front cover of The Yellow Journalism
The Yellow Journalism
The Press and America's Emergence as a World Power
David R. Spencer
Northwestern University Press, 2007
When a case containing dismembered human remains surfaced in New York's East River in June of 1897, the publisher of the New York Journal--a young, devil-may-care millionaire named William Randolph Hearst--decided that his newspaper would "scoop" the city's police department by solving this heinous crime. Pulling out all the stops, Hearst launched more than a journalistic murder investigation; his newspaper's active intervention in the city's daily life, especially its underside, marked the birth of the Yellow Press. In a work that studies the rise and fall of this phenomenon, David R. Spencer documents the fierce competition that characterized yellow journalism, the social realities and trends that contributed to its success (and its ultimate demise), its accomplishments for good or ill, and its long-term legacy.

Most notable among Hearst's competitors was New York City's The World, owned and managed by a European Jewish immigrant named Joseph Pulitzer. The Yellow Journalism describes how these two papers and others exploited the scandal, corruption, and crime among the city's most influential citizens, and its most desperate inhabitants--a policy that made this "journalism of action" remarkably effective, not just as a commercial force, but also as an advocate for the city's poor and defenseless. Spencer shows how many of the innovations first introduced during this period--from investigative reporting to the use of color, entertainment news, and cartoons in papers--have had a lasting effect on journalism; and how media in our day reflects the Yellow Press's influence, but also its threatened irrelevance within the broader realities of contemporary society.
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front cover of You Shall Tell Your Children
You Shall Tell Your Children
Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual
Gubkin, Liora
Rutgers University Press, 2007

Passover is among the most widely observed holidays for American Jews. During this festival of redemption, Jewish families retell the biblical story of Exodus using a ritual book known as a haggadah, often weaving modern tales of oppression through the biblical narrative. References to the Holocaust are some of the most common additions to contemporary haggadot. However, the parallel between ancient and modern oppression, which seems obvious to some, raises troubling questions for many others. Is it possible to find any redemptive meaning in the Nazi genocide? Are we adding value to this unforgivable moment in history?

            Liora Gubkin critiques commemorations that violate memory by erasing the value of everyday life that was lost and collapse the diversity of responses both during the Shoah and afterward. She recounts oral testimonies from Holocaust survivors, cites references to the holiday in popular American culture, and analyzes examples of actual haggadot. Ultimately, Gubkin concludes that it is possible and important to make a space for Holocaust commemoration, all the time recognizing that haggadot must be constantly revisited and “performed.”

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front cover of Youth in Postwar Guatemala
Youth in Postwar Guatemala
Education and Civic Identity in Transition
Michelle J. Bellino
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Winner of the 2018 Comparative & International Education Society's Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award and the 2018 Council on Anthropology of Education's Outstanding Book Award

In the aftermath of armed conflict, how do new generations of young people learn about peace, justice, and democracy? Michelle J. Bellino describes how, following Guatemala’s civil war, adolescents at four schools in urban and rural communities learn about their country’s history of authoritarianism and develop civic identities within a fragile postwar democracy.

Through rich ethnographic accounts, Youth in Postwar Guatemala, traces youth experiences in schools, homes, and communities, to examine how knowledge and attitudes toward historical injustice traverse public and private spaces, as well as generations. Bellino documents the ways that young people critically examine injustice while shaping an evolving sense of themselves as civic actors. In a country still marked by the legacies of war and division, young people navigate between the perilous work of critiquing the flawed democracy they inherited, and safely waiting for the one they were promised...
 
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