Over the last 40 years, American institutions of higher education have been encouraged to align with the private sector by policymakers, think tank experts and businessmen in order to become more efficient and more accountable. In a wider sense, this new partnership may be evidence of what has been termed "disaster capitalism." In…

Drawing upon research on federalism, localism, and professional autonomy, this article explores how educational stakeholders used social media to discuss and organize against the implementation of Differentiated Accountability in a large Florida school district. The results showed that the stakeholders used social media to engage in sense making…

Scholars have long debated the complicity of Southern white women after the Civil War in helping create a racialist and racist regional identity and denying or delaying civil rights for African Americans. These studies have largely focused on the activities of elite white women property owners, club members, and writers. Yet few scholars have…

In the fall of 1990, the community of Gainesville, Florida, needed information concerning the brutal murders of five local college students. These serial slayings disrupted numerous "scripts" of life in the typical college town and produced a blanket of uncertainty, fear, and hysteria which enveloped Gainesville. College towns are…