Authored by scholars from a variety of disciplines, including English, Theology, Philosophy, Communications, Sociology, Humanities and Peace Studies, this edited volume provides detailed descriptions of the many ways popular culture can be used to teach peace. Chapters discuss documentary and feature film, music, television, literature and more, providing both educators and the general public with a timely and useful tool. From popular dystopian novels like The Hunger Games to feature films like The Matrix to modern rap and hip-hop music, contributors not only provide critical analysis of the violence in popular culture but also an assessment of how the same or alternate forms can be used by peace educators. Additionally, each chapter project synopses and teaching ideas, as well as recommended resources.

Drawing from many disciplinary areas, this edited volume illustrates the many ways that popular culture can be used to teach peace and justice. Chapters address such topics as teaching about racism, domestic violence, structural violence, conflict analysis, decolonization, critiques of capitalism, and peacebuilding, showing how different forms of popular culture can be utilized to enhance student learning. Contributors provide both theoretical backgrounds and concrete lessons using TV, film, music, graphic novels, and more.

A comprehensive resource, this book reviews current and historical examples of violence in film, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and novels. Despite decades of attention and various attempts to enact legislation that limits violence in American popular culture, it remains ubiquitous across films, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and popular fiction. Studies have shown that programs marketed to children are often remarkably violent and that viewing or otherwise consuming such violence has numerous negative effects on children's psychological health. This book sheds light on the scholarship related to violence in popular culture and compares historical and current examples, analyzing popular shows such as Game of Thrones, video games such as Mortal Kombat, young adult fiction including the trilogy The Hunger Games, and more. Not only does Violence in American Popular Culture provide a comprehensive review of the research about the effects of violence in media, but it also offers detailed assessments of violent content in various expressions of popular culture. In addition, it invites readers to compare violence in American popular culture with that globally via entries on violence in popular culture outside the United States. An appendix of additional resources and primary sources gives readers further tools for deepening their understanding of this complex and controversial issue.

The intent of this playbook is to enable PK-12 teachers, teachers-in-training, counselors, and coaches to use character and peace education lessons to enrich their curriculum and help students expand their knowledge and understanding of themes and content in each of the book’s chapters. The lesson plans will help students discover, learn, reflect on, and make connections between and among each of the chapters in the book, such as Character Development, Peace Awareness, Special Skills, and Selfdiscipline, Respect, Responsibility, Relationships, and Conflict Resolution. This playbook is designed in such a way that you may take any one of the lessons and implement it at any time you find a teachable moment or want to focus on a particular topic or theme. The lessons have been designed to help you and your students "reflect” upon and make "connections" between the content and activities of each lesson. At the end of each chapter is a stop-sign symbol suggesting one “read/reflect/respond.” The playbook is rich in references, research, and resources.

This edited volume, authored by scholars, students, and activists, focuses on how peace educators at the collegiate level can more effectively address gender and sexuality. Chapters focus on the classroom and the campus at large, and emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary practice, thoughtful approaches that offer both challenges and safety, and solidarity and support. The volume includes entries on hot and important topics, including trigger warnings, using popular culture in the classroom, sex trafficking, campus sexual assault, and more. Contributors come from a variety of disciplinary areas, making the volume eclectic in nature. Further, most entries include student voices, providing much- needed agency for college youth. While the book does offer a critical perspective, importantly, chapters also offer hope and possibility.

The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony offers practical insights for educators, students, researchers, peace activists, and all others interested in communication for peace. This book is a perfect text for courses in peace education, communications, media, culture, and other fields. Individuals concerned about violence, war, and peace will find this volume both crucial and informative. This book sheds light on peaceful versus destructive ways we use words, body language, and the language of visual images. Noted author and educator Rebecca L. Oxford guides us to use all these forms of language more positively and effectively, thereby generating greater possibilities for peace. Peace has many dimensions: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, international, intercultural, and ecological. The language of peace helps us resolve conflicts, avoid violence, and reduce bullying, misogyny, war, terrorism, genocide, circus journalism, political deception, cultural misunderstanding, and social and ecological injustice. Peace language, along with positive intention, enables us to find harmony inside ourselves and with people around us, attain greater peace in the wider world, and halt environmental destruction. This insightful book reveals why and how.

The premise of this book is very simple. While acknowledging that much progress has been made since the end of World War II to improve life conditions for billions of people and reduce the likelihood of war, current global challenges threaten to undermine, undo, or even reverse much of the progress made. Growing political and social polarization, and the resultant increasing fear of each other, is on a trajectory that could cause unprecedented harm. The book illustrates how everyone can have an impact on peace and that many already do so in both constructive and negative ways, illustrated by many examples. The book offers an expansive view of peace, which includes promoting human rights, identifying and resolving situations of slow violence, working to promote fair and sustainable economic development, identifying and resolving injustices, and establishing institutions and practices for resolving conflicts by communicative means. The book especially focuses on the role universities can and should play in promoting peace. Universities, which have played a pivotal role in creating a more humane and just world through their research, teaching and scholarship, now face the challenge of thoughtfully examining how each discipline and vocation and the university as a whole can contribute to fostering peace. In general, universities help to prepare students actively to work for peace by cultivating their capacities at reasoning and reflecting, developing their skills in communicating and research, and fostering among them an active awareness of their responsibilities as citizens of the world. While not every discipline or vocation shares the same level of responsibility to advance peace, all have the potential to do so as they intentionally and thoughtfully look for avenues to do so.

The idea of Peace Linguistics (PL) has been around for decades. However, the practice of PL has only occurred much more recently, only within the last few years, since the first creditbearing, university-level PL course was taught at Brigham Young University-Hawaii in 2017. Since then, the field of NPL has grown beyond its original goals, of using peaceful language and language that avoids or de-escalates conflict. The New Peace Linguistics (NPL) focuses on in-depth, systematic analyses of the spoken and written language of some of the most powerful people in the world, such as presidents of the USA, as it is they who have the power to start wars or to bring peace. As the first book to be published on PL and on NPL, this work represents a ground-breaking study of the power of language to hurt and harm or to help and give hope. The first four chapters of the book, which provide the foundation on which the rest of the book is built, introduce the concept of Peace Linguistics and the New Peace Linguistics, starting with the origins of PL and coming to the present day. The remaining Part Two and Part Three chapters present in-depth, systematic NPL analyses of George W. Bush, Colin L. Powell, Barack H. Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden. The concluding chapter reiterates the most important distinguishing and recurring features of NPL, and looks at where the field may be headed in the future.

Drawing from many disciplinary areas, this edited volume explores how the Coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately harmed vulnerable and marginalized people in the U.S. Chapters address harm to people of color that exacerbated structural racism and harm to low-wage workers that highlighted existing inequalities. In addition, the volume provides strategies that have been successful in mitigating these harms and recommendations for a post- pandemic more peaceful and just future.

Democratizing Leadership: Counter?hegemonic Democracy in Organizations, Institutions, and Communities promotes leadership in the democratization of culture to counter the current hegemony of domination and cultivate an alternative hegemony of collaboration. It is premised on a leadership framework for decision?making rooted in democratic voice and leading to collective action. This broad peacebuilding prescription for individual and collective agency accounts for the constructive role of conflict in democratic pluralism, and the need to develop practices and structures that prevent violent conflict in order to advance positive peace. This theory addresses the contexts of deliberative, agonistic, and revolutionary democratic frameworks. Democratizing Leadership is informed by three qualitative case studies described in rich detail. First Bank System Visual Art Program, In the Heart of the Beast Theater's May Day Ritual, and The Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers exemplify the practice of democratizing leadership. These diverse settings include corporate banking during 1980's deregulation, an annual community May Day parade, and an informal alliance of peacemaking organizations. Leadership in each case promotes authentic voice, encourages decision?making with integrity, and advocates for responsible collective action.