Strategic Climate Change Communications

Effective Approaches to Fighting Climate Denial

Edited by Jasper Colin Fessmann, West Virginia University

For over 30 years the science on climate change has been clear: it is happening, we humans caused it, and it puts all our futures at risk. Global warming can still be reversed, or at least the worst prevented, if we act in time. However, despite valiant efforts by scientists, activists and science reporters, little meaningful change has occurred. This is largely the result of well-funded professional strategic communication efforts by vested interests. They have been highly successful in achieving their central goal: protecting the profitable status quo by creating gridlock to slow down meaningful action on climate change. Strategic Climate Science Communications: Effective Approaches to Fighting Climate Denial analyzes some of the communication strategies employed by deniers and the psychological mechanisms behind how they work. Several experts offer specific counter-strategies to change the conversation and foster meaningful societal change on global warming. The book helps environmental journalists to build up resistance against being manipulated by highly effective public relations techniques often successfully used against them. It can also help scientists and activists to become more effective communicators. An effective strategy is best countered by even better strategy.

Argumentation Strategies in the Classroom

Chrysi Rapanta, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Argumentation as a teaching and learning method in the K-12 curriculum has received increasing attention across the globe. The reason for this is simple: argumentation helps students develop necessary critical thinking skills. However, teaching this method is not as straightforward as it may appear. Placing the classroom at the centre of the investigation, this book seeks to throw light onto argumentation as a teaching practice by asking: What does it take to teach as argument? What does it mean to be ‘argumentative’ teachers? And, how can we create classroom environments that will help and encourage young people to develop their argument skills? Based on first-hand experience and extensive research, this volume guides the reader through argumentation with the focus placed on the relationship between this teaching method and effective learning and the need to investigate the role of teachers in encouraging argumentation in the classroom. Although there are a considerable number of tools and techniques that promote argumentation in the K-12 classroom, many teachers struggle to successfully implement them in the classroom. Aimed at addressing this issue, this book endeavours to instruct teachers on how to apply argumentation effectively in their day-to-day classes and to clarify argumentation as a teaching and learning strategy. As an important contribution to the field of argumentation and education, this book will be of interest to researchers, post-graduate students, and secondary school teachers, alike.

Cioran – A Dionysiac with the voluptuousness of doubt

Ion Dur, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Baia Mare Northern University Centre, Romania

Since its inception philosophical thought has been fixated by death. Death, as much as life, has been the unrelenting driving force behind some of history’s greatest thinkers. Yet, for Emil Cioran, a Romanian-French philosopher, even philosophy cannot attempt to understand nor contain the inevitable unknown. Considered to be an anti-philosopher, Cioran approached and reflected on the human experience with a despairing pessimism. His works are characterised by a brooding, fatalistic temperament that reveals and defines itself in his irony, black humour and inimitable style. Although Cioran’s later works have received much scholarly recognition, little attention has been paid to the texts he wrote in his adolescent. Grounded in the historical context of interwar Romania, this book presents for the first time an analysis of the little-known works of this pioneering Romanian thinker. Deeply affected by his upbringing, this book offers a glimpse into Cioran’s first attempts to delve into philosophical enterprise, before turning its attention to his later works, On the Heights of Despair (1934), The Transfiguration of Romania (1936) and Twilight of thoughts (1940; written in France). Using both the French and Romanian editions of these works, but also their original manuscripts, this volume seeks to provide a re-reading that takes language rather than a social or political critique as its focal point. As an important and provocative contribution to the existing literature on Cioran, this book will be an essential point of reference for students and researchers, alike.

A Postcard View of Hell: One Doughboy’s Souvenir Album of the First World War

Frank Jacob, Nord University, Norway and Mark D. Van Ells, Queensborough Community College (CUNY)

For many the postcard may seem trivial, little more than a mundane souvenir or a way to keep in touch with friends and relatives while on vacation. But if we look carefully, postcards offer valuable insights into the time periods in which they were created and the mentalities of those who bought or sent them. Frank Marhefka, while serving in the U.S. Army Motor Transportation Corps during the First World War, amassed a collection of more than 150 postcards and photographs while in France, and bound them into a souvenir album. Marhefka’s collection provides a diverse and vivid look into a period of history that – in many soldiers’ accounts – is not usually visualized with all its cruelties. Emphasizing the pictorial turn of the Great War, this album offers personal insight into a conflict that caused so much death and destruction. The book begins with an introduction providing a history of postcards and their extensive use by soldiers during the Great War. Then, after a biography of Marhefka, his postcard collection is presented in its entirety. Accompanying the images are brief texts that place them into historical context, as well as suggestions for further reading. As a visual artifact of the First World War and the perspective of one U.S. soldier, this book is aimed at students, scholars, postcard collectors, and general readers alike who have an interest in military history and popular culture.

Writing as a Way of Staying Human in a Time that Isn’t

Edited by Nate Mickelson, Guttman Community College, City University of New York (CUNY)

The human element of our work has never been more important. As Robert Yagelski explains in Writing as a Way of Being (2011), the ideological and social pressures of our institutions put us under increasing pressure to sacrifice our humanity in the interest of efficiency. These problems only grow when we artificially separate self/world and mind/body in our teaching and everyday experiences. Following Yagelski and others, Writing as a Way of Staying Human in a Time that Isn't proposes that intentional acts of writing can awaken us to our interconnectedness and to ways in which we—as individuals and in writing communities—might address the social and environmental challenges of our present and future world. Featuring essays drawn from a range of contexts, including college composition and developmental reading and writing, professional and legal writing, middle school English, dissertation projects, academic conferences, and an online writing group, the collection outlines three ways writing can help us stay human: caring for ourselves and others; honoring the times and spaces of writing; and promoting justice. Each essay describes specific strategies for using writing as a means for staying human in inhuman times. The authors integrate personal stories, descriptions of classroom assignments and activities, and current research in writing studies. Their work shows that writing can contribute to personal, social, and political transformation by nurturing vulnerability, compassion, and empathy among students and instructors alike.