Framing The Nation

This book analyzes top-down and bottom-up strategies of framing the nation and collective identities through commemorative practices relating to events from the Second World War and the 1990s "Homeland War" in Croatia. With attention to media representations of commemorative events and opinion poll data, it draws on interviews and participant observation at commemorative events to focus on the speeches of political elites, together with the speeches of opposition politicians and other social actors (such as the Catholic Church, anti-fascist organizations and war veterans’ and victims’ organizations) who challenge official narratives. Offering innovative approaches to researching and analyzing commemorative practices in post-conflict societies, this examination of a nation’s transition from a Yugoslav republic to an independent state – and now the newest member of the European Union – constitutes a unique case study for scholars of cultural memory and identity politics interested in the production and representation of national identities in official narratives.

Framing the Nation: Documentary Film in Interwar France argues that, between World Wars I and II, documentary film made a substantial contribution to the rewriting of the French national narrative to include rural France and the colonies. The book mines a significant body of virtually unknown films and manuscripts for their insight into revisions of French national identity in the aftermath of the Great War. From 1918 onwards, government institutions sought to advance social programs they believed were crucial to national regeneration. They turned to documentary film, a new form of mass communication, to do so. Many scholars of French film state that the French made no significant contribution to documentary film prior to the Vichy period. Using until now overlooked films, Framing the Nation refutes this misconception and shows that the French were early and active believers in the uses of documentary film for social change - and these films reached audiences far beyond the confines of commercial cinema circuits in urban areas.

As films like 'Slumdog Millionaire' attest, India on film is quickly growing beyond the Bollywood images that frequently spring to mind. In 'Framing the Nation', Sircar maps the distance that film theory has traveled in the Anglo-American academy and India in recent decades.

This book introduces a historical perspective on the emergence and development of social welfare. Starting from the familiar ground of 'the family', it traces some of the crucial historical roots and desires that fed the development of social policy in the 19th and 20th centuries around education, the family, unemployment and nationhood. By aiming to discover the link between past and present, it shows that social problems are socially constructed in specific contexts and that there are diverse and competing ways of telling history.

Framing the future works. Every year, Flemming Fellows win a disproportionately large share of the progressive victories in the states. In fact, since the great leap backward of 2001, as one policy disaster after another was spawned in our nation's capital, Flemming Fellows and their allies made significant gains in state capitals all over the n...

Chinese and Japanese people's descriptions of themselves and each other differ vastly and contrast starkly with Western perceptions. This book explores human categories and how academics classify themselves and the world.

What patterns emerge in media coverage and character depiction of Southern men and women, blacks and whites, in the years between 1954 and 1976? How do portrayals of the region and the equal rights movement illuminate the spirit and experience of the South—and of the nation as a whole? In Framing the South, Allison Graham examines the ways in which the media, particularly television and film, presented Southerners during the period of the civil rights revolution. Graham analyzes depictions of southern race and social class in a wide range of Hollywood films—including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Three Faces of Eve, and A Face in the Crowd from the 1950s; later films like Cool Hand Luke, In the Heat of the Night, and Mississippi Burning; and MGM's Elvis Presley vehicles. She traces how films have confronted—or avoided—issues of racism over the years, paralleling Hollywood depictions with the tamer characterization of the likeable "hillbilly" popularized in television's The Real McCoys and The Andy Griffith Show. Graham reinforces the political impact of these fictional representations by examining media coverage of civil rights demonstrations, including the documentary Crisis: Behind the Presidential Commitment, which reported the clash between Robert Kennedy and Governor George Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama. She concludes with a provocative analysis of Forrest Gump, identifying the popular film as a retelling of post-World War II Southern history.

Framing China sheds new light on Western relations with and perceptions of China in the first half of the twentieth century. In this ground-breaking book, Ariane Knüsel examines how China was portrayed in political debates and the media in Britain, the USA and Switzerland between 1900 and 1950. By focusing on the political, economic, cultural and social context that led to the construction of the particular images of China in each country, the author demonstrates that national interests, anxieties and issues influenced the way China was framed and resulted in different portrayals of China in each country. The author’s meticulous analysis of a vast amount of newspaper and magazine articles, commentaries, editorials, cartoons and newsreels that have previously not been studied before also focuses on the transnational circulation of images of China. While previous publications have dealt with the occurrence of the Yellow Peril and Red Menace in particular countries, Framing China reveals that these images were interpreted differently in every nation because they both reflected and contributed to the discursive construction of nationhood in each country and were influenced by domestic issues, cultural values, pre-existing stereotypes, pressure groups and geopolitical aspirations.