Critical Perspectives On The Hallmark Channel

This multinational, multidisciplinary collection of essays focuses on Hallmark Channel movies and Hallmark's position in the changing North American media landscape. This book covers the 'Countdown to Christmas' offerings, year-round productions, made-for-TV mysteries and romances, Hallmark's use of specific filming locations, and its relationship to viewer desires. Chapters examine Hallmark's position in a changing sociopolitical context and the tensions the company must navigate in creating more "progressive" content; they discuss issues of gender, race, sexuality, and place, as well as analyzing the extensive ranges and reactions of social media participants and interrogating the nature of Hallmark's popularity. Suitable for scholars and students of film and tv and popular culture studies, this is a multifaceted look at both Hallmark and its viewers at a particular moment of Hallmark's market dominance.

This multinational, multidisciplinary collection of essays focuses on Hallmark Channel movies and Hallmark’s position in the changing North American media landscape. This book covers the ‘Countdown to Christmas’ offerings, year-round productions, made-for-TV mysteries and romances, Hallmark’s use of specific filming locations, and its relationship to viewer desires. Chapters examine Hallmark’s position in a changing sociopolitical context and the tensions the company must navigate in creating more “progressive” content; they discuss issues of gender, race, sexuality, and place, as well as analyzing the extensive ranges and reactions of social media participants and interrogating the nature of Hallmark’s popularity. Suitable for scholars and students of film and tv and popular culture studies, this is a multifaceted look at both Hallmark and its viewers at a particular moment of Hallmark’s market dominance.

Originally known as a brand for greeting cards, Hallmark has seen a surge in popularity since the early 2010s for its made-for-TV movies and television channels: the Hallmark Channel and its spinoffs, Hallmark Movie Channel (now Hallmark Movies & Mysteries) and Hallmark Drama. Hallmark's brand of comforting, often sentimental content includes standalone movies, period and contemporary television series, and mystery film series that center on strong, intuitive female leads. By creating reliable and consistent content, Hallmark offers people a calming retreat from the real world. This collection of new essays strives to fill the void in academic attention surrounding Hallmark. From the plethora of Christmas movies that are released each year to the successful faith-based scripted programming and popular cozy mysteries that air every week, there is a wealth of material to be explored. Specifically, this book explores the network's problematic relationship with race, the dominance of Christianity and heteronormativity, the significance placed on nostalgia, and the hiring and re-hiring of a group of women who thrived as child stars.

This book explores narrative imagination and emotion as resources for learning critical meta-reflection. The author examines the learning trajectories of several students as they engage in learning to think critically through a new approach to creative writing, and details how learning through writing is linked to new discoursal identities which are trialled in the writing process. In doing so, she analyses the processes of expansion and change that result from the negotiations involved in learning through writing. This volume offers a completely new approach to creative writing, including useful practical advice as well as a solid theoretical base. It is sure to appeal to students of creative writing and discourse analysis as well as applied linguistics and language as identity.

This book provides the first sustained critical exploration, and celebration, of the relationship between Geography and the contemporary Visual Arts. With the growth of research in the Geohumanities and the Spatial Humanities, there is an imperative to extend and deepen considerations of the form and import of geography-art relations. Such reflections are increasingly important as geography-art intersections come to encompass not only relationships built through interpretation, but also those built through shared practices, wherein geographers work as and with artists, curators and other creative practitioners. For Creative Geographies features seven diverse case studies of artists’ works and exhibitions made towards the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twentieth-first century. Organized into three analytic sections, the volume explores the role of art in the making of geographical knowledge; the growth of geographical perspectives as art world analytics; and shared explorations of the territory of the body, In doing so, Hawkins proposes an analytic framework for exploring questions of the geographical “work” art does, the value of geographical analytics in exploring the production and consumption of art, and the different forms of encounter that artworks develop, whether this be with their audiences, or their makers.

This is the most comprehensive collection to date on all aspects of strategy. The articles selected here discuss key themes, including:* different conceptions of strategy, such as the classical, rational models of Porter, the empirical, emergent emphasis of Mintzberg, and the competence based models of Grant and others * the relationship between strategy and other subjects including economics and organizational studies * scenario planning, networks, strategic groups and knowledge, and other key new developments * the implications of globalization and international management * key strategic decisions including diversification and mergers and acquisitionsWith a new introduction by the editor and an extensive index, this collection is an invaluable reference tool and teaching aid.

In Neurotrauma and Critical Care of the Brain, leading clinicians present widely accepted guidelines and evidence-based practices for the management of patients with traumatic brain injury. Divided into five main sections, the book guides the clinician through the science, management, critical care, outcomes, and important socioeconomic issues relevant to patient care.Special Features: Offers the valuable team approach and recommendations of renowned surgeons, clinicians, rehabilitation specialists, and researchers Includes guidelines for injuries ranging from mild to moderate, severe, and penetrating, and for treating brain injury in children Covers the related intensive care issues of neurologic, pulmonary, cardiovascular, and infection management and nutrition and fluid control Reviews fundamental science concepts, including pathophysiology, monitoring and imaging, biomarkers and classification systems for brain injury Provides hundreds of concise summary tables and illustrations to help digest complex information Discusses ethics and important end-of-life issues With an integrated management approach to injury and rehabilitation that goes well beyond initial surgery, Neurotrauma and Critical Care of the Brain will enable neurosurgeons, neurologists, physicians in trauma, critical care, and rehabilitation medicine, and residents in these specialties to optimize patient care and outcomes. It is also useful as a guide for board exam preparation.The companion volume to this book is Neurotrauma and Critical Care of the Spine.

Few phenomena in the Arab world are more controversial than Al Jazeera - the satellite television news channel that, despite its brief history, has made its impact known throughout the world and changed the face of a formerly parochial Arab media.This timely collection of articles, many by Arabic-speaking scholars, gives us more information and analysis of the network - and how it has affected the public and even the foreign policies of Western governments - than any other of the very few books published in English up to now.The book provides rare insights into Al Jazeera's politics, its agenda, its programs, its coverage of regional crises, and its treatment of the West. The authors attempt to gauge the station's impact on ordinary Arab viewers, understand its effect on an increasingly visible Arab public sphere, and map out the role it plays in regional Arab politics. The image of Al Jazeera that emerges from this book is much more complex than its depiction in American media. It reveals the powerful role that the network plays in shaping ideas and reconstructing Arab identities during a crucial juncture in Middle Eastern history and politics.