CNY Talk About: “Classroom Wars” (20 April 2015)

“Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture”

This event takes place at:
New School, Johnson/Kaplan Hall
66 W. 12th St.
Room A712
6pm

Sign up here:

http://www.meetup.com/Conversations-New-York/events/221783164/

“In this carefully researched, empirically grounded, and elegantly written book, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela explores debates and politics of bilingual education and sex education in California at the origins of the ‘culture wars.’ She tells an engaging, accessible, and compelling history of these conflicts that has important implications for how we understand postwar American political culture and education, past and present. Scholars and students of education history, education policy, and postwar American politics and culture will want to read this book.”-Tracy L. Steffes, School, author of School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890-1940

“What’s the matter with Kansas–or with America–and its endless culture wars? According to a common liberal refrain, contemporary conservatives have invoked hot-button cultural issues to persuade Americans to vote against their own economic interests. But that claim is itself a liberal conceit, ignoring the many ways that the American Right wove cultural and economic grievances into a cohesive and enduring ideology. No matter which way your own politics lean, you won’t be able to understand modern American conservatism without reading Natalia Mehlman Petrzela’s brave and original book.”-Jonathan Zimmerman, author of Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education

After the lecture, the CNY group will convene at a local cafe and discuss the ideas presented in the lecture.

CNY Moderator: Laurence Mailaender