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In settler colonial societies, colonizers often omit contemporary Indigenous Peoples from representations, while controlling signifiers of indigeneity to legitimate their interests (e.g., stereotyp...

In the introductory essay to Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media, editors Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki set the stage for their volume on compact cinematics, a term which encompasses a wide array of moving image works and their role in society—a role that is often minimised due to their length and “small screen” methods of display. Rather than agree with dominant understandings that compact cinematics are new, and exist on the border of film and television, the authors argue that such visual displays, now in digital form through platforms, such as Vine and YouTube, predate feature-length films, and can open new avenues of understanding in the realm of spectacle and leisure studies more broadly.

In this article, we discuss how adding a final film project to a revised ‘Culture through Film’ course led to deeper student learning and higher rates of student success, as well as increased student satisfaction. Ultimately, we urge social science educators to include experiential projects in their courses that connect to all learning styles. Such projects should also challenge students to ‘create’, a task that requires generating ideas, planning and ultimately producing something, which, according to Bloom’s revised taxonomy, engages students in the highest cognitive process (Anderson and Krathwohl 2000). Although this class focused on the intersections of culture and film and was taught at an American university, we believe these lessons apply more broadly.

The Massachusetts Native American Trails Project is a collaborative, community-based project developed in conjunction with the Aquinnah Wampanoag, the Mashpee Wampanoag, the Nipmuc Nation, the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, and the University of Massachusetts. The trails project has led to a comprehensive, tribally controlled website detailing Native sites and events across the state of Massachusetts. The site, http://www.massnativetrails.com/, continues to grow. This brief field report outlines the history of the site, the challenges and rewards of engaged, activist scholarship, and the current goals of this ongoing project.