New Books

Historical view of German Post-Expressionism

Associate professor of art history Dennis Crockett investigates an art movement that emerged at a crucial moment of modern German history in his new book, German Post-Expressionism: The Art of the Great Disorder 1918-1924.

Crockett explores the idea that post-expressionism developed, not during the Weimar Republic's middle years of economic and political stability, but during the "political, social, and economic chaos" of the republic's first years.

Reviewer Neil Donahue notes that Crockett's work "defines the significance" of the art that emerged at this time in Germany and in addition introduces painters who have been little known, even to specialists in the field. "This study is original," Donohue writes. "It combines a decidedly fresh and broad look at a well-defined area with scrupulous and rewarding historical research." The book was published by Penn State University Press.

Crockett, who has taught art history at Whitman since 1992, is planning a major project to produce a new text on European and American modern art from the 1880s to the 1930s in collaboration with several colleagues. His contribution will deal with visual culture in Germany during the Weimar Republic.

What is literacy in an age of electronic media?

What does it mean to be literate in an age of electronic media? That question is explored in two recent books coedited by Whitman assistant professor of education Ann Watts Pailliotet.

Intermediality: The Teachers' Handbook of Critical Media Literacy stresses the importance of teaching critical thinking, critical reading, and critical viewing skills across the curriculum. The growing proliferation of electronic and other popular media and the complexity of students' interaction with those media "underscore now, more than ever," the need for such skills, according to Pailliotet and her coeditor Ladislaus Semali of Pennsylvania State University. The book emphasizes the possibilities of working with media texts to address questions adapted from linguists and literary educators.

Published in December 1998 by JAI Press/Ablex Publishing Corp., Intermediality has received positive reviews from leading media literacy educators in American and Canadian journals.

Pailliotet's newest book is Reconceptualizing Literacy in the Media Age, which she coedited with Peter Mosenthal of Syracuse University. The book, due out this winter from JAI/Ablex, "brings together an international, interdisciplinary set of experts on media literacy who address myriad issues of theory practice and policy," Pailliotet said.

Technology in the schools: risks and promises

A new book, Watch It: The Risks and Promises of Information Technologies in Education, examines several critical issues involving new technologies in the classroom. Whitman associate professor of education Thomas Callister and Nicholas Burbules of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are coauthors of the book, published in December 1999 by Perseus.

Already central to many aspects of our lives, information technology "is rapidly becoming an integral part of teaching and learning," the authors note. In Watch It they explore such issues as access, credibility, new approaches to reading and writing, the glut of information, privacy, censorship, commercialization, and globalization.

The book "argues that technology is not a neutral means to our ends, but a social reality that forms our environment," writes reviewer Andrew Feenberg. The authors "challenge the education community to think more deeply about how inhabiting the new environment shaped by the Internet will change educational methods and aims."

Callister is chair of the education department and a Garrett Fellow at Whitman. He and Burbules, a professor of educational policy studies, have published numerous articles, together and separately, on education and technology issues.

For children, a story of the Jubilee Singers

A Band of Angels: A Story of the Jubilee Singers, a children's picture book by Deborah Hopkinson, lecturer of education at Whitman, was named one of the best books of 1999 by Publisher's Weekly. In the book, a Simon & Schuster/Anne Schwarz publication, Hopkinson and illustrator Raul Colon tell the story of the Jubilee Singers — how in 1871 they toured America and Europe to raise money for Fish School (now Fisk University) and preserved such spirituals as "Go Down Moses" and "Many Thousand Gone." According to Publisher's Weekly, Hopkinson's "lilting text interweaves subtle details about racial tensions after the Civil War while emphasizing the importance of education and of being true to oneself."

Hopkinson, who is director of development administrative services at the College, also is the author of Birdie's Lighthouse, a 1997 Junior Library Guild selection, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, winner of the 1994 International Reading Association Award, and the recently published Maria's Comet.