Subject: Back to School: A Special Report 
Date: Published: 9/5/91 (48 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Business Bulletin -- Back to School:
    A Special Background Report
    On Trends in Industry
    And Finance
    ----
    By Katherine Shaver

    HIGH-TECH EXTRAS help publishers push standard texts.
    HarperCollins's newly revised college anatomy/physiology
 text comes with 45 optional items, up from 20 in 1987.
 Workbooks and film strips aren't enough; the new anatomy text
 includes a videotaped cadaver dissection and a video laser
 disk with an interactive "laser touch anatomy" program.
    McGraw-Hill's new introductory college Spanish text comes
 with a Spanish soap opera-like video series stressing each
 chapter's vocabulary and grammar.  Publishers hope the frills
 grab media-conscious students and help them compete for
 shrinking school budget funds.  But some extras come at a
 price:  Each interactive videodisk program costs $1,200.
    "We've all become little media companies," says Susan
 Katz, vice-president for HarperCollins's college division.
    NEW COLLEGE COURSES re-examine traditional liberal arts.
    Standard topics are viewed in terms of the human body, the
 self, sexuality and race.  Scholars consider the new focus an
 outgrowth of both cross-cultural and gender studies.  New
 slants on old subjects:  University of Pennsylvania's "The
 Self and Society in 18th Century France," Stanford's "Body,
 Sex and Gender in Ancient Judaism" and Occidental College's
 "Race and Ethnicity in 20th Century America."
    Stanford professor Howard Eilberg-Schwartz says the
 emphasis on the body reflects new attention to issues such as
 AIDS, abortion and the right-to-die debate.  Berkeley
 professor Thomas Laqueur says, for example, that scholars are
 re-examining the body's role in the French Revolution by
 asking why peasant revolutionaries insisted on beheading to
 kill royalty.  In the current events department, Harvard's
 "Russian for Business" examines Soviet business jargon and
 etiquette, and film director and writer Spike Lee teaches
 "Contemporary African-American Cinema."

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