Social Sciences Media Studies

The stuff of conspiracy theories makes for great, entertaining stories in movies, books, and television. And there is no shortage of subjects: from who really killed JFK to the truth behind 9/11. And then, there are subjects from alien invasions to the Moon landing was simulated - theories that are truly out of this world, which according to some, is flat. Many of these crazy concepts have jumped off the pages or screens to become so pervasive in our culture that thousands - even millions - subscribe to them as reality.

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the Internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the Internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.

In this characteristically turbocharged new book, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider's guide to the variety of ways today's mainstream media tells us lies. In the internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism's dirty tricks.

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.

How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times best-selling author Martin Ford uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the artificial intelligence community.

Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability.

Known for providing incisive progressive political analysis without being dogmatic, popular radio and podcast host David Pakman delves into the vicious cycle of reactionary political ideology. It's no secret how the right-wing has benefited and capitalized off disinformation and polarization of US politics. Critical thinking and media literacy are on a rapid decline, and our republic is unable to agree upon a shared set of facts. Pakman challenges the right-wing head-on and encourages listeners to understand how the status quo became the status quo.

Channel your Black-girl magic: If you're feeling stuck or trapped by other people's expectations of what you can achieve, it's time to stop playing small and start redefining what success can mean for you. Leave a legacy of Black excellence: With the seven simple rules, you'll learn how to bring your career, income, and lifestyle to that next level. Don't settle for a life of invisibility and mediocrity. Set ambitious goals, reach for bigger opportunities, and know that you are brave enough to get what you deserve.

Indigenous author Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in the Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the center, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and wholistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression, and experiences of parallel and multiple realities.

Margaret Wheatley proposes that citizens band together with their colleagues and friends to create the solutions for social change, both locally and globally, that are so badly needed. Such change will not come from governments or corporations but from the ageless process of thinking together in conversation. Turning to One Another encourages this process.

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

How did we become a world where facts—shared truths—have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country, globally? How have we allowed the proliferation of alternative facts, hoaxes, even conspiracy theories, to destroy our trust in institutions, leaders, and legitimate experts? Best-selling journalist Steven Brill documents the forces and people, from Silicon Valley to Moscow to Washington, that have created and exploited this world of chaos and division—and offers practical solutions for what we can do about it.

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are responding. They're dropping out of college, leaving the workforce, and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this man-child phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

This poetic and evocative audiobook, drawing on the personal experiences of Good Buffalo Eagle, presents the meditations of an ancient Anasazi tribesman who rejects his family and community and walks off into the desert. During his journey, he discovers the seven paths of the Anasazi way, each path teaching a lesson symbolized by an element of the natural world: light, wind, water, stone, plants, animals, and finally the unity of all beings with the Creator, the path of We. By walking these paths, he discovers the roots of his conflict and the way toward reconciliation.

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached.

It began as rumors. Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in "rough sex" in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host. What the public did not know was that months before Ghomeshi's emotional post, Canadaland podcaster Jesse Brown and Toronto Star journalist Kevin Donovan were quietly pursuing serious allegations against him.

“Like being deemed a witch hundreds of years ago, being presumed a slut today is cause for ostracism, abuse, and death”.... Archetypes of “witch” and “slut” have been used to police female sexuality and punish women; now, feminists are reclaiming them as positive affirmations. This book unearths the sex positive feminist legacy of the witch in art, music, politics, and popular culture, connecting the fictional witch we love to emulate and fear with real women, past and present.

In Teaching to Transgress, Bell Hooks - writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual - writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for Hooks, the teacher's most important goal. Bell Hooks speakes to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom? Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself.