Rampage Violence Narratives

Springfield. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Each school shooting in the United States is followed by a series of questions. Why does this happen? Who are the shooters? How can this be prevented? Along with parents, school officials, media outlets, and scholars, popular culture has also attempted to respond to these questions through a variety of fictional portrayals of rampage violence. Rampage Violence Narratives: What Fictional Accounts of Rampage Violence Say about the Future of America’s Youth offers a detailed look at the state of youth identity in American cultural representations of youth violence through an extended analysis of over forty primary sources of fictional narratives of urban and suburban/rural school violence. Representations of suburban and rural school shootings that are modeled after real-life events serve to shape popular understandings of the relationship between education and American identity, the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and the centrality of white heterosexual masculinity to definitions of social and political success in the United States. Through a series of "case studies" that offer in-depth examinations of fictional depictions of school shootings in film and literature, it becomes clear that these stories are representative of a larger social narrative regarding the future of the United States. The continuing struggle to understand youth violence is part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to raise future citizens within a cultural moment that views youth through a lens of anxiety rather than optimism.

Ever since the 1990s, school shootings have shocked the public in their brutality, their suddenness, and their inexplicability. While film and literature have played a role in the heated debates about so-called copycat crimes, the growing body of fictionalizations of school shootings has been neglected thus far. However, in a discourse in which the boundaries between fiction and reality are increasingly blurred, this book shows how fiction shapes and structures, challenges and disrupts cultural processes of meaning-making. Hence, for a better understanding of the school shooting phenomenon, the relevance of fiction on all levels of discourse construction requires thorough analysis. This book therefore develops a new approach to the role of fiction for contemporary forms of excessive violence. By combining narrative theory with insights from sociology and other disciplines, it provides the means for apprehending and describing the relevance of fiction for contemporary discourses. Furthermore, it provides exemplary analyses of more specific functions of literary and filmic fictionalizations of school shootings between 2000 and 2016.

Profiles more than twenty-five of Canada's most lethal mass and spree killers.

The chapters contained in this handbook address key issues concerning the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of violence in film and media. In addition to providing analyses of representations of violence, they also critically discuss the phenomenology of the spectator, images of atrocity in international cinema, affect and documentary, violent video games, digital infrastructures, cruelty in art cinema, and media and state violence, among many other relevant topics. The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media updates existing studies dealing with media and violence while vastly expanding the scope of the field. Representations of violence in film and media are ubiquitous but remain relatively understudied. Too often they are relegated to questions of morality, taste, or aesthetics while judgments about violence can themselves be subjected to moral judgment. Some may question whether objectionable images are worthy of serious scholarly attention at all. While investigating key examples, the chapters in this handbook consider both popular and academic discourses to understand how representations of violence are interpreted and discussed. They propose new approaches and raise novel questions for how we might critically think about this urgent issue within contemporary culture.

This unique and timely collection examines childhood and the child character throughout Stephen King’s works, from his early novels and short stories, through film adaptations, to his most recent publications. King’s use of child characters within the framework of horror (or of horrific childhood) raises questions about adult expectations of children, childhood, the American family, child agency, and the nature of fear and terror for (or by) children. The ways in which King presents, complicates, challenges, or terrorizes children and notions of childhood provide a unique lens through which to examine American culture, including both adult and social anxieties about children and childhood across the decades of King’s works.

In the last decade, school shootings have decimated communities and terrified parents, teachers, and children in even the most “family friendly” American towns and suburbs. These tragedies appear to be the spontaneous acts of disconnected teens, but this important book argues that the roots of violence are deeply entwined in the communities themselves. Rampage challenges the “loner theory” of school violence and shows why so many adults and students miss the warning signs that could prevent it.

Blended (also called hybrid) classrooms, in which face-to-face interaction is intentionally combined with online activities to aid student learning, are becoming more and more common. Most recently, “flipped” classrooms have become a popular method for teaching because more time for active learning in-class can be gained by moving content delivery such as lecture to outside-of-class homework using technology tools such as video or lecture capture. The blended model is proving to be an environment that provides more self-directed, technology-mediated learning experiences for students who will be incorporating technology more and more into their professional lives post-college.The Blended Course Design Workbook meets the need for a user-friendly resource that provides faculty members and administrators with instructions, activities, tools, templates, and deadlines to guide them through the process of revising their traditional face-to-face course into a blended format. Providing a step-by-step course design process that emphasizes active learning and student engagement, this book will help instructors adapt traditional face-to-face courses to a blended environment by guiding them through the development of course goals and learning objectives, assignments, assessments, and student support mechanisms with technology integration in mind. It will also help instructors choose the right technologies based on an instructor’s comfort level with technology and their specific pedagogical needs. The book will help each instructor who uses the text to develop a unique course by making choices about their course design based on student learning needs for their chosen topic and discipline. Every component of the workbook has been piloted with faculty designing and implementing blended courses and then revised to better meet the needs of faculty across a range of comfort levels with technology use.The Blended Course Design Workbook includes detailed instructions for each stage of course design alongside specific activities that the reader can complete. The book is unique because it facilitates a step-by-step process for blended course design with specific templates and tools that can be used across disciplines.

The Business of Innovating Online responds to a critical need for concrete narratives of innovation success that can serve as a foundation for administrators and leaders who are in need of practical guidance as they scale and grow their online learning organizations.Through specific examples and practical suggestions from experienced e-learning leaders, readers will be introduced to concrete strategies for how to create a climate of creativity and innovation that can lead to more successful and scalable online programs and initiatives. The Business of Innovating Online demystifies the relationship between business, creativity, and innovation by describing the logistics required to create an agile online education enterprise. Topics discussed will include:- Defining innovation and creativity for online education and e-learning- Knowing when and how to innovate- Creating a culture of innovation- Effectively leading innovation- Collaborative innovation- Making innovation stick and transitioning innovative strategies into day-to-day practice- Assuring quality in the midst of innovation- Staffing structures/administrative stability to support creativity and innovationThe Business of Innovating Online provides both novice and experienced online education administrators with a comprehensive overview of a range of online innovations, how they came to be created, the components that led to their success, and concrete steps that they can take to create a more innovative culture for their own e-learning organization.