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Book Review: Unsettling The Literary West: Authenticity And Authorship, J. David Stevens

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Its promise to revolutionize western studies aside, Nathaniel Lewis's Unsettling the Literary West offers several smart readings of western texts along with a unique analytical approach to the field. Lewis's central claim is that as early as the 1830s writers of western literature felt an undue obligation to capture the "true West," to produce books that stressed accurate renditions of landscape, and, however exaggerated, to claim real-world credentials to substantiate their observations. Though most of these writers understood absolute realism to be impossible, they were performing for eastern audiences whose interest lay not in artistic perception but in the "genuine" …

Theology And Religious Studies In Post-Communist Ukraine: Historical Sources, Modern Status, And Perspectives Of Cooperation, Lyudmyla Filipovych, Anatoly M. Kolodny

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

From Challenge To Absorption: The Changing Face Of Latino Studies, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

Over the last three decades Latino studies scholarship has gained increased academic acceptance. However, many administrators continue to doubt the wisdom of sustaining autonomous Latino studies departments, and are devising alternative approaches for incorporating Latino-based knowledge into the university’s mission. This article discusses the academy’s response to the emergence of Latino studies and explores a range of consequences for the field of two institutional arrangements that universities appear to privilege: the horizontal fusion with Latin American Studies, and a vertical absorption into centers for the study of race and ethnic or absorption into American studies.

Willa Cather's Reluctant New Woman Pioneer, Reginald Dyck

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1913 Willa Cather created a female protagonist who is single, independent, entrepreneurial, managerial, strong willed, wealthy and in love with the land of south-central Nebraska. This character offered a new vision for women at the turn of the twentieth century. Cather's fictional construction of gender, as well as her own experience, embody the contradictions present in the roles society offered women. One can read O Pioneers! as a cultural seismometer, one that picks up tremors along various social fault lines and then expresses them within a particular framework held by many people of her economic and social position. This …

En Attendant Le Plan Marshall : Consommation Endogène De La Littérature Camerounaise, Pierre Fandio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Despite the numerous forms of "aid" it has always received, Africa remains the only continent on the fringe of the tremendous development that the rest of the world has been experiencing in the last two centuries. The sectorial analysis of the literary works in this paper illustrates how the implementation of the various "Marshall Plan" is meant to bring about the development of a whole continent and a country like Cameroon. This could be done by involving actors of the cultural domain in the analysis of data and formulation of solution. Such development could give a boost to profitable endogenous …

Leadership: The Missing Variable In The Economic Development Of Sub-Saharan Africa, Osei K. Bonsu

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Contemporary economic theories, modernization and dependency, have overlooked the fact that the development process depends on the interaction of social factors. Specifically, the theories have ignored the role of leadership in analyzing economic development. This dissertation seeks to incorporate the importance of leadership into the analysis of development. It argues that sub-Saharan African countries have not developed economically because leaders in the region have been less than successful in establishing a culture conducive to industrialization. African leaders have failed to establish the high moral and scientific cultures necessary to promote economic progress. In place of those cultural attributes, the leaders …

No. 09: Transnationalism And African Immigration To South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

The demise of formal apartheid has created new and as yet only partially understood opportunities for migration to South Africa. Legal migration from other Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, for example, has increased almost ten-fold since 1990 to over four million visitors per year. South Africa’s (re)insertion into the global economy has brought new streams of legal and undocumented migrants from outside the SADC region and new ethnic constellations within. The easing of legal and unauthorized entry to South Africa has made the country a new destination for African asylum-seekers, long-distance traders, entrepreneurs, students and professionals (Bouillon 1996; Saasa …

Representing Bosnia: Human Rights Claims And Global Media Culture, James Castonguay

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Review Of Dr. Holmberg's Work, Gary Hoppenstand

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor's Introduction]

Dr. Carl Holmberg, a beloved member of Bowling Green State University's department of Popular Culture and father of two daughters, Lily and Erin, passed away September 29, 2002 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. In addition to what you will find highlighted below, Dr. Holmberg was in the process of extensive research into Japanese popular culture and was loved by the students he taught at the graduate and undergraduate level. Below, we have decided to publish a review of Carl's work by friend and colleague Dr. Gary Hoppenstand, so that the members of our community might realize …

Modern Arabic Film : A Study Of Selected Works Of New Arab Expressionist Filmmakers, Mohamed Masoud Elmasmari

Student Works (2000-2009)

Film reached the major cities of the Arab world within a matter of months of the first film showing in Paris, London, and New York, so the history of film exhibition and to some extent film production in virtually as long in the Arab world as in the West. The experience of the last thirty years has shown situation to be of enormous creative potential for an artist. In this study, attention is paid to the achievements of just a handful of notable filmmakers of the New Arab Cinema, even this choice is limited but not random, for all the …

Reading Hong Kong Chinese Culture: Hybridity Or Eclecticism, A Matter Of Contemporary Configuration, K. C. Staples

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis investigates the Cultural Studies paradigm 'hybridity' through an analysis of Hong Kong culture. In Cultural Studies, 'hybridity' is usually applied to cultures that have been influenced by another culture, resulting in a loss of identity, leading to a cultural mixture. As a former Colony comprising predominantly of a southern Chinese population, Hong Kong has been influenced by British culture. However, the question is whether Hong Kong culture has been 'hybridises', or, the Hong Kong people, in mastering two cultures, have become bicultural, and use their biculturalism bilaterally, as particular situations require. The study also researches the condition of …

Looking At African Value System Through Cultural Dimensions: How Do African Countries Culturally Differ Among Themselves And From The United States?, Habte G. Woldu

International Conference on African Development Archives

The study through a variety of cultural dimensions, measures the cultural differences and similarities of four different African countries: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa. The national cultures of the four African countries are analyzed through a methodology for systematically assessing cultural differences. The African countries are compared with that of the United States of America. The output of the study clearly shows that there are cultural differences among the African countries as well as between the African countries and the United States. African respondents demonstrated significantly higher cultural traits in collective & hieratical relations, being/feeling & risk avoidance related …

The Role Of The Internet In Chinese Foreign And Domestic Affairs, Jean Bowman Leedy

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Problem: Rapid dissemination of Internet technology and the free access to information it affords poses a threat to non-democratic states that rely on control of information to maintain power and stability. This is of substantial concern to the Communist regime in The People's Republic of China due to the fact that its repressed population constitutes the fastest growing body of Internet users in the world.

Methods: This paper examines the potential impact of the Internet on Chinese foreign and domestic policy through interpretation of existing literature as it applies to the Internet, interviews with experts studying the emergence of China's …

Bolshevism And The Avant-Garde: Marxist Ideology And The Aesthetics Of Soviet Film, 1923-28, Garrett H. Booker

History Theses & Dissertations

When Eisenstein's Strike burst onto the cultural scene in 1925, Soviet cinema began a creative odyssey that left to posterity a brilliant collection of films that redefined the manner in which audiences viewed them. Not only was the form of these films dynamic and innovative, but their content captured the heroic actions of a new historical subject, the revolutionary proletariat. As the Soviet State assumed control over the production of films, politics imprinted its indelible mark on the content of these films, especially as Stalin tightened his grip over all aspects of artistic life. The author of this project will …

Review Of Theorizing The Americanist Tradition Edited By Lisa Philips Valentine And Regna Darnell, Thomas C. Patterson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The twenty-five essays in this volume enhance our understanding and appreciation of the Americanist tradition of anthropological theory and practice. The Americanist tradition, as several authors point out, has been concerned historically with Native-language texts and the knowledge they encode about the culture of Native communities and the individuals who compose them. The Americanists' concern with texts was manifested in the efforts of Albert Gatschet, George Dorsey, James Dorsey, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to document and preserve the oral knowledge of cultures that were being rapidly transformed or erased altogether. …

China And The Globalization Of Ir Theory: Discussion Of 'Building International Relations Theory With Chinese Characteristics', William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines current developments in International Relations theory in China. First it comments on Song Xinning's essay, agreeing that IR theory in China is limited by ideology, the dominance of policy-oriented research, and the state. But rather than seeing culture ('IR theory with Chinese characteristics') as a problem that can be solved by a more scientific approach to IR theory, the essay argues that the scientism of realism and IPE has similar problems. Thus the essay switches from the universals of science to the contingency of interpretation to understand global politics, drawing on recent books which combine IPE with …

Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2001 - 2002, Singapore Management University

Report to Stakeholders

If the first year of incorporation was the paving of the foundation for SMU, the second year was one of laying the first building blocks. For the university, this was a year for surging ahead – of exploration and adventure. With a sizeable student population, a faculty of international repute and two schools going on three, SMU is growing from strength to strength at an unbelievable rate. But beyond sheer numbers, I sense and see a spirit of fervour and adventure in the work of students, faculty and staff in every corner of this institution that we have founded. Our …

Challenging The Gendered Hegemony Of Space: Acknowledging ‘Difference’ In Development Planning, Laura Hebert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Gender, Planning and Human Rights, edited by Tovi Fenster. New York: Routledge, 1999 (International Studies of Women and Place Series). 240pp.

Traditionally, feminist efforts to promote and protect women’s rights as human rights have focused on legalistic strategies, such as advocating for the inclusion of gender-specific concerns in international human rights conventions, the implementation of national legislation, the revision of laws that are discriminatory to women, and the strengthening of police and judicial procedures. In recent years, however, feminist activists and academics have recognized that advancing the status and empowerment of women requires recognition of the multiple …

Redefining The U.S. Hispanic Market: Generation N And American Society, Cindy L. Pino

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Confucian Ethics And The Critique Of Ideology, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas provides a fresh perspective from which Confucian philosophy may be approached. In this paper, focusing on the Lunyu (Analects), I argue that the sayings of Confucius reflect an essentially 'conservative' orientation, finding in tradition a reservoir of insight and truth. There is a critical dimension to it in that ethical reflection and self-cultivation would enable the individual to challenge particular claims of tradition. However, can self-cultivation transcend tradition as a whole and enable the individual to effect radical change? Following the strategy of Habermas' critique of Gadamer, what happens if tradition is …

Literary Skinheads? Writing From The Right In Reunified Germany, Jay Julian Rosellini

Purdue University Press Books

"Literary Skinheads? is a very nuanced, meticulously researched and vividly written study of a series of important debates in German literary circles since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid political transformations that have accompanied German unification. No other book in the English-speaking world offers such a comprehensive survey of the legacy of radical conservative ideas in German political life. Rosellini not only offers trenchant interpretations of major political controversies of the last decade in Germany, but he also provides the necessary background information needed to make sense of these important public debates." Elliott Neaman, author of …

Powerful Feelings Recollected In Tranquility Literary Criticism And Lakota Social Song Poetry, R. D. Theisz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The anthropologist and ethnomusicologist William K. Powers, in his Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, laments that the discipline of ethnomusicology-and music pedagogy-with its emphasis on the vocal and instrumental "art music" traditions of musically literate peoples has been lax in accepting anthropological theory. Thus, Powers points out that ethnomusicology, where it is concerned with the music of oral, indigenous cultures, adheres to outdated theories on "primitive" music and displays a telling absence of ethnographic abilities.¹ Reflecting Powers' judgment, it seems to me that the conceptual seams between anthropology, ethnomusicology, and musicology are rather formidable.

At …

Management And Cultural Values: The Indigenization Of Organisations In Asia: Edited By Henry S R Kao, Durganand Sinha And Bernhard Wilpert, New Delhi: Sage Publishers, 1999., R C Sekhar

IIMB Management Review

This is the third of a series of publications on inter-cultural studies emerging out of three conferences organised by the International Union of Psychological Science at Hongkong, Taiwan, Guang Zhou, China (Mainland). The studies are focused on Asia and are spread over more than a decade.

Cultural Sensitivity As Malign Attribution: The United Nations And Planning For Arms Inspections In Iraq, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes a subtext of United Nations (UN) planning for arms inspections in Iraq.

Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2000 - 2001, Singapore Management University

Report to Stakeholders

It has been an extremely gratifying first year for SMU. From scratch, we saw a curriculum developed, a more than credible faculty assembled, a campus bloom from the ground in record time, and a small group of bright and very promising young individuals set the standard as the historic pioneer intake of students. How did we even begin to persuade sponsors or students to come on board with us? We had no track record, no alumni, not even an existing undergraduate population. Yet, industry support was unabashedly warm from the time Singapore’s third university was announced. First year application for …

Globalisation And Singaporean Transmigration: Re-Imagining And Negotiating National Identity, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Within the context of globalisation that confronts the world today, I aim in this paper to illustrate one particular state's attempts at constructing a 'nation' amidst efforts to encourage its citizens to globalise, actions which are ostensibly, or at least, potentially, contradictory; and to analyse how these citizens who became transmigrants construct and negotiate their sense of 'nation' and national identity. Specifically, my empirical questions centre on Singaporean transmigrants working in China. I ask the following questions. What happens to the sense of national identity among Singaporeans and their relationship with the 'nation' when confronted with transnational conditions? What are …

Late Prehistoric High Plains Foragers: Starving Nomads, Affluent Foragers?, Luann Wandsnider

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Past human groups of the High Plains have been variously characterized as starving nomads and affluent foragers. In fact, these terms do not capture the multi-faceted nature of the human foraging experience on the High Plains. Relying on human ecology and archaeological interpretations, this paper examines the coping strategies used by Late Prehistoric foragers in the high variance environment of the High Plains, which was relatively less variable during the early part of the Late Prehistoric time period and more variable in the later part.

Review Of Frontiers Of Historical Imagination: Narrating The European Conquest Of Native America, 1890-1990 By Kerwin Lee Klein, Alex Long

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Frontiers of Historical Imagination, Kerwin Klein traces the changes in the historical discourse of the European conquest of Native America. This interdisciplinary and wide-ranging study synthesizes twentieth-century historiography, encompassing debates in history, anthropology, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. While Frederick Jackson Turner's writings serve as organizing texts for Klein's account, the changing interpretations and narratives of the American frontier provide the thematic focus.

Klein arranges his study into four books, each in turn, organized around a trope-a la Hayden White's Metahistory: metaphor ("The Language of History")' metonym ("From Spirit to System"), synecdoche ("Time Immemorial"), and …

Cemetaries And Columbaria, Memorials And Mausoleums: Narrative And Interpretation In The Study Of Deathscapes In Geography, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper reviews research on deathscapes, particularly by geographers in the last decade, and argues that many of the issues addressed reflect the concerns that have engaged cultural geographers during the same period. In particular, necrogeographical research reveals the relevance of deathscapes to theoretical arguments about the social constructedness of race, class, gender, nation and nature; the ideological underpinnings of landscapes, the contestation of space, the centrality of place and the multiplicity of meanings. This paper therefore highlights how the focus on one particular form of landscape reveals macro-cultural geographical research interests and trends.

Attempting Preventing Reinventing The Wheel: Establishing Chicano/A-Latino/A Studies At A Midwest Urban University, Joseph A. Valades, Theresa Barron-Mckeagney, Michael Carroll, Lourdes Gouveia, Lucy Garza

Social Work Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

“This session will focus on the personal observations of three faculty who sought to establish a minor in Chicano/a-Latino/a Studies . . . Follow our graphic accounts as we wrestle with the decision of actually embarking on such a quest amidst our thencurrent demands of doctoral coursework, research, teaching and tenure.” In the fall semester of 1995, Chicano/a Studies was formally recognized as a "minor" at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Two years previously, three faculty members from the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at UNO diligently worked to gather student and faculty support and put the …