[The Montana Professor 18.2, Spring 2008 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Henry Gonshak
Acting editor
MT Tech-UM
O. Alan Weltzien
Acting editor
UM-Western
Like The Montana Professor's Fall 2007 issue, which we also guest-edited, this one is a lively compendium of essays and reviews on a wide range of interesting topics. It forays into relatively new terrain for the journal--the field of popular culture. John Hadjuk's "Channels of Dissent" explores the birth of that lamentable media phenomenon known as "infotainment," while Jack Crowley's "Red Harvest and Dashiell Hammett's Butte" discusses the debut of a master of the noir mystery novel.
Two other essays delve into contemporary politics. Bill Janus dissects the ideology underlying the Iraq War in "Myth and the Neoconservative View of the United States Military," while Stuart Justman freshly analyzes events plucked from the headlines in "School Shootings: Against Interpretation."
Unusual faculty research is highlighted in Barry Ferst's "How I Resurrect the Dead," which explains the author's extended fascination with Ancient Roman sarcophagi. And we inaugurate a new series reassessing seminal works in various disciplines with Alan Weltzien's examination of Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
Finally, like last issue, we leaven our serious articles with Joe Barnhart's send-up of that well-known academic oxymoron, "Strategic Planning: Cut to Pieces."
[The Montana Professor 18.2, Spring 2008 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]