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Policies intended to encourage gender equity in the film industry are ramifying and take many forms. This paper uses social network analysis to assess the effectiveness of one popular equity policy, shadowing, a form of mentoring. In shadowing programs, women and gender minorities (WGM) are connected to more experienced members of the industry through attachment to their productions.

We constructed real collaboration networks based on film releases from 2005 to 2020 in three countries and simulated the effects that hypothetical shadowing interventions would have on the distribution of social capital in these networks. We implement different versions of the intervention, including different eligibility criteria for shadows and shadowees as well as isolating the additive effects on participants’ project portfolios.

We find that shadowing is effective in enabling WGM to access the strongest network positions, which are currently disproportionately occupied by men. However, we show that the primary reason that shadowing is effective in doing this is because it provides a second project affiliation to WGM in an industry where it is difficult to get past one’s first project.

Our study contributes to the literature on how mentoring policies affect people’s professional networks as well as scholarship on mentoring as a gender equity policy. We contribute novel evidence to debates about the efficacy of shadowing programs for WGM in the film industry. We suggest that shadowing can be effective as a tool for not only helping individual WGM advance their careers but also for structurally reconfiguring the distribution of power in project-based collaboration networks.

This paper has two purposes. First, I offer a reading of interpretive biography (Denzin, 1989a) as an alternative method for understanding how individual lives are rendered meaningful in postmodern communication processes. Second, given the importance of many rock performers as cultural heroes, I present an interpretive biography of Pete Townshend, chief songwriter and most visible member of the classic rock band the Who. This method of inquiry is grounded in the more general tradition of interpretive interactionism (Denzin, 1989b, 1990a) and has its roots in C. Wright Mills's (1959) concept of the sociological imagination. Its guiding question is this: How is the postmodern self (or stated more accurately, selves) created within and sustained by the mass media? I argue that as postmodern cultural symbols, Townshend and the band (however ambiguously) mirror a collective search for identity on the part of audiences and society-at-large.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

In this chapter, we discuss teaching physical education to Black male students in urban schools. We present a brief account of the history and status of physical education and specifically examine school physical education, particularly for Black male students in urban geographical contexts. We also offer strategies to counter the narrative of Black male school failure and present strategies for addressing the needs of urban teachers and Black male students.

A manager tells one of his maintenance engineers: Pete, you missed three calls last week. Pete interprets this as a reprimand because his manager made a pass‐fail judgement. Yet on further analysis one finds that Pete: