Preliminary Material / Heather Hickman and Brad J. Porfilio -- A Qualitative Understanding of Preservice Teachers’ Critical Examination of Textbook Curriculum Units as Political Text / Sandra Foster -- Finding My Serpent Tongue / Theresa Montaño and Rosalinda Quintanar-Sarellana -- Women on the Margins / Racgek Sutz Pienta and Ann Marie Smith -- Representation of Diversity in Science Textbooks / Robert Ceglie and Vidal Olivares -- Handling Heteronormativity in High School Literature Texts / Heather Hickman -- The Open Court Reality / Elizabeth Jaeger -- E Pluribus Unum / Mary Christianakis and Richard Mora -- Uncovering and Destabilizing Heteronormative Narratives in World History Textbooks / Scott S. Wylie -- The Exclusion and Inclusion of Women in American Government Textbooks / Christiane Olivo -- Context and Community / Christine Rogers Stanton -- Textbook Orientalism / Lisa Zagumny and Amanda B. Richey -- Swept under the Rug / Caroline Knight -- Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell the Lies My Teacher Told Me / Jeffrey M. Hawkins -- Invisible Indians / Kate Cummings -- Gender Representation in AP Art History Textbooks / Denise Michelle Cornish , Sherrie Carinci and Jana Noel -- Neo-Confederate Ideology & History Textbooks – 1860 to 2010 / Faith Agostinone-Wilson -- Afterword / Lauren P. Hoffman.

In an age of unprecedented corporate and political control over life inside of educational institutions, this book provides a needed intervention to investigate how the economic and political elite use traditional artifacts in K-16 schools to perpetuate their interests at the expense of minoritized social groups. The contributors provide a comprehensive examination of how textbooks, the most dominant cultural force in which corporations and political leaders impact the schooling curricula, shape students’ thoughts and behavior, perpetuate power in dominant groups, and trivialize social groups who are oppressed on the structural axes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Several contributors also generate critical insight in how power shapes the production of textbooks and evaluate whether textbooks still perpetuate dominant Western narratives that normalize and privilege patriotism, militarism, consumerism, White supremacy, heterosexism, rugged individualism, technology, and a positivistic conception of the world. Finally, the book highlights several textbooks that challenge readers to rethink their stereotypical views of the Other, to reflect upon the constitutive forces causing oppression in schools and in the wider society, and to reflect upon how to challenge corporate and political dominance over knowledge production.

Description based on print version record.