Describes the film, "Glory," that focuses on the experience of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry. Discusses topics and issues, such as racial relations viewed within the film. Asserts that this film helps students question the role of film makers when depicting history on the screen. (CMK)

Describes the use of the film "Breakfast Club," in a college adolescent psychology course. Relates how students study and discuss theories of moral reasoning and psychological development prior to viewing the film. Provides an opportunity for students to integrate course content while enjoying the learning process. (CFR)

Presents media literacy research of eighth-grade students to determine the level of recognizing and understanding visual and nonvisual codes that make up motion-picture stories. Study focused on rhetoric of the film medium: trust, confidence and belief in films among children is very high; if this trust coincides with ignorance of media codes,…

Describes a college psychology course activity designed to help students define the parameters of cognitive psychology. Students selected a feature film and a journal article that represented some aspect of cognitive psychology. They then wrote a paper discussing the theoretical and empirical connections between the sources and the topic. (MJP)

The films "Star Maps" and "El Norte" reveal the real political, socioeconomic, and psychic costs of divided cities by bringing the simulated realities of mass media to their logical end, thereby sacrificing each character to the disorder of the city. In "Star Maps", Carlos dreams of becoming the next major Latino…

The present study examines the hypothesis that older adults might differentially react to a negative versus neutral mood induction procedure than younger adults. The rationale for this expectation was derived from Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST), which postulates differential salience of emotional information and ability to regulate…

Books, cartoons, movies, and video games provide engaging opportunities to get both science and nonscience students excited about physics. An easy way to use these media in one's classroom is to have students view clips and identify unusual events, odd physics, or list things that violate our understanding of the physics that governs our universe.…

We measured long-term memory for a narrative film. During the study session, participants watched a 27-min movie episode, without instructions to remember it. During the test session, administered at a delay ranging from 3 h to 9 mo after the study session, long-term memory for the movie was probed using a computerized questionnaire that assessed…

Local cultures survive when they are successfully passed to new generations in spite of the many oppressions and seductions delivered by surrounding cultures--dominant, variant, and deviant. The groups that use those small cultural systems must be organized in a way that assures that passage, and organization of any important social activity means…

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of repeat viewing on comprehension of explicitly and implicitly presented information in an animated movie. Seventy-three pre-school children watched an animated film and were tested for comprehension after either their single or fifth viewing. Only children's comprehension of explicitly …

In this article, the author talks about a critically acclaimed movie "Crash" and what it reveals pedagogically about the paradoxical legacies of the grand experiment in radical democracy. Written and directed by Paul Haggis, "Crash" inundates the viewer with a barrage of the most condescending racial and ethnic insults, which…

This article presents the highlights of the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) annual conference held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of librarians showed up early for a day of service, volunteering in libraries, schools, and other Washington-area institutions. As the conference wound down, some 2000…

This article talks about a new film entitled "An Unreasonable Man" that features the political activist Ralph Nader. The film rightly claims to be a documentary, but as the title hints, it's also a suspense movie. The film's first sequence briefly recounts Nader's much-maligned independent campaign for president in 2004. Although it shows him…

This article emerged in the course of a doctoral study that focused on the role of literary and filmic texts in constructing adolescent girls' subjectivities and desires for womanhood. Analysing data drawn from both text and subject, the study focused on the discursive choreography of girls' imaginary constructions of their mature adult selves.…

The need has been established for classroom study of mass media form and content. As this need becomes more widely recognized, high quality, cost effective, and systematic educational materials must be developed. Teachers who possess characteristics and backgrounds amenable to media teaching must be trained in the use of these materials and in…