Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech, To : multiple recipients : "a gunman is loose on campus..." / Timothy W. Luke -- 2. Media spectacle and the "massacre at Virginia Tech" / Douglas Kellner -- 3. Mediated ritual on academic ground / Neal King -- 4. Profiling school shooters and shooters' schools : the cultural contexts of aggrieved entitlement and restorative masculinity / Michael Kimmel -- 5. "Victims sought in next week's shooting" / William Ayers -- 6. "We are all Seung-Hui Cho!" : American social psychosis and the Virginia Tech killings / Stephen Pfohl -- 7. Satire, guns, and humans : lessons from the Nacirema / Steve Kroll-Smith, Gwen Hunnicutt -- 8. S/he's lost control? : damaging a body of knowledge / Tara Brabazon -- 9. When rhetoric fails : the heroic teacher and the basic communications course / Matthew Levy -- 10. There is an unknown on campus : from normative to performative violence in academia / Patricia Mooney Nickel -- 11. The April 16 archive : collecting and preserving memories of the Virginia Tech tragedy / Brent K. Jesiek, Jeremy Hunsinger -- 12. Colonization and massacres : Virginia Tech, Jamestown, Korea, and Iraq / Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz -- 13. All the rage : digital bodies and deadly play in the age of the suicide bomber / Carolyn Guertin -- 14. Is Virginia Tech an exception? / Stanley Aronowitz -- 15. Baudrillard (1929-2007) & Mao : a history of normal violence / Charles Lemert -- 16. Cho, not Che? : positioning Blacksburg in the political / Ben Agger.