Digital Commons Network^™

Great Lakes Great Books: A New Season, Lynette Marten Suckow

Michigan Reading Journal

Five book reviews from the Great Lakes Great Books list for the 2022-2023 school year.

The Development And Operation Of Foundations In China, Qun Wang

The Foundation Review

Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address multiple aspects of their activities and relations with the government. Yet there has been little research synthetically reviewing their development and operation. As a result, we often lack the knowledge of the context in which these organizations interact with state and society.

This article divides the history of Chinese foundations into three phases: in search of identity, 1978–2004; in search of legal status, 2004–2016; and in search of the role in civil society, from 2016 onward. Within those three periods, it also examines overseas foundations and their …

Men Of The Fur Trade, Ca. 1620-1770s, Mitchell Mockerman

McNair Scholars Journal

No abstract provided.

New Hollywood: Classical Hollywood In A New Light, Wesley D. Buskirk

Cinesthesia

This essay analyzes the manifestations of America’s post-1960 film industry, more specifically the rise of “New Hollywood.” In response to governmental intervention of the studio system, the popularization of commercial television, and the influences of the French New Wave, Hollywood’s emerging “film generation” embraced the commercialization of the star auteur and the blockbuster picture. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, sons of the “Hollywood Renaissance,” capitalized on the potential of “high concept,” “ultra-high-budget” feature films and their associated synergetic marketing systems, a phenomenon referred to as the “blockbuster syndrome.” Jaws, a pioneering New Hollywood megapicture directed by Spielberg, exhibits the “Lucas-Spielberg” …

An Interview With Barbara Roos, Joe Hogan

Cinesthesia

Barbara Roos started teaching when Grand Valley was just a few buildings erected on a slab of midwestern prairie. Nixon was in office then, and young draftees were still being sent to Vietnam. In those days, Grand Valley – not yet a university but a cluster of colleges – was alive with the spirit of the counter-culture. William James College, among the most pedagogically experimental of the colleges, was interdisciplinary and non-departmental – it emphasized harmony between theory and practice, thought and action. At James, Roos co-founded the film and video program. In the following interview, she talks with guest …

Egyptian Film And Feminism: Egypt’S View Of Women Through Cinema, Wesley D. Buskirk

Cinesthesia

This essay analyzes the history of Egyptian film in relationship to the common perception of women in Egypt. From the early stages of Egyptian cinema, women assumed leadership positions, helping build the undeveloped industry to its height in the mid-1900's. An increasingly state-led and male-dominated film industry, however, adopted women as a symbol of nationalism, while neglecting them as equals through traditionalist film content. Furthermore, in the last quarter of the 20th century, governmental influences resulted in a shortage of production resources. Although commercial motion pictures suffered, social-issue, realist movies have reignited feminist initiatives and provided hope for a recovering …

Education And Legislation: Affluent Women's Political Engagement In The Consumers' Leagues Of The Progressive Era, Scott R. St. Louis

Grand Valley Journal of History

This paper examines the extent to which the National Consumers’ League and similar localized leagues provided middle- and upper-class women with new opportunities for involvement in American politics during the early Progressive Era, or roughly the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. These organizations undertook various efforts – including “list” and “label” campaigns – to educate the consuming public about the poor working conditions suffered by retail employees and especially factory workers in the garment industry, with a focus on employed women and child laborers. Later on, the leagues provided their female members …

A Cultural Perspective On Intergroup Relations And Social Identity, James H. Liu

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Violent instances of intergroup conflict in recent memory have usually involved cultural groups, but theory and research on the psychology of intergroup relations is largely culture free. The two most prominent theories, realistic group conflict theory (RGCT) and social identity/self-categorization theory (SIT/SCT) provide fundamental insight into basic processes in intergroup relations: (1) that behavior in intergroup situations is qualitatively different than that involved in interpersonal situations (including transformations of the self and relationships with others), (2) competition over material resources is the driver for intergroup conflict, but psychological identification with a group is sufficient to produce ingroup favoritism, and (3) …

The Grand Rapids Public Museum: What’S In A Building?, Nicholas A. Claus

Grand Valley Journal of History

“The Grand Rapids Public Museum has provided educational and community opportunities to the local area before and after 1937, however, a split was made from amateurism to professionalism with the procurement of a permanent building in 1937.”

Certainty, Probability, And Stalin’S Great Party Purge, Brett Homkes

McNair Scholars Journal

In 1935, Stalin decided to purge his own party to consolidate power in the Soviet government. Since the inception of historical research about this event, a debate has developed regarding the number of arrests and deaths of Soviets ordered by Stalin. This study will examine the figures calculated by Western historians to determine where correlation and discrepancy exist. The importance of this research is to assess the reasons why such dramatic statistical differences exist among various historians. The historians’ sources show the difficulty of determining accurate figures because of the secretive nature of the Soviet government and only partial opening …