\u27s representation of Indians is a subject which up till now has generated a lot more heat than light. This welcome new collection of essays covers a lot of ground . . . including a valuable piece on Michael Mann\u27s The Last of the Mohicans and earlier versions of Cooper\u27s \u27Leatherstocking Tales,\u27 a surprisingly and convincingly sympathetic essay on Dances with Wolves , and an informative account of Pocahontas . -- Edward Buscombe Will become the standard source for reference for an important subject, not only in American contemporary popular culture, but for evolving attitudes in a new century. -- Film and History The essays provide valuable ways to think about the meaning and impact of Hollywood\u27s portrayal of American Indian characters. -- Great Plains Quarterly Offers an engaging and timely update to previous critical anthologies. -- H-Net Book Review An engaging and timely update to previous critical anthologies. -- Journal of American Culture The value of this collection resides in the concentrated attention it gives to the portrayal of Native Americans on film. -- Journal of American Ethnic History The essays are solid pieces that place the films in a proper historical and artistic context. -- Journal of American History The essays add to the growing literature on films about American Indians, and individually, they provide interesting insights into the process of movie-making and viewing. -- North Carolina Historical Review A welcome contribution to the lively and timely debate on the representation of ethnic minorities in the media. -- Zeitscrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik An excellent set of essays on the subject. -- Choicehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1022/thumbnail.jp

Upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134

The first science run of the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors presented the opportunity to test methods of searching for gravitational waves from known pulsars. Here we present new direct upper limits on the strength of waves from the pulsar PSR J1939+2134 using two independent analysis methods, one in the frequency domain using frequentist statistics and one in the time domain using Bayesian inference. Both methods show that the strain amplitude at Earth from this pulsar is less than a few times $10^{-22}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Tirrenia, Pisa, Italy, 6-11 July 200

Quantum state preparation and macroscopic entanglement in gravitational-wave detectors

Long-baseline laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors are operating at a factor of 10 (in amplitude) above the standard quantum limit (SQL) within a broad frequency band. Such a low classical noise budget has already allowed the creation of a controlled 2.7 kg macroscopic oscillator with an effective eigenfrequency of 150 Hz and an occupation number of 200. This result, along with the prospect for further improvements, heralds the new possibility of experimentally probing macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM) - quantum mechanical behavior of objects in the realm of everyday experience - using gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we provide the mathematical foundation for the first step of a MQM experiment: the preparation of a macroscopic test mass into a nearly minimum-Heisenberg-limited Gaussian quantum state, which is possible if the interferometer's classical noise beats the SQL in a broad frequency band. Our formalism, based on Wiener filtering, allows a straightforward conversion from the classical noise budget of a laser interferometer, in terms of noise spectra, into the strategy for quantum state preparation, and the quality of the prepared state. Using this formalism, we consider how Gaussian entanglement can be built among two macroscopic test masses, and the performance of the planned Advanced LIGO interferometers in quantum-state preparation

Improving the sensitivity to gravitational-wave sources by modifying the input-output optics of advanced interferometers

We study frequency dependent (FD) input-output schemes for signal-recycling interferometers, the baseline design of Advanced LIGO and the current configuration of GEO 600. Complementary to a recent proposal by Harms et al. to use FD input squeezing and ordinary homodyne detection, we explore a scheme which uses ordinary squeezed vacuum, but FD readout. Both schemes, which are sub-optimal among all possible input-output schemes, provide a global noise suppression by the power squeeze factor, while being realizable by using detuned Fabry-Perot cavities as input/output filters. At high frequencies, the two schemes are shown to be equivalent, while at low frequencies our scheme gives better performance than that of Harms et al., and is nearly fully optimal. We then study the sensitivity improvement achievable by these schemes in Advanced LIGO era (with 30-m filter cavities and current estimates of filter-mirror losses and thermal noise), for neutron star binary inspirals, and for narrowband GW sources such as low-mass X-ray binaries and known radio pulsars. Optical losses are shown to be a major obstacle for the actual implementation of these techniques in Advanced LIGO. On time scales of third-generation interferometers, like EURO/LIGO-III (~2012), with kilometer-scale filter cavities, a signal-recycling interferometer with the FD readout scheme explored in this paper can have performances comparable to existing proposals. [abridged]Comment: Figs. 9 and 12 corrected; Appendix added for narrowband data analysi

Searching for a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves with LIGO

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has performed the fourth science run, S4, with significantly improved interferometer sensitivities with respect to previous runs. Using data acquired during this science run, we place a limit on the amplitude of a stochastic background of gravitational waves. For a frequency independent spectrum, the new limit is $\Omega_{\rm GW} < 6.5 \times 10^{-5}$. This is currently the most sensitive result in the frequency range 51-150 Hz, with a factor of 13 improvement over the previous LIGO result. We discuss complementarity of the new result with other constraints on a stochastic background of gravitational waves, and we investigate implications of the new result for different models of this background.Comment: 37 pages, 16 figure

Identification of Leishmania Proteins Preferentially Released in Infected Cells Using Change Mediated Antigen Technology (CMAT)

Although Leishmania parasites have been shown to modulate their host cell's responses to multiple stimuli, there is limited evidence that parasite molecules are released into infected cells. In this study, we present an implementation of the change mediated antigen technology (CMAT) to identify parasite molecules that are preferentially expressed in infected cells. Sera from mice immunized with cell lysates prepared from L. donovani or L. pifanoi-infected macrophages were adsorbed with lysates of axenically grown amastigotes of L. donovani or L. pifanoi, respectively, as well as uninfected macrophages. The sera were then used to screen inducible parasite expression libraries constructed with genomic DNA. Eleven clones from the L. pifanoi and the L. donovani screen were selected to evaluate the characteristics of the molecules identified by this approach. The CMAT screen identified genes whose homologs encode molecules with unknown function as well as genes that had previously been shown to be preferentially expressed in the amastigote form of the parasite. In addition a variant of Tryparedoxin peroxidase that is preferentially expressed within infected cells was identified. Antisera that were then raised to recombinant products of the clones were used to validate that the endogenous molecules are preferentially expressed in infected cells. Evaluation of the distribution of the endogenous molecules in infected cells showed that some of these molecules are secreted into parasitophorous vacuoles (PVs) and that they then traffic out of PVs in vesicles with distinct morphologies. This study is a proof of concept study that the CMAT approach can be applied to identify putative Leishmania parasite effectors molecules that are preferentially expressed in infected cells. In addition we provide evidence that Leishmania molecules traffic out of the PV into the host cell cytosol and nucleus

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye