John Beck

Ryan Bishop

John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the 1960s interdisciplinary art and technology collaborations between American avant-garde artists and the military-industrial complex that took place in universities, private labs, and museums.

Art, Technology, and the Military-Industrial Avant-Garde

Technocrats of the Imagination

This monograph celebrates the 50th anniversary of Michael Young's iconic book The Rise of the Meritocracy by analysing the ideas behind meritocracy, citizenship and education. Within the context of Young's ideologies and influences on education the support for meritocracy under New Labour in the UK is examined. The book then goes on to examine Bew Labour's idea of active citizenship. The aim is to go beyond exposition to develop a sustained critique, particularly of New Labour's over-centralising tendencies and the associated erosion of local and institutional democracy.

New Labour's Legacy

Meritocracy, Citizenship and Education

In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthetic but a new utopian social order based on collective experimentation. In examining these projects' promises and pitfalls and how they have inspired a new generation of collaborative labs populated by artists, engineers, and scientists, Beck and Bishop reveal the connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s.

David Holloway

American Visual Cultures analyses the role of painting, photography, film, television, advertising, journalism and other visual media in the historical development of the United States from the Civil War to the present day. It offers a chronology of major debates and developments in modern US history and traces the social, political and economic factors that have shaped the development of visual forms and practices across time. Illustrated throughout, the book combines a wide range of critical approaches and is made up of new essays by internationally renowned scholars. A General Introduction, in which the editors discuss the theoretical and pedagogical approaches shaping the contemporary study of visual culture, with particular reference to the United States, is followed by four sections, each covering a defined chronological period: 1861-1929; 1929-1963; 1963-1980; 1980 to the present. Each section opens with an introduction by the editors, giving historical and cultural context and highlighting thematic and pedagogical links between essays. An annotated bibliography of suggested further reading completes this invaluable and unique resource for the student and teacher of modern American art, media and culture.

American Visual Cultures

Madeleine Arnot

Harry Daniels

Rob Moore

This book is made up of a selection of writings from an international team of scholars, highlighting the contribution made to the field of educational policy and educational policy research by Basil Bernstein's work on the sociology of pedagogy. These contributors explore, analyse and engage with contemporary political reforms of education, contemporary pedagogic debates and the changing nature of professional knowledge, relationships and structures. The subjects covered include: particular concepts such as voice research the significance of social class in relation to the language, schooling and home cultures differences between official and pedagogic recontextualising fields formation of different types of identities the construction of the learner formation of teacher identities and use of pedagogic discourses analysis of performance-based educational reforms and its impact on pedagogy.

Applying the Sociology of Basil Bernstein

Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform

Beck's Leamington Guide ... With numerous illustrations. Ninth edition. [With a map.]

Beck's Guide to Kenilworth Castle, etc

Since World War II, the American West has become the nation’s military arsenal, proving ground, and disposal site. Through a wide-ranging discussion of recent literature produced in and about the West, Dirty Wars explores how the region’s iconic landscapes, invested with myths of national virtue, have obscured the West’s crucial role in a post–World War II age of “permanent war.” In readings of western—particularly southwestern—literature, John Beck provides a historically informed account of how the military-industrial economy, established to protect the United States after Pearl Harbor, has instead produced western waste lands and “waste populations” as the enemies and collateral casualties of a permanent state of emergency. Beck offers new readings of writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Julie Otsuka, and Terry Tempest Williams. He also draws on a variety of sources in history, political theory, philosophy, environmental studies, and other fields. Throughout Dirty Wars, he identifies resonances between different experiences and representations of the West that allow us to think about internment policies, the manufacture of atomic weapons, the culture of Cold War security, border policing, and toxic pollution as part of a broader program of a sustained and invasive management of western space.

Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature

Dirty Wars

Matthew Cornford

The Art School and the Culture Shed

Explores the cultural work of two important early-twentieth-century writers: the poet William Carlos Williams and the educator/philosopher John Dewey, both key figures in American democracy.

William Carlos Williams, John Dewey, and American Cultural Politics

Writing the Radical Center

From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we are now living in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War. Drawing on theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Friedrich Kittler, Michel Serres, Peter Sloterdijk, Carl Schmitt, Bernard Stiegler and Paul Virilio this collection makes connections between Cold War material and conceptual technologies, as they relate to the arts, society and culture.

Legacy, Theory, Aesthetics

Cold War Legacies

Joe Filippone

T. A. Branom

Thirsty are the Damned is a collection of 22 Vampiric stories and poems written by seasoned and new authors. Whether you're looking for a thrill or chill, this collection has a tale that will satisfy your need for blood. With no romantic contagions, this book is filled with vampires that are cursed, deprived and damn right blood-obsessed. No one will be spared; no one will be left alive. Each story and poem has its unique take on the vampire myth, bringing alive the mystery and horror that surrounds the legends, leaving you wondering if vampires actually do walk amongst us... The Damned are out and they are thirsty. Don't forget to look over your shoulder.

Thirsty Are the Damned

Chris Jenks

Nell Keddie

Michael F. D. Young

By including material from literary, philosophical, and anthropological sources, and by selecting readings which consider educational practice both within and beyond formal educational contexts, this book broadens the character of sociological inquiry in education. The editors bring together material they have found valuable when working with students of education and sociology at all levels. Many of these articles and extracts are either inaccessible or have not been reprinted. The collection should stimulate inquiry about the assumptions underlying current debates on curriculum, streaming, school organization, methods of teachin, and preconceived notions of ability.

Toward a Sociology of Education

Since World War II, the American West has become the nation?s military arsenal, proving ground, and disposal site. Through a wide-ranging discussion of recent literature produced in and about the West, Dirty Wars explores how the region?s iconic landscapes, invested with myths of national virtue, have obscured the West?s crucial role in a post?World War II age of ?permanent war.? ø In readings of western?particularly southwestern?literature, John Beck provides a historically informed account of how the military-industrial economy, established to protect the United States after Pearl Harbor, has instead produced western waste lands and ?waste populations? as the enemies and collateral casualties of a permanent state of emergency. Beck offers new readings of writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Julie Otsuka, and Terry Tempest Williams. He also draws on a variety of sources in history, political theory, philosophy, environmental studies, and other fields. Throughout Dirty Wars,øhe identifies resonances between different experiences and representations of the West that allow us to think about internment policies, the manufacture of atomic weapons, the culture of Cold War security, border policing, and toxic pollution as part of a broader program of a sustained and invasive management of western space.

John Beck

Books

Your next favorite book is out there