How Hysterical reads scenes from the films Light It Up , Three Kings , Remember the Titans , Paris is Burning , Boys Don't Cry , and Magnolia alongside biblical texts from Numbers , Exodus , Isaiah , Micah , Ezekiel and Revelation . An innovation in studies on Bible and film, How Hysterical is less centred on direct citation of the Bible in film than on analyses of hypostasized biblical influence in culture. Here, through accessible engagement with feminist, queer, post-colonial and ideological critical theories, Runions discusses the processes by which biblical and filmic texts can both bolster and disrupt identifications with the norms that drive politics and culture.

Babylon is a surprisingly multivalent symbol in U.S. culture and politics. Political citations of Babylon range widely, from torture at Abu Ghraib to depictions of Hollywood glamour and decadence. In political discourse, Babylon appears in conservative ruminations on democratic law, liberal appeals to unity, Tea Party warnings about equality, and religious advocacy for family values. A composite biblical figure, Babylon is used to celebrate diversity and also to condemn it, to sell sexuality and to regulate it, to galvanize war and to worry about imperialism. Erin Runions explores the significance of these shifts and contradictions, arguing that together they reveal a theopolitics that tries to balance the drive for U.S. dominance with the countervailing ideals and subjectivities of economic globalization. Examining the confluence of cultural formations, biblical interpretations, and (bio)political philosophies, The Babylon Complex shows how theopolitical arguments for war, sexual regulation, and political control both assuage and contribute to anxieties about waning national sovereignty. Theoretically sophisticated and engaging, this remarkable book complicates our understanding of how the Bible affects U.S political ideals and subjectivities.

Coming from a strong gender critical and post-colonial theoretical stance, Runions takes up important questions of the reading process that arise from literary, ideological critical and cultural studies approaches to the Bible. She examines readers' negotiations with the ambiguous configurations of gender, nation and future vision in the book of Micah, using the theoretical work of Homi Bhabha with Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek-all key figures in cultural studies. Her book confronts the problem of the determined subject reading an indeterminate text and suggests that (liminal) identifications with the ambiguitiesof the book of Micah might reconfigure the readers' own ideological positions.

The author describes the Mentor Academy Program (MAP) a skill-based model for training gifted high school students as mentors and thereby becoming leaders in processing information and networkers creating and sharing information. Chapter 1 offers historical and philosophical, gifted education, and high school perspectives to stewardship (the dual responsibility to self and others to realize potential). Five models for educating the gifted are compared: the social/survival model (activities are mostly games), the curriculum model (which emphasizes mastering the basics), enrichment (which extends the curricular model with options within and outside the school), stewardship (which involves students as leaders in the community), and Micronet (which combines stewardship with microcomputer technology). The MAP, particularly as it was developed at Lord Elgin High School (Ontario, Canada), is described in chapter 2. Five components of the program are discussed: orientation (which focuses on assessment and on a match of students with potential programs), networkshop (designed for skill acquisition in areas useful to becoming an effective mentor, steward, and networker), mentorship (in which students apply their newly acquired networking skills to working with mentors in the community), stewardship (during which the student engages in activities of service), and micronet (involving training the students to network their resources via microcomputer programing). A final chapter briefly addresses MAP outcomes including that students were better able to resolve problems arising from differentiated learning situations and students were better able to meet their own learning expectations for areas of interest. Appended are a grade 9 enrichment program proposal and a description of the LESS (Learning Enrichment Service by Students) program at Lord Elgin High School. (SW)

Children's maladaptive social information processing (SIP)---including attributing hostile intentions to others and planning aggressive versus passive responses---has been shown to predict both externalizing (disruptive/aggressive) and internalizing (anxious/withdrawn) tendencies in children. But the predictors of maladaptive SIP have not been well established, and the contribution of SIP to maladaptive behaviour beyond the role of its predictors is unclear. Longitudinal data spanning the first six years of life for 910 families from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were analyzed with two aims. The first aim was to examine developmental antecedents (temperament, family income, and maternal education, depression, and harshness) of maladaptive SIP in young children. Children of less educated mothers were more likely to report hostile attributions and to generate more aggressive responses, but this effect was mediated by maternal harsh parenting. Infant temperament variables, including reactivity (distress to novelty) and surgency (approach and impulsivity), were poor predictors of SIP. The second aim of the present study was to establish the role of SIP in the development of internalizing and externalizing tendencies. Externalizing tendencies were amplified in high-surgency children who also constructed aggressive responses. Externalizing tendencies were attenuated for children who consistently reported only accidental attributions of cause---rather than any hostile attributions of intent---during a preschool SIP assessment (28% of the sample). Likewise, teacher-reported internalizing tendencies were attenuated for children who attributed only accidental causes as preschoolers. Yet, for children high in temperamental reactivity, reporting only accidental attributions of cause was predictive of greater maternal-reported internalizing tendencies, whereas reporting hostile attributions of intent were predictive of fewer internalizing tendencies. The results highlight the need to examine the interactive effect of temperamental risk and children's social information processing on internalizing and externalizing tendencies in early childhood. Further research that examines the normative and pathological development of children's understanding of people's intentions and motivations is also needed, as is research on the role of maternal education and parenting in this development. Implications for prevention of childhood adjustment problems are presented.