Education Commons^™

Introduction To Volume 2, Erik Liddell

The Chautauqua Journal

Introduction to The Chautauqua Journal, Volume 2: Living with Others / Crossroads

Lincoln And The Constitution: From The Civil War To The War On Terror, Mark E. Neely Jr.

The Chautauqua Journal

On December 6, 2001, less than three months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft, testifying before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, gave a warning: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists—for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies.” Such tough talk was not unprecedented in American history by any means. In fact, one can draw a straight line from President Abraham Lincoln to John Ashcroft on that score. Lincoln offered his sternest warning to the …

Reflections Of A White Southerner In The Freedom Struggle, Bob Zellner

The Chautauqua Journal

Eastern Kentucky University's Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “Living with Others: Challenges and Promises,” certainly resonates with my life, my experiences and my work for human rights. I have found that a proactive approach to living with others provides a strong antidote to close-mindedness, hate and violence. Living with others peacefully, harmoniously and joyfully broadens and liberates one’s life. This sharply contrasts with my Southern upbringing during the forties and fifties, when white supremacy and male chauvinism led many southerners to be narrow minded and reactionary. Juxtaposing challenge with promise, as the Chautauqua theme does, is also compatible with my philosophy …

Living With American Indians And American Indian History, John P. Bowes

The Chautauqua Journal

The following essay developed out of a lecture given on November 17, 2011 as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series at Eastern Kentucky University. November 2011, like every November since 1994, was designated by proclamation as Native American Heritage Month. Working with the theme for the Chautauqua series, “Living with Others: Challenges and Promises,” the lecture focused on an idea relevant to the series and the month—the place of American Indians in the national historical narrative and its meaning for the place and perception of American Indian individuals and nations in the contemporary United States. This essay will build on …

Walking A Mile In Your Shoes, Matthew P. Winslow

The Chautauqua Journal

At first glance, Americans seem obsessed with other people. From magazines like People to television shows like Access Hollywood, we seem to have an insatiable appetite for the details of other people’s lives. Reality television differs from scripted television because it gives us the illusion that we are peering into the real life of other people. Much contemporary news coverage has a voyeuristic feel to it. We learn the details of the lives of people like Jerry Sandusky (child sexual abuser), Snookie (celebrity) and Whitney Houston (pop star) whether these details are relevant to an original story or not. …

Whither Education In Kentucky: The Challenges And Promises For The 21st Century, William E. Ellis

The Chautauqua Journal

From its founding in 1792, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, compared with the states north of the Ohio River, followed a typically southern style of education. Before the Civil War a slave oligarchy controlled the political destiny of the state. After the Civil War, ironically because two-thirds of Kentuckians who fought in that war were on the Union side, the state became even more southern in many ways. Racism and segregation prevailed until the mid-1950s when the state began making rapid and successful strides to integrate its public and private schools. Equity and equality have always been stumbling blocks for education …

The Wolf And The Philosopher, Mark Rowlands

The Chautauqua Journal

Some years ago, I wrote a book called The Philosopher and the Wolf. It should really have been called The Wolf and the Philosopher. The wolf is the star, the philosopher an insignificant extra bumbling around in the background. The book is about many things, but fundamentally, I suppose, it is about growing up. I’ve recently finished a sequel of sorts. It’s called Running with the Pack and it’s a book about growing old. There is, I suspect, a natural trilogy to be written here, but I hope I don’t have to write the final part for some …

Is There A Gps For Lost In Translation?, Carole Garrison

The Chautauqua Journal

Building human community is a greater task today as we reach a billion more people on our planet than just 12 years ago; then the earth was home to 6 billion people, according to the United Nations, and back in the 1960s, the earth’s population measured only half that number—3 billion. The concept, community, is over-broad and thus problematic. It covers both groups and individuals bound by similar and dissimilar interests. It can contain ideas across a broad array of cultural entities in life. A “Community” is a construct, an abstraction. Even as a member, we cannot see a whole …

Contributors

The Chautauqua Journal

Contributors to Volume II: Living with Others / Crossroads

Living With Others: The African American Experience, Arnold Rampersad

The Chautauqua Journal

The phrase, “Living with Others,” is especially intriguing in the context of race relations in the United States. At one level, it invites pleasantries about our natural wish for harmony and peace among diverse peoples, along with simple or even simplistic notions about what it takes to achieve this harmony and peace. At another level, however, it has the potential to be something much more complex.

To speak of living with others against the backdrop of the history of black Americans is to ask the following key question. How does a minority people manage to live with the majority, when …

The Chautauqua Journal, Complete Volume 2: Living With Others / Crossroads

The Chautauqua Journal

Complete text of The Chautauqua Journal, Volume 2: Living with Others / Crossroads

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln And American Slavery, Eric Foner

The Chautauqua Journal

In April 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered a celebrated oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Washington, D.C., a statue that depicted Abraham Lincoln conferring freedom on a kneeling slave. “No man,” the great black abolitionist remarked, “can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln." This has not in the ensuing 130 years deterred innumerable historians, biographers, journalists, lawyers, literary critics and psychologists from trying to say something new about Lincoln. Lincoln has always provided a lens through which Americans examine themselves.

Sesquicentennial Reflections On Civil War Women, Catherine Clinton

The Chautauqua Journal

The nation looked back on its Civil War, in the midst of a whirlwind of domestic debates, while impending foreign crises loomed—but with a new young President in the White House, with his charismatic wife and children, the country seemed on the brink of momentous change. On the cusp of a new era, it seemed an appropriate time, if not overdue, to reflect on the legacy of an epic historical era that tore the nation in two. Whether referring to the centenary in 1961 with John F. Kennedy in office, or the sesquicentennial in 2011 with Barack Obama, backward glances …

A Talk With Bracelen Flood, Author Of Grant's Final Victory, Charles Bracelen Flood

The Chautauqua Journal

A talk with Charles Bracelen Flood, author of Grant's Final Victory, about the last years of Union General and President Ulysses S. Grant's life and his determination to complete his memoirs while also fighting the effects of terminal illness.

Bible Belt Gays: Insiders-Without, Bernadette Barton

The Chautauqua Journal

During a Spring 2012 visit to a university nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, my hosts introduced me to an openly gay Episcopalian priest active in a variety of local progressive causes, including gay rights issues. While enjoying a buffet luncheon of Indian food, I learned that Father “Joe” (all the names are changed) had lived many years in Central Kentucky and we knew several people in common. After a run-through of our personal connections, Father Joe shared other tidbits of his life story, including that he had not been raised Episcopalian. He explained, “I grew up in a fundamentalist family …

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Further Reflections On A Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas

The Chautauqua Journal

I first heard the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the summer that I turned 25. I had just returned to faith in a serious and moving way and one day the man who led me along that journey gave me a copy of Bonhoeffer’s classic book, The Cost of Discipleship. He asked if I’d ever heard of Bonhoeffer. I told him that I hadn’t, and he told me that Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who because of his faith had stood up for the Jews and had gotten involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He said that …

Christian Faith And Struggles For Justice (A Reply To Metaxas), Carolyn R. Dupont

The Chautauqua Journal

As part of the EKU Chautauqua Lecture Series, author Eric Metaxas came to Central Kentucky to speak about his newly published book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. The book garnered glowing reviews in some circles and continued to sell briskly after reaching the top slot on the New York Times bestseller list in September 2011. Engaging and openly evangelical, Metaxas tells a compelling story of the life and ultimate end of the German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime, joined a plot to kill Hitler and paid with his life. Audiences leave his presentations as if under a spell. …

First Day Of My Life, Derek Nikitas

The Chautauqua Journal

Mom stomped on the gas and the wheels spun but the car went nowhere. Rowan scooted up in the passenger seat to get a better view. The windshield was caked around with snow like the fuzzy edges of a dream, and the back window was even worse. Six hours back they left Queens, but now they were in the woods somewhere in New Hampshire. Rowan couldn’t even see a road.

“Well, we’re here,” Mom said, and tossed up her hands. Her voice steamed. They were both bundled in extra layers, but still Rowan’s toes were frozen in his boots. Around …

Abiding With Me, John Lackey

The Chautauqua Journal

Poem: "Abiding With Me"

Q & A With Donna Freitas, Author Of Sex And The Soul, Donna Freitas, Lisa Day

The Chautauqua Journal

As part of your methodology for your research and your writing of Sex and the Soul, how did you choose the participating universities? Did you consider any Bible Belt schools? Do you think Southern schools might align more closely with purity culture at religious schools? Have you visited any schools that presented different results from the predominant paradigm?

For this study, I chose the participating colleges and universities based on a number of factors: religious affiliation or non religious affiliation (Catholic, evangelical, private-secular and public), size, geographic location and whether the school was primarily a campus where students lived …

Elder Women Making Family Through Celebratory Foods: Kentucky, New Zealand, Thailand, Doris Pierce, Anne Shordike, Clare Hocking, Valerie Wright, Wannipa Bunrayong, Soisuda Vittayakorn, Phuanjai Rattakorn

The Chautauqua Journal

This study, which describes how older women of three counties experience the preparation of annual celebratory foods, is uniquely responsive to the theme of EKU’s 2011-2012 Chautauqua Lecture Series, “Living with Others: Challenges and Promises.” How women of different countries lead their families in preparing traditional foods together each year demonstrates how, although each culture is unique, the challenges and promises of living with others are fulfilled and managed in many similar and little-examined women’s ways in countries around the globe.

Understanding The Complexity Of School Bully Involvement, Dorothy L. Espelage

The Chautauqua Journal

Bullying perpetration and victimization are issues of increasing concern for researchers, educators, clinicians, parents and youth today. Bullying broadly refers to aggressive behaviors including physical aggression (hitting, shoving, tripping, etc.), verbal aggression (teasing, name-calling, threatening) as well as relational aggression (rumor spreading, exclusion, isolation from clique). Bullying is thought to differ from normal peer conflict in that it is often repeated and involves a difference in power between the bully and victim. Bullying behaviors also extend to the use of the internet and cell-phones to harass and intimidate recipients. Bullying through these mediums is commonly referred to as cyberbullying. Although …

The Ethics Of Facebook, Michael W. Austin

The Chautauqua Journal

In this paper, I offer a moral analysis of Facebook. What are the morally positive features of Facebook? What are its morally negative features? I will limit my attention to the personal and interpersonal aspects of the use of this technology, and set aside an ethical analysis of the business practices, both past and present, of Facebook. My analysis, then, is not comprehensive. I will argue for a particular thesis concerning Facebook, namely, that in many ways Facebook’s moral value for a person depends on the character of that person, though the structure of this technology is not morally neutral. …

How To Build A Domesticated Fox: The Start Of A Long Journey, Lee A. Dugatkin

The Chautauqua Journal

In 1959, outside of Novosibirsk, Siberia, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut began what remains one of the longest-running experiments in biology. For the last 59 years they have been domesticating silver foxes and studying evolution in real time. Belyaev died in 1985, but Trut has continued to lead this experiment up to this very day. Each generation they and their team have been selecting the calmest, most prosocial-toward-humans foxes and preferentially breeding those individuals. Today they have foxes that are calmer than lap dogs, and who also look eerily dog-like—floppy ears, wagging tail and all. Belyaev and Trut’s results have …