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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Book Review: How To Cure A Fanatic, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: How To Cure A Fanatic, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
How to Cure a Fanatic by the internationally acclaimed novelist and peace activist Amos Oz, is a book I took with me on a recent trip to the Balkans. I decided to read the book and write my review in my flat on Gradacacka Street in the Otoka neighborhood of Sarajevo, given the book’s topic and the problems that have plagued the people of Bosnia for the past fifteen years.
Book Review: Reading Lolita In Tehran By Azar Nafisi, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: Reading Lolita In Tehran By Azar Nafisi, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Azar Nafisi, now the Director of the Dialogue Project at John Hopkins University, does a fine job in this book of piecing together her life as an academic, especially the last two years of her residence in Tehran when she embarked on an adventure to supplement the education of a select group of university students. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a multilayered memoir about teaching Western literature in revolutionary Iran in the late 1990s.
Book Review: Culture, Ideology And Society, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: Culture, Ideology And Society, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Fatos Tarifa’s Culture, Ideology and Society was my companion on a recent trip to the Balkans. Having read and reviewed one of his other books, The Quest for Legitimacy and the Withering Away of Utopia, I thought Culture, Ideology and Society would not only offer a glimpse of how a social scientist turned enlightened diplomat examines the lenses through which sociologists, philosophers, and film makers look at the world, but also some insight into the categories and concepts that are useful in better understanding the Balkans. I believe the book was somewhat successful at doing both.
Book Review: The Quest For Legitimacy And The Withering Away Of Utopia, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: The Quest For Legitimacy And The Withering Away Of Utopia, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Many who live in the West have a myopic view of the world and of recent history. They understand the transition from the end of the twentieth century to the start of the new millennium as the replacement of one “evil” with another. The Cold War and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union have been replaced with the War on Terrorism and the battles being waged against Al-Qaeda, Hizballah, and the many other terrorist organizations worldwide, as well as nation states like Iraq and Iran that are said to sponsor terrorist groups. Indeed, the expression “rogue …
Book Review: The Man Who Tried To Save The World: The Dangerous Life And Mysterious Disappearance Of Fred Cuny By Scott Anderson, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: The Man Who Tried To Save The World: The Dangerous Life And Mysterious Disappearance Of Fred Cuny By Scott Anderson, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Occasionally a biography is written about an individual who is "cut" from a different piece of cloth than the of the rest of us. The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny is such a biography. Scott Anderson. a war correspondent who has covered numerous connects around the world, tells the story of this most extraordinary humanitarian relief expert. Fred Cuny considered the interests of strangers to be more important than those of his own and eventually gave his life in the pursuit of rendering assistance to those who most needed …
Book Review: Ethics For The New Millennium, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: Ethics For The New Millennium, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Ethics for the New Millennium is a book written by the Dalai Lama that came to my attention at the request of a few of my students who wanted to start a reading group. Although the book remained in my office, I took the Dalai Lama's ideas about ethics with me when I visited China, a country that bears Buddhism's mark. Whether you agree with bis views or not, you cannot help but admire him; nor do you have to be a Buddhist to enjoy this readable and interesting book, a quick and easy read intended for the general reader.
Book Review: To End A War, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: To End A War, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
If asked to name career diplomats who have tackled some very difficult international crises, many foreign policy makers would put Richard Holbrooke near the top of the list. Not many negotiators have wielded moral principle, power, and reason as well as Holbrooke. His book on the Bosnia negotiations leading up to the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement is timely, given the ethnic cleansing that is being carried out in Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia's Serb Republic. Once again we are faced with unrest in the Balkans. We have seen the daily newspaper headlines change from "24 Albanian Men Killed in …
Book Review: Chechnya: Tombstone Of Russian Power, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: Chechnya: Tombstone Of Russian Power, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
From December 1994 to August 1996, Russia was engaged in the Chechen War, a Vietnam-style quagmire that exemplified, on the one hand, the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power, and, on the other hand, "one of the greatest epics of colonial resistance in the past century.'' No analysis can hope to understand the totality of forces that lend to the stability (or instability) of nations with large minority populations unless it first examines the conditions that led to the Russian defeat in Chechnya. At the center of that problem lies an interesting issue. What aspects of …
Book Review: The Decolonization Of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge And Power, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: The Decolonization Of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge And Power, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power includes fourteen essays, some of which are revised papers presented at a cultural studies conference in Amsterdam in 1991, that contribute to the rapidly growing library of literature on postcolonial theory by exploring the dimensions of decolonization.
Book Review: The Price Of A Dream: The Story Of The Grameen Bank And The Idea That Is Helping The Poor To Change Their Lives, Rory J. Conces
Book Review: The Price Of A Dream: The Story Of The Grameen Bank And The Idea That Is Helping The Poor To Change Their Lives, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
A simple logo, a red and green arrow, is commonly found on buildings in villages and cities scattered across the South Asian country of Bangladesh. The logo, as unpretentious as its creator, signifies the presence of one of the many offices of the Grameen Bank, a credit institution founded in 1976 by the charismatic economist Muhammed Yunus. The history of the Grameen Bank, and of how the bank has worked to alleviate poverty through an innovative entrepreneurial approach to development in one of the poorest nations in the world, is the subject of David Borstein's readable and often entertaining book.