Kevin Costner, America’s Teacher

Kevin Costner, America’s Teacher addresses how Kevin Costner's oeuvre has been a vital source of informal education for, and about, Americans. This book is the first to examine the educational impact of Costner’s works.

Kevin Costner: America's Teacher examines the role of Costner in educational settings domestically and abroad. Costner’s career over the past 35 years has seen ups and downs: his movies grossed 2 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide and he has he won/been nominated for several Academy Awards but he also experienced critical and box office failures. Through the films in his oeuvre, Costner has been teaching audiences around the world about the United States--its history, people and culture. Some viewers and scholars recognize this as positive, others as problematic. This book serves as a place for teachers and scholars to explore ways in which Costner may be tapped for research and teaching purposes at all levels of education. It is organized around three large themes: Costner’s baseball films and their connection to Americana; Costner’s films through the more critical lenses of gender and new western scholarship; and Costner’s teaching of teachers, the pedagogical possibilities of his work.

Contents

Foreword

Andrew Grunzke

Introduction

Ludovic A. Sourdot and Edward Janak

Part I: Kevin Costner and America’s Game

Chapter One: Candlesticks Make a Nice Gift: The Baseball Films of Kevin Costner

Cathy Leogrande

Chapter Two: Heaven or Iowa? Field of Dreams and Public Understanding of America’s Pastime

Bradley Hart and Dennis Hart

Part II: Kevin Costner and Sex, Gender, and the New West

Chapter Three: Black Women’s Lives Matter: Revisiting The Bodyguard Thirty Years Later

Tatiana Prorokova-Konrad

Chapter Four: Performing the Rugged Patriarch: Yellowstone’s Commemoration of the American Monomyth

Chandra Maldonado and Ashley A. Mattheis

Chapter Five: “This is America. We Don’t Share Land Here.” Kevin Costner, Taylor Sheridan, and Remediating New/Post-West(ern) Scholarship in Yellowstone

Stefan Rabitsch and Pawel Pyrka

Part III: The Pedagogical Possibilities of Kevin Costner

Chapter Six: Kevin Costner the Wise Teacher: Thirteen Days and Four Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis

William Gombash

Chapter Seven: Intentional Focus on Integrated STEM: Was Costner the Original STEM Influencer?

Andrea Burrows, Michelle Chamberlain, and Mike Borowczak

Chapter Eight: Resilience and Asset Framing: The Lessons of McFarland, USA

Ludovic A. Sourdot and Edward Janak

Afterword: “Playing the Hand You’ve Been Dealt”: Lessons in Leadership the Post-COVID

Educational Frontier

Jerry Ausburn and Edward Janak

Index

About the Contributors