Who Is Afraid of the Body Snatchers? Conceptualizing a Genre of National Crisis and International Threat

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Text, Context, and Narrating Identities of Self and Other

Abstract

This synoptic text, supporting the internationalization of curriculum studies (see Pinar, 2003), situates Waiting for Superman and similar representations within a national-crisis-and-international-threat genre, conceptualized here as the body snatchers genre. First, this synoptic text provides analytical resources drawing on 1) social-psycho analysis, 2) Foucauldian “disciplined bodies,” and 3) alien invasion genre films. Second, using these analytical resources, this synoptic text reviews three body snatchers “classics” including Arthur Bestor’s (1953) Educational Wastelands, Admiral Rickover’s (1960) Education and Freedom, and the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s Nation at Risk (1984/1994). Third, this synoptic text identifies three over-arching patterns inherent in body snatchers’ classics: anxieties without-within, strengthening discipline, and “feminizing” progressives.

Author

• James C. Jupp, Georgia Southern University