SUNY Plattsburgh Modern Languages and Cultures Faculty Work
Recent Submissions
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Educating in and for uncertainty: climate science, human evolution and the legacy of Arne Naess as guidance for ecological practiceThis paper reflects on how the issue of climate change and the general state of our planet is, among other causes, a main factor in the paralyzing divisions ailing Western societies. This situation, while unsettling to democracies, is promoting a kind of education in and through fear and I question if education can succeed under these circumstances without becoming indoctrination. This paper does not try to diminish the urgency and the importance of current environmental problems but rather expands today´s perspectives and incorporates research in more constructive ways of thinking and doing. I use scientific contributions in climatology, evolution, environmental conservation, economics, and neuroscience to bring new light to today’s investigations about the human and the non-human world. Finally, I propose Deep Ecology’s principles of deep questioning, deep experience and deep commitment, as a guide for new educational and ecological practices.
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In Our Own Image: An Oral History of Mexican Women Filmmakers (1988-1994)In Our Own Image: An Oral History of Mexican Women Filmmakers (1988-1994) is a translation of Isabel Arredondo's Palabra de Mujer: Historia oral de las directoras de cine mexicanas 1988-1994. The translation is by Mark Schafer, Jim Heinrich, Elissa Rashkin, and Isabel Arredondo. The book includes an introduction, six interviews with Mexican women filmmakers, an epilogue and a filmography. The goal of the book is to accurately document the entrance of women filmmakers, as a group, into Mexico's film industry at the end of the 1980s into the 1990s. These interviews trace the emergence of a new perspective within Latin American cinema. Beginning in the 1980s, social problems are approached from the perspective of the individual; a person's gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation become the link to the society. The filmmakers, studied in In Our Own Image as a group, give a coherent overview of the problems in Latin American society, especially Mexican society, from a gender perspective at this time. The introduction, which includes interviews with key figures of the state film industry in Mexico, describes how films are produced within this industry, the rationale for having a state film industry, and the openings it provides for women. The interviews with filmmakers Guita Schyfter, Busi Cortes, Marisa Sistach, Mara Novaro, Dana Rotberg and Eva Lopez-Sanchez explain how each filmmaker made her way into the film industry. The interviews also highlight the filmmakers' personal preoccupations and experiments in approaching social problems from a gender perspective. In 2013 Isabel Arredondo will publish Motherhood in Mexican Cinema, 1941-1991 The Transformation of Femininity on Screen, a study drawing on the interviews published here in In Our Own Image. You can read more about Motherhood in Mexican Cinema at the publisher's website: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-6804-1