Joseph Zornado

A practical guide to navigating AI’s transformation of literacy and education, this book combines the long-standing values of writing studies with instruction on how students and teachers can write more effectively with AI. Mirroring the seismic changes on writing brought about by the printing press, the typewriter and the internet, AI’s impact on literacy, teaching and writing marks a shift in how we think about knowledge production, intellectual labour and composition. Moving students away from a myopic, transactional, ‘vending machine-style’ approach, Writing with AI offers techniques on engaging with these new technologies more critically and thoughtfully. With structured, adaptable frameworks based upon relational and conversational models of engagement, this book allows students to better articulate and compose their needs, refine their questions, and engage in an iterative exchange with more meaningful and useful responses from generative learning language models. Introducing a four-part recursive framework – Question, Analyze, Iterate, Compose (QAIC) – that guides students through a deliberate process, Writing with AI gives students the tools for ensuring that AI is integrated thoughtfully and ethically into their work rather than being used as a shortcut. Designed for immediate classroom use, the book features: - Consideration of the ethics of AI - How students can formulate context-aware questions for prompts - Guidance on how students can assess and refine AI-generated content - Explanation on how the use of AI can be a part of a process that expands critical thinking skills - Demonstrations of how AI-assisted insights can be structured into meaningful compositions Offering a structured way to interact meaningfully with AI in the current pedagogical moment, this is an essential resource to exploring the monumental next stage in human development that isn’t going away. A readable, accessible alternative to resisting change, Writing with AI reveals that artificial intelligence reinforces the very processes that are essential to good writing, rather than replacing them.

Surveying disaster films from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this book explores the disaster film genre from its initial appearance in 1933 (The Grapes of Wrath, 1933) to its present-day form (Don’t Look Up!, 2021), laying bare the ideological unconscious at work within the genre. The Disaster Film as Social Practice examines environmental science, history, film and literature in its interdisciplinary analysis of the disaster film genre. It explores the interplay, and the dichotomy, of “restorative” and “reflective” disaster narratives. An analysis of cinema's role in symbolizing and managing collective anxiety around disaster and death narratives examines how disaster films, through their narrative structures and symbolic elements, contribute to the public's understanding and emotional processing of real-world threats, and how cinematic narratives shape and are shaped by public and private ideological discourses, reflecting deeper psychological and environmental truths. Finally, the book offers an overview of how the transformation of the disaster film genre over time tells a history through imagining the worst. Providing a nuanced understanding of the disaster film genre and its significance in contemporary culture and thought, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies, media studies, and environmental studies.

Surveying disaster films from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this book explores the disaster film genre from its initial appearance in 1933 (The Grapes of Wrath, 1933) to its present-day form (Don’t Look Up!, 2021), laying bare the ideological unconscious at work within the genre. The Disaster Film as Social Practice examines environmental science, history, film and literature in its interdisciplinary analysis of the disaster film genre. It explores the interplay, and the dichotomy, of “restorative” and “reflective” disaster narratives. An analysis of cinema's role in symbolizing and managing collective anxiety around disaster and death narratives examines how disaster films, through their narrative structures and symbolic elements, contribute to the public's understanding and emotional processing of real-world threats, and how cinematic narratives shape and are shaped by public and private ideological discourses, reflecting deeper psychological and environmental truths. Finally, the book offers an overview of how the transformation of the disaster film genre over time tells a history through imagining the worst. Providing a nuanced understanding of the disaster film genre and its significance in contemporary culture and thought, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies, media studies, and environmental studies.

This book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’sThe Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.

This book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’sThe Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.

Critical Thinking presents, defines and explains the intellectual skills and habits of mind that comprise critical thinking and its relationship to social justice. Each of the sequential chapters includes detailed examples and learning exercises that guide the reader step by step from intellectual competency, to critical thinking, to cultural cognition, and to critical awareness necessary for social justice. The book documents and explains the scope of multiple crises facing society today, including environmental destruction, income and wealth inequality, large-scale human migration, and the rise of autocratic governments. It shows how critical thinking, cultural cognition, and critical awareness lead to the possibility of solutions grounded in social justice. All college students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities, will develop the intellectual skills necessary for critically engaging information in order to become active learners and effective agents in the world. This book complements information in introductory, interdisciplinary, or discipline-specific courses. Every chapter contains examples and exercises that can be assigned as homework, adopted as in-class activities, or both. The Conclusion also contains exercises for developing writing and basic mathematical competency skills.

Critical Thinking presents, defines and explains the intellectual skills and habits of mind that comprise critical thinking and its relationship to social justice. Each of the sequential chapters includes detailed examples and learning exercises that guide the reader step by step from intellectual competency, to critical thinking, to cultural cognition, and to critical awareness necessary for social justice. The book documents and explains the scope of multiple crises facing society today, including environmental destruction, income and wealth inequality, large-scale human migration, and the rise of autocratic governments. It shows how critical thinking, cultural cognition, and critical awareness lead to the possibility of solutions grounded in social justice. All college students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities, will develop the intellectual skills necessary for critically engaging information in order to become active learners and effective agents in the world. This book complements information in introductory, interdisciplinary, or discipline-specific courses. Every chapter contains examples and exercises that can be assigned as homework, adopted as in-class activities, or both. The Conclusion also contains exercises for developing writing and basic mathematical competency skills.

This book analyzes Walt Disney’s impact on entertainment, new media, and consumer culture in terms of a materialist, psychoanalytic approach to fantasy. The study opens with a taxonomy of narrative fantasy along with a discussion of fantasy as a key concept within psychoanalytic discourse. Zornado reads Disney’s full-length animated features of the “golden era” as symbolic responses to cultural and personal catastrophe, and presents Disneyland as a monument to Disney fantasy and one man’s singular, perverse desire. What follows after is a discussion of the “second golden age” of Disney and the rise of Pixar Animation as neoliberal nostalgia in crisis. The study ends with a reading of George Lucas as latter-day Disney and Star Wars as Disney fantasy. This study should appeal to film and media studies college undergraduates, graduates students and scholars interested in Disney.

This book analyzes Walt Disney’s impact on entertainment, new media, and consumer culture in terms of a materialist, psychoanalytic approach to fantasy. The study opens with a taxonomy of narrative fantasy along with a discussion of fantasy as a key concept within psychoanalytic discourse. Zornado reads Disney’s full-length animated features of the “golden era” as symbolic responses to cultural and personal catastrophe, and presents Disneyland as a monument to Disney fantasy and one man’s singular, perverse desire. What follows after is a discussion of the “second golden age” of Disney and the rise of Pixar Animation as neoliberal nostalgia in crisis. The study ends with a reading of George Lucas as latter-day Disney and Star Wars as Disney fantasy. This study should appeal to film and media studies college undergraduates, graduates students and scholars interested in Disney.