apologies for any cross postings...
SIMILE Volume 1 Issue 4 November 2001 is now available at
www.utpjournals.com/simile
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Announcing the fourth issue(see table of contents and abstracts below) of
Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education (SIMILE), a new e-journal
published by the University of Toronto Press.

The journal, which is currently available for free, is intended to be an
electronic meeting place for anyone and everyone interested in the broad
subject of media literacy. The journal will be published four times per
year, in February, May, August, and November. Each issue will contain three
or four full-length refereed articles from scholars approaching media
literacy from a wide variety of perspectives.

SIMILE hopes to bring together scholars and educators at all levels from the
research university to the grade school to the community college and
everything in between. The submission of theoretically-based work that has
been tested and applied in the field-the kind of work that demands
collaboration between university-based researchers and, for example, high
school teachers-is strongly encouraged.

SIMILE Volume 1 Issue 4 November 2001

Jeanette Haynes Writer and Rudolfo Chávez Chávez
Storied lives, dialog - retro-reflections: Melding Critical Multicultural
Education and Critical Race Theory for pedagogical transformation

ABSTRACT
We are critical retro-reflective teacher educators and cultural workers. As
such, we have a civic responsibility to embrace courage, compassion, equity,
social justice, and social activism. We also have the responsibility to
deconstruct dominant subordinating narrative and stories. The purpose of
this article is to create a counter story via our retro-reflective dialog,
centered within our deep-seated existence as culturally ethnic, racialized,
and gendered beings. We illustrate how the process of retro-reflection is a
hopeful contingency for transformative praxis using the theoretical tools of
Critical Race Theory and Critical Multicultural Education. Our
retro-reflections expose and de-center the tacit practice of white
supremacy - a hegemonic construct often embedded within teacher education
programs. Through our retro-reflections, we hope to create personal and
pedagogical transformations for both ourselves and others involved in the
struggle for social justice and equity.

Donna L. Potts
Channeling girl power: Positive female media images in "The Powerpuff Girls"

ABSTRACT
Using information from web site reviews as well as interviews with
preschool, elementary, undergraduate, and graduate students, this article
argues that the television show "The Powerpuff Girls," despite its violent
nature, appeals to the vast majority of its viewers because it provides
positive female media images that are not based on sex appeal. In addition,
viewer comments reveal that the show is viewed as empowering for both girls
and boys because children are depicted as saviors to adults.

Peter Pericles Trifonas
Loving the letter, teaching the truth: Creating a community of the question
in the English education classroom

ABSTRACT
This article suggests that, in order to reduce the numbing sense of
divisiveness permeating the public sphere of our lives and classrooms, it is
necessary to create the solidarity of a community of difference borne of
affirmation and respect for others, rather than a simple celebration of a
community of differences where subjects are perceived to exist more-or-less
independently of each other as the multiple sites of isolated or
marginalized selves. It is within the affirmative ethics of a "community of
the question" and the multiple sites of literacy that arise from within it
that a synthesis of the negative values of difference as a foundational
concept of democratic education can occur. This will provide a philosophical
and methodological means through which to rethink the ground of the
principle of educational equity beyond the competing distinctions of
either/or categories.

Ven-hwei Lo
Sexual strategies theory, gender, exposure, and support for restriction of
pornography on the internet

ABSTRACT
Based on a survey of 2,826 college and high school students in Taiwan, this
study examines the relationship among gender, exposure, and support for
restriction of pornography on the internet. The study was theoretically
grounded in sexual strategies theory, which contrasts the sexual pairing
behaviors of males and females. The results confirmed substantial gender
differences in internet exposure and willingness to support restriction of
pornography on the internet. Gender and pornography exposure were also
related to support for restriction of pornography on the internet.

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite