bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
First Steps: Bozidar Vidov and the Early Croatian Language Schools in Canada
Authors: Granic Stan
Published: February 2012

Bozidar Vidov (1913–2000) was a key figure in establishing and supporting Croatian language schools prior to the adoption of the federal policy of multiculturalism and before provincial support for heritage language programs. He helped to organize Toronto’s Croatian Elementary School Abroad in 1961, and he prepared and published the first generation of textbooks used by Croatian heritage language schools and for home schooling by parents from smaller communities where schools were not yet established. In 1964 he enunciated his vision of a Federation of Croatian Elementary Schools that would coordinate and support the scattered language schools. Through his publishing activities, promotion of schools, and efforts to coordinate and facilitate an exchange of approaches and best practices among teachers, Vidov helped to build the early institutional foundation of Croatian heritage language schools serving children of parents who belonged to the third wave of immigration to Canada.

Boris Vidov (1913–2000) fut une des principales personnalités qui a mis en place et consolidé les écoles de langue croate avant l’adoption de la politique fédérale du multiculturalisme et le soutien provincial aux programmes de langues d’origine. En 1961, il aida à organiser l’École élémentaire d’outre-mer de langue croate à Toronto, et il a préparé et publié les premiers manuels scolaires qui ont servi dans les autres établissements de même type et, dans les communautés plus petites qui n’en avaient pas encore, aux parents faisant l’instruction à la maison. En 1964, il exposa son projet de coordonner et de soutenir les écoles élémentaires croates dispersées en une Fédération. Vidov a joué un rôle éditorial, a promu les écoles et s’est efforcé de coordonner et de faciliter un échange de points de vue et de meilleures pratiques pédagogiques entre les enseignants. Il a ainsi aidé à jeter les premières fondations institutionnelles de l’enseignement du et en croate au service d’enfants dont les parents faisaient partie de la troisième vague d’immigration au Canada.
Voice Is Voice Whether a Bat or a Poet
Authors: Howell Pamela R.
Published: February 2012

Randall Jarrell's The Bat-Poet explores the dilemma of the artist in maintaining his individuality in his work, of finding his voice, and yet reaching an audience. Through the development and responses to three full-length poems , the novice bat-poet learns important lessons about his craft and his audience and about his relation to both. The bat has many creative experiences with audience and with critics, but it is his failure to know the response of his most important audience — the other bats who initially reject his artistic efforts — that is critical to Jarrell's point. Ultimately, the bat-poet claims the time to choose whether he will simply remain a bat to his community or if he will recite the poem, changing his voice and his identity to become the batpoet.
Localized Globalization and a Monster National: The Host and the South Korean Film Industry
Authors: Lee Nikki J. Y.
Published: February 2012

This essay examines the industrial practices behind the domestic success of the South Korean film The Host ( Goemul ; Bong Joon-ho, 2006), highlighting the Korean film industry's ambivalent nationalist-global ideological stance and its increasingly monopolizing and globalizing tendencies, and arguing that Korea's pursuit of indigenous movie blockbusters has turned it into an international producer and distributor of localized global movies.
Surveying the World of Contemporary Comics Scholarship: A Conversation
Authors: Smith Greg M.
Published: February 2012

Instead of a traditional book-review section focusing on particular academic works on comics, Cinema Journal asked Greg M. Smith to moderate a more informal conversation among scholars about the current state of comics scholarship, its successes, its challenges, and promising directions for future work. Smith invited Thomas Andrae, Scott Bukatman, and Thomas LaMarre to participate and started the conversation with general questions: What works of comics scholarship do you find useful? Why these works? Andrae responded with an annotated list of his favorites, which provided a springboard for the rest of the discussion.
Out of the Screen and into the Theater: 3-D Film as Demo
Authors: Sandifer Elizabeth
Published: February 2012

Abstract: The technology of 3-D film is perennially hyped, yet it has been largely overlooked in Film Studies. This essay argues that 3-D film violates the essential metaphor of film, and that this limits it to brief periods of success as a spectacle, as opposed to being used for more serious narrative purposes.
Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom
Authors: Ellcessor Elizabeth
Published: February 2012

This essay uses the writer and actor Felicia Day as a case study through which to explore how stardom is changed by social media. It argues for the concept of "star texts of connection," in which audiences, industries, and projects are unified through the creation of active, social, online star texts.
A Nineteenth-Century American Interpretation of the Aeneid
Authors: Dexter Joseph P.
Published: February 2012

This paper examines a loose, popularized translation of Aeneid 1 and 4 published in 1870 by a small New England newspaper. Through evaluation of the translator’s preface and related material, I argue that the text was intended to be a response to the marginalization of the classics in school curricula and a useful pedagogical tool for attracting students to Vergil. I then consider the translation in relation to the long tradition of Vergilian travesty and propose that it can be read as a combinatorial parody that satirizes both the original epic and nineteenth-century American society in an attempt to increase interest in the classics.
Paul Valéry and Geometry: Instrument, Writing Model, Practice
Authors: Krauthausen Karin
Published: February 2012

In the course of the nineteenth century, the development of non-Euclidean geometries and topology led to wide-ranging discussions on the foundations of mathematics. The new mathematical objects and the accompanying disputes also became a source of fascination for literature. A paradigmatic instance of this is the French writer and theorist Paul Valéry (1871-1945), whose Cahiers (1894-1945) show a constant preoccupation with mathematical problems. What is remarkable here is the fundamental significance Valéry ascribes to mathematics for his own work. Initially, he searched in topology for a tool to advance his reflection on psychology. Although this project ultimately failed, mathematics became for Valéry an ideal—since "operative"—mode of writing, one against which to measure his own literary writing and note-taking. However, the result of this formalization, which he pursued over decades, was neither mathematic literature nor, indeed, literary mathematics, but a form of writing that had a significant effect upon the twentieth-century understanding of literature: the aim of producing a finished work was shifted into the background to make room for writing as a "life-form."
'I Hē Koe?: Placing Rapa Nui
Authors: Young Forrest Wade
Published: February 2012

In August 2010, conflict between indigenous Rapa Nui people and the Chilean state in "Easter Island" escalated as Rapa Nui occupied institutions and lands claimed by the Chilean state. This article introduces competing discourses by which the events of August 2010, as well as subsequent conflicts, might be assessed: archaeological, tourist, Chilean, indigenous, and cosmopolitan ethnography. Ethnographic analysis illuminates the point that the nonindigenous discourses fail to coherently "place" the significance of Rapa Nui people in Easter Island and hence cannot coherently ground the sense of Rapa Nui resistance. By contextualizing the events within indigenous epistemology, the events are shown to be continuous with over a century of rational Rapa Nui resistance to Chilean colonialism on the island. The article thus provides a discursive ground for interpreting recent and ongoing conflict in Rapa Nui in terms of Rapa Nui discursive practice.
The Asian American Hepatitis B Program: Building a Coalition to Address Hepatitis B Health Disparities
Authors: Trinh-Shevrin Chau , Pollack Henry J. , Tsang Thomas , Park Jihyun , Ramos Mary Ruchel , Islam Nadia , Wang Su , Chun Kay , Sim Shao-Chee , Pong Perry , Rey Mariano Jose , Kwon Simona C.
Published: February 2012

Background: Community coalitions are increasingly recognized as important strategies for addressing health disparities. By providing the opportunity to pool resources, they provide a means to develop and sustain innovative approaches to affect community health.
Objectives: This article describes the challenges and lessons learned in building the Asian American Hepatitis B Program (AAHBP) coalition to conduct a community-based participatory research (CBPR) initiative to address hepatitis B (HBV) among New York City Asian-American communities.
Methods: Using the stages of coalition development as a framework, a comprehensive assessment of the process of developing and implementing the AAHBP coalition is presented.
Lessons Learned: Findings highlight the importance of developing a sound infrastructure and set of processes to foster a greater sense of ownership, shared vision, and investment in the program.
Conclusion: Grassroots community organizing and campus–community partnerships can be successfully leveraged to address and prevent a significant health disparity in an underserved and diverse community.
College Student Drug Use: Patterns, Concerns, Consequences, and Interest in Intervention
Authors: Palmer Rebekka S. , McMahon Thomas J. , Moreggi Danielle I. , Rounsaville Bruce J. , Ball Samuel A.
Published: February 2012

Although previous surveys have indicated high rates of illicit and prescription drug misuse among college students, few have assessed negative consequences, personal concerns, or interest in interventions for drug use. In a survey of 262 college students who self-reported lifetime use of an illicit drug, 69% reported at least one negative consequence over the course of their lifetime and 63% in the past year. Many also reported being moderately concerned (28%) about their drug or medication misuse and moderately interested in some form of intervention (76%). The frequency of marijuana use and medication misuse in the past month was related to increased negative consequences and personal concerns even when controlling for the frequency of past month alcohol use. There were relatively few differences as a function of gender or year in college.
Defending Union Democracy
Authors: Moberg David
Published: February 2012

In 1958, Herman Benson, a longtime socialist and labor editor of a weekly New York tabloid, Labor Action, received a call about three leaders in a Chicago Machinist union local. They had challenged the questionable financial practices of the union business agent, but the union's international president was more upset about their distribution of handbills to members than any malfeasance by the business agent. He put the local under a trustee who promulgated rules banning distribution of any literature (even the Bill of Rights). As the local leaders carried on their protest, two of them were expelled by the president, A. L. Hayes, after he suppressed the results of an internal trial and issued his own verdict. It's an appalling story, but the kicker is that Hayes was also chairman of the new AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee.
The Struggle for EUrope
Authors: Nicolaidis Kalypso
Published: February 2012

Constitutions are often born out of tumultuous moments—after a war or in a moment of collective reconciliation. By contrast, the European Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters last spring sought to translate half a century of peace into a formal political settlement. Although proponents of the constitution, especially within the European left, were dismayed by the No votes, some of them believe that it is possible to turn the rejection into an opportunity both for the left and for the European Union project as a whole.
Ghosts, Fantasies, and Hope
Authors: Willis Ellen
Published: February 2012

For most of my politically conscious life, the idea of social transformation has been the great taboo of American politics. From the smug 1950s to the post-Reagan era, in which a bloodied and cowed left has come to regard a kinder, gentler capitalism as its highest aspiration, this anti-utopian trend has been interrupted only by the brief but intense flare-up of visionary politics known as "the sixties." Yet that short-lived, anomalous upheaval has had a more profound effect on my thinking about the possibilities of politics than the following three decades of reaction. The reason is not (to summarize the conversation-stopping accusations routinely aimed at anyone who suggests that sixties political and cultural radicalism might offer other than negative lessons for the left) that I am stuck in a time warp, nursing a romantic attachment to my youth, and so determined to idealize a period that admittedly had its politically dicey moments. Rather, as I see it, the enduring interest of this piece of history lies precisely in its spectacular departure from the norm. It couldn't happen, according to the reigning intellectual currents of the fifties, but it did. Nor—in the sense of ceasing to cast a shadow over the present—can it really be said to be over, even in this age of "9/11 Changed Everything."
Taming the Hydra: WMD: Threat and Strategies
Authors: Roxborough Ian
Published: February 2012

If a small (ten-kiloton) nuclear bomb exploded in Times Square, it would "destroy instantaneously the theater district, the New York Times building, Grand Central Terminal, and every other structure within a third of a mile. . . . The ensuing firestorm would engulf Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building, and Madison Square Garden. . . . On a normal workday, more than half a million people crowd the area within a half-mile radius of Times Square. A noon detonation in midtown Manhattan would kill them all. Hundreds of thousands of others would die from collapsing buildings, fire, and fallout in the ensuing hours," says Graham Allison in his book Nuclear Terrorism.
The Soul of a Poet: Raúl Rivero
Authors: Berman Paul
Published: February 2012

Raúl Rivero moved into dissident opposition after what he deemed the betrayal of the Cuban Revolution. In 1991 he formally broke with the regime and founded an independent Cuban news agency. He wrote reports of what was actually happening and sent them abroad for publication. He taped some of these reports and distributed the tapes in Cuba—a tape-cassette samizdat, to use the old Soviet word for underground literature. His recordings were biting and ironic. He wrote poems. And, of course, he was detained by the police many times.
Russia: Which Capitalist Road?
Authors: Stein Judith
Published: February 2012

The relationship between democracy and the economy has always been contested terrain. In Russia, many people, including intellectuals, do not see democracy as important to economic reconstruction. They are unconcerned by President Vladimir Putin's steady elimination of the content, if not the form, of democratic institutions. Defending his near-monopoly of Russian television, Putin claimed that Russians want to know the truth, not its many variations. He has been buying up media, arresting politicians and businessmen who challenge him, substituting appointed for elected local officials, and bringing the judiciary under executive control. In fact, many Russians attribute the country's current economic growth to the order that Putin has imposed. Western criticism of Putin stokes a nationalistic pride.
Herbert Hoover and Hurricane Katrina
Authors: Mills Nicolaus
Published: February 2012

Lyndon Johnson's response to Hurricane Betsy, the subject on September 11, 1965, of two New York Times stories and more recently the focus of a "Letter from Louisiana" in the New Yorker by its editor, David Remnick, and a New York Times op-ed by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, is still seen by many as the best historical example of how the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina should be judged. It is a comforting thought for Bush critics. But there is another historical example, more in tune with the current political atmosphere, that we also need to consider. It is the reaction of the Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover administrations to the great Mississippi River flood of 1927.
The Co-op: On Urban Planning and Socialist Dreams
Authors: Kriegel Leonard
Published: February 2012

Leonard Kriegel reminisces about moving to a co-op in the 1960s, when When "urban renewal" was not yet a term of opprobrium. Most New Yorkers were less interested in what was being knocked down than in what was being built in its place.
What Am I Going to Do With the Rest of My Life?
Authors: Rubin Lillian B.
Published: February 2012

In 1979, I published a book on the midlife search for self that had in it a chapter titled, "What Am I Going to Do With the Rest of My Life?" Then, I was writing about women who at forty found themselves facing a frighteningly empty future. As one woman put it: "Pretty much the whole of adult life was supposed to be around helping your husband and raising the children. I mean, I never thought about what happens to the rest of life. He doesn't need your help any more and the children are raised. Now what?"
The Last Page
Authors: Linfield Susie
Published: February 2012

When I hear professional critics, or my students, bemoan the commodification of art, a wave of irritation engulfs me. Yes, yes, I think, we live in a capitalist society where art, like other things, is bought and sold. This is especially true of documentary photographs, which, almost from their inception, offered information to the masses and were never intended as pure art. Reproduced in newspapers and popular magazines, photographs thrive not just in the marketplace of ideas but also in the real, grubby one.
Movement Mayor: Can Antonio Villaraigosa Change Los Angeles?
Authors: Dreier Peter , Freer Regina , Gottlieb Robert , Vallianatos Mark
Published: February 2012

Antonio Villaraigosa was elected mayor in May 2005, unseating the incumbent James Hahn, a moderate Democrat, by a 59 percent to 41 percent landslide. Instantly, the new mayor's face was everywhere, on the cover of Newsweek, on the network news stations. The "bold" and "charismatic" mayor was profiled on National Public Radio and in nearly every major newspaper in the country. The stories focused on his prominence as a Latino mayor in the country's second largest city. They also highlighted his early years—as the son of an abusive father, a rebellious teenager, a high school dropout (before returning to get his diploma, then graduating from UCLA)—and described his growth as a progressive activist and elected official. They portrayed his ascent—as Villaraigosa often does himself—as an updated version of the American dream.
Democrats and Middle America: What's the Real Problem?
Authors: Ross Benjamin
Published: February 2012

Why is it so hard for Democrats to get votes from people whose economic interests should lead them to support the party? Is Hillary Clinton right to identify the root cause as the party's lack of credibility as a protector of national security and to seek a remedy in a hawkish approach to foreign policy? Is the problem primarily cultural, a feeling that liberal elites are hostile to the values and religious beliefs of ordinary Americans? Or is it simply that Democrats have pursued an economic agenda of free trade and deregulation—against the interests of working people—leaving the party defenseless in the face of Republican demagoguery on whatever issue comes to hand?
Heaven Can Wait: Against Michael Kazin
Authors: Jacoby Susan
Published: February 2012

Kazin, whose new biography of William Jennings Bryan should be a major corrective to the cartoonish stereotype based entirely on Bryan's role in the Scopes "monkey trial," is absolutely right in his contention that "evangelical Protestantism has always been an integral part of American political history." But he fails to make a crucial distinction between eighteenth-century evangelicals, who supported the godless Constitution because they regarded any government involvement with religion as an insult to God, and later evangelicals, who, as their numbers grew, did everything they could to write their religious views into law, on matters ranging from Sunday postal service to the outlawing of alcohol.
Democratic Dilemmas: The Party and the Movements
Authors: Gitlin Todd
Published: February 2012

In heaven, possibly, ideals speak for themselves. But on earth ideals require translation; they require action. If the world were logically ordered, politics would begin with ends—so Plato and Aristotle would insist. But a little experience demonstrates that the ends crash and burn without means. So, over time, human beings have learned that their ideals need means, vessels, escorts—and that's where the trouble begins. The need for means is the terrible requirement exacted by an unforgiving world, and in this requirement, and the possibility it creates of a fatal mismatch between ends and means, lies the taproot of political tragedy. Ideals are the necessary motives of practical action, but ideals without wherewithal are empty dreams, and ideals yoked to the wrong means are likely to turn into nightmares.
'At the Mind's Limits'
Authors: Stansell Christine
Published: February 2012

Genocides, once over, have a way of turning into crimes without criminals. In the aftermath, the corpses pile up, denunciations, recriminations, and chants of "never again" fill the air, and the historians, political scientists, and genocide specialists set to work. Meanwhile, few, except the survivors, notice that the murderers themselves are disappearing: into thin air (the Turks), into the maquis (the Khmer Rouge), into the refugee camps (the Rwandans), or into their postwar lives as solid citizens (the Nazis). If you go by the numbers of known killers, you would think that millions of people died at the hands of a few miscreants. Exactly one Nazi, the commander of Auschwitz, admitted to murdering Jews.
China's Nationalist Narrative
Authors: Friedman Edward
Published: February 2012

The vengeful nationalism that pervades China under Communist Party rule is explored in Peter Gries's study, China's New Nationalism. The discourse of this nationalism identifies the forces threatening China's return to glory and describes what must be done to defeat that threat and restore the nation's dignity.
Regime Change and Just War
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

Allied policy at the end of the Second World War reminds us that regime change can be justified in the aftermath of a just war. Michael Walzer argues that a more indirect approach to regime change can also be justified before (and instead of) a just war—indeed, the success of this approach would render war unnecessary and therefore unjust. And if we commit ourselves to that indirection, if we commit ourselves to the forceful containment of brutal regimes, to collective security, we may find that we can reach justice without the terrible destructiveness of war.
George W. Bush and the Latest Evangelical Menace
Authors: Ribuffo Leo P.
Published: February 2012

In March 2003, Newsweek pronounced George W. Bush's presidency the "most resolutely 'faith based' in modern times." This judgment is plausible enough to merit serious consideration but it is self-evidently true only if modern times began on January 20, 1989, when George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, there has been little serious examination of this judgment. Rather, a facile stereotype of a "faith-based" presidency has become conventional wisdom among Bush's friends and foes alike.
Promoting Democracy: Is Exporting Revolution a Constructive Strategy?
Authors: Beissinger Mark R.
Published: February 2012

Over the past five years, four successful revolutions have occurred in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, overthrowing pseudodemocratic regimes and bringing to power new coalitions expressing commitment to democratic reform. There is now enormous interest in revolution among democratic activists throughout the region. The "colored revolutions" (so named for their adoption of "people power" tactics of nonviolent resistance and their symbolic use of colors to identify supporters) have inspired oppositional groups in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Oppositions in places as distant as Lebanon, Egypt, Togo, and Zimbabwe have been emboldened by these developments. Like European monarchs after 1848, post-Soviet strongmen are now concerned about the transnational spread of revolution to their fiefdoms. Some have already taken counter-measures to stave off such a possibility. Post-Soviet Eurasia today is a region consumed by the hope and fear of revolutionary change—and of its aftermath.
Roots of Insecurity: Why American Workers and Others Are Losing Out
Authors: Brand Horst
Published: February 2012

In 2004 the International Labor Office (ILO) published a voluminous though mistitled report called "Economic Security for a Better World." This is in fact a treatise about the economic insecurity that has been afflicting the world's working people for the past several decades. It is also an argument criticizing the "liberalization context" of insecurity and the policies that have deliberately fostered it. Liberalization, says the ILO, is the objective of policies formulated by international financial institutions in concert with the U.S. Treasury—policies that are based on the "Washington Consensus."
Attacking Secular America
Authors: Mattson Kevin
Published: February 2012

American conservatism has always differed from the European conservatism of Edmund Burke. Bereft of rooted traditions, organic hierarchy, or state-based religion—all those things that built the European scaffolding for intellectual reaction—American conservatives have had to reconcile themselves to an alarmingly individualistic and populist society. That's not to say that America was born and will remain a liberal country, the way political scientists like Louis Hartz once confidently prognosticated during the 1950s. Rather, it means that to be conservative demands picking up on some not-so-native-born traditions (Catholicism) or turning populist in style—making for strange alliances and belief systems that don't necessarily hinge together too well.
Getting Right with the Cold War: A Debate with Joanne Barkan
Authors: Mattson Kevin
Published: February 2012

It would seem that Dissenters and others on the left have a hard time getting over the cold war. Pieces about the cold war not only filled the Summer 2006 issue but have appeared before in the magazine's pages- including my own reconsideration of Arthur Schlesinger's The Vital Center (Winter 2005) and Jeffrey Isaac's brilliant defense of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Summer 2002). There was also George Packer's fine collected set of essays (it included pieces by Dissent editors Paul Berman and Todd Gitlin) that evoked the memory of 1930s fascism and 1940s communism and made explicit linkages between cold war liberalism and the sort of liberalism that Packer hoped to recover.
The Globe of Villages: Digital Media and the Rise of Homegrown Terrorism
Authors: Mohamed Feisal G.
Published: February 2012

We have been told that the August 2006 plot to attack several U.S.-bound flights departing from London's Heathrow Airport was hatched largely by Muslim Britons. This is becoming a familiar story. Earlier this summer, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police foiled a homegrown Toronto cell in its attempt to blow up Parliament with a fertilizer bomb similar to that used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. The July 7, 2005, attacks on London buses and subways were carried out largely by British citizens, and this was not the first such occurrence: two Britons traveled to Tel Aviv in 2003 to conduct a suicide bombing of a nightclub that killed three and wounded sixty.
Killing Tyrants
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

Is it possible to oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of killing tyrants? That is, I think, my own position, but the botched execution of Saddam Hussein, which looked more like savage revenge than impartial justice, made it much harder to hold on to both those views. Still, they seem to me contradictory but not incompatible. I don't believe that the state should kill people convicted of crimes against other people, even of terrible crimes. Except when it is resisting military attack or helping others who are under attack, the state should not be in the killing business; its first commitment is to the preservation of life. But a tyrant has committed crimes not simply against individuals but against the solidarity of the citizens, against the commonwealth, against the very idea of a political community. And that seems to raise the stakes; a tyrant is not an ordinary criminal.
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Telhami Shibley
Published: February 2012

The American project to spread democracy in the Middle East in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the Iraq War was doomed from the outset. That's not because the Middle East is not compatible with democracy, but because the project was based on contradictions and erroneous assumptions.
Photography After the Flood
Authors: Mills Nicolaus
Published: February 2012

Today, when we think of the hundreds of thousands of families who between 1935 and 1938 migrated to California after Dust Bowl conditions forced them off their farms in the Great Plains, we picture the men and women Dorothea Lange photographed during the years she worked for the New Deal's Farm Security Administration. Primarily a portrait photographer until 1932, Lange found the skills that she had developed for the studio allowed her to capture the worn and tired faces of the "Okie" families trying to begin their lives again in the midst of the Great Depression.
Pragmatist Hope
Authors: Blake Casey Nelson
Published: February 2012

Think back to a time when the Clinton administration's "triangulation" and free-trade policies looked to many on the left like the primary threat to a humane approach to political economy, when controversy about presidential lying had to do with adultery and not a ghastly war, and when political insurgents looked to a candidate other than Ralph Nader to carry the banner of a progressive politics. That candidate was Bill Bradley, whose only success in the 2000 primaries was to lure voters with postgraduate degrees away from Al Gore. But unlike earlier "new politics" efforts, notably Eugene McCarthy's 1968 race, the failed Bradley campaign disappeared without leaving a trace on American politics.
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Cushman Thomas
Published: February 2012

As someone who supported the war in Iraq, I am often asked these days—in some cases tauntingly and with a touch of Schadenfreude—if I have changed my mind. Even when asked politely, the question is vexing and, in any case, my opinion is of little consequence in relation to the tragic turn of events in Iraqi history. Throughout the war, the liberal case for it mattered little to those in power in the United States or to those who were critical of U.S. power. It mattered most to those powerless agents in Iraq who mostly did support the war and did see it as an act of liberation. It still matters to millions of liberal-minded Iraqis who threw their energies into building a democratic and free society, but who have been thwarted by the abject failures of the Bush administration, the willful indifference and even hostility displayed by the global left, and the barbaric fundamentalist and fascist terrorists who use indiscriminate mass murder as their weapon of choice.
Teaching Plato in Palestine
Authors: Fraenkel Carlos
Published: February 2012

Can philosophy save the Middle East? This, I learn from a friend upon arriving in Israel in February of 2006, is the thesis of Sari Nusseibeh, not only a prominent Palestinian intellectual and the Palestinian Liberation Organization's former chief representative in Jerusalem, but by training a philosopher (and, I think, by nature, too). "Only philosophy" the friend quotes him as saying at the Shlomo Pines memorial lecture he gave in West Jerusalem three years before. Six months later, when I return to Montreal, I'm almost convinced that he's right.
No Laughing Matter
Authors: Marcus David
Published: February 2012

One Wonders what Amis is truly up to. Why is he writing a fictionalized slave-camp narrative sixteen years after the cold war ended? When considered with his other recent work, in particular his New Yorker stories ("In the Palace of the End" and "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta"), House of Meetings provides Amis with one more means to articulate the argument he put forth in his 2006 Guardian essay, "The Age of Horrorism": that incorrigible Islamic fundamentalists—"Islamo-fascists," as he calls them—are not only the world's newest body-count manufacturers but are also guilty of the same authoritarian sadism as their Nazi and Soviet forebears. This contention, however relevant or disputable, is difficult to argue when the novella is taken out of the context of his other recent stories, and what remains beneath the din of historical reprobation is little more than hollow, thinly conceived characters.
Internet Politics in France
Authors: Soufron Jean-Baptiste
Published: February 2012

Internet and new digital technologies played remarkable, novel roles in the 2007 French presidential campaign. They produced unexpected shifts in daily operations of parties, which had to reverse their tactics as a result of information flows and the need to respond to revelations from unauthorized videos broadcast on the Web. There were forums and interactive debates online (Ségolène Royal's team was the innovator in these), and campaigners were mobilized via instant messaging. In short, political communication departed from beyond the traditional paths of a party apparatus, public relations teams, and mainstream journalism. Activists online helped to create the content of political debates, and this, in turn, fed into the traditional media.
France: Red Rose, Blue Grip
Authors: Cohen Mitchell
Published: February 2012

Paris: Last year an American socialist on a long stay in France ambled almost daily past the Socialist Party (PS) headquarters of Paris's fourth arrondissement. He thought to stop in. "What are local Socialist politics like?" he wondered. After all, he came from the United States, where, unlike France, avowed socialists rarely come close to winning elections. But there was a problem. The PS office was always closed. Finally, he saw a notice indicating when it was open—one day a week for a half hour. This was a time of massive demonstrations against labor legislation proposed by the conservative government of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. The PS is the major opposition party, thousands of new members joined it during the protests, yet it never seemed to situate itself in this broad opposition movement. A year later, Nicolas Sarkozy, of the conservative Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), defeated Socialist Ségolène Royal in presidential elections by 53 percent to 47 percent.
Editor's Page
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

One of the signs of left internationalist commitment is a strong interest in the politics of other people's countries. For many years, internationalism required a steady focus on the Soviet Union. Other countries lived in the shade. But Russia today looks more like it did in czarist than in soviet times. So now internationalism is more egalitarian: we pay our respects to everybody.• But France still commands special attention—because it is the country of 1789 (and 1830 and '48), of the Paris Commune, of the Dreyfusard struggle, of Léon Blum and the Popular Front—and because of the panache (and sometimes also the serious work) of its leftist intellectuals. It is also, of course, the country of the Terror, the Napoleonic wars, the Restoration, the court-martial of Captain Dreyfus, the Vichy regime, the Algerian War—and the most famous intellectual defenses of Stalinism. Well, that is what makes it so interesting.
Martha Nussbaum Replies
Authors: Nussbaum Martha
Published: February 2012

I am very grateful to Mohammed Abed for the commitment to civil dialogue that he has shown throughout our exchange, which began last year at the American Philosophical Association. Let me begin by addressing his constructive proposal; I shall then turn to his counterarguments. Abed's proposal has two parts: first, that American and European academics might refuse to take part in academic activities inside Israel; second, and most centrally, that they should work together on creating dialogue by sponsoring events in Palestinian universities that "put Israeli, European, and American academics face-to-face with each other and with the appalling conditions in which Palestinians—academics included—are forced to live." I find the latter proposal a wonderful idea, and I hope to join Abed in organizing such a conference, on issues of social and global justice. Obviously, however, the goal of increasing understanding will be reached only if Israeli academics are (as he proposes) included; so it would appear that Abed does not favor the ostracism of individual academics that the British boycott proposes.
Joanne Barkan Replies
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: February 2012

Call this a reckless claim, but I know I made the main point of my article clear -that is, Dissent magazine's editors and writers in the 1950s didn't criticize the liberals for not being socialists; they criticized liberals for not defending liberal principles vigorously enough, for compromising those principles too often. What mattered to Dissenters, and to my argument, were the many instances when liberals caved on civil rights, civil liberties, and foreign policy. So, a useful reply would have demonstrated that the liberals had, in fact, taken principled positions on those occasions or that they had no choice but to surrender or that I had misinterpreted Dissent's position or perhaps a combination of all three. Such an analysis would have added something to the debate about how to evaluate cold war liberalism.
Zipped Trousers, Crossed Legs, and Magical Thinking: Sex Education in the Age of AIDS
Authors: Sendziuk Paul
Published: February 2012

Health-promotion experts and historians generally concur that the federal government's response to HIV/AIDS during the 1980s and early 1990s was inadequate and constrained by moralism. President Ronald Reagan famously refused to publicly address the issue of AIDS until five years after the first reported cases of AIDS (and only after it was clear that HIV was spreading outside so-called "deviant" groups, such as homosexuals and injecting drug users). The U.S. surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, fought a losing battle against Reagan and Secretary of Education William J. Bennett to introduce pragmatic sex education classes into American high schools or even mention the word "condoms" in literature mailed to U.S. households. Congress was reluctant to fund gay-based organizations, such as New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis, to devise and deliver HIV prevention programs to their constituencies, despite evidence from countries such as Australia that peer-provided education was more successful and cost-effective than having medical professionals and public health bureaucrats design campaigns and disseminate information. And successive presidents and Republican- and Democrat-controlled Congresses have failed to provide funding for needle-and-syringe exchange programs, even though there is overwhelming evidence that they are effective in preventing HIV transmission among injecting drug users. Federal public health officials claimed (and continue to assert) that there is less incentive for drug users to seek treatment once they are supplied with sterile equipment that reduces the danger of injecting, and fear that young people will experiment with drugs if needles and syringes are readily available. Yet between 1991 and 2001, eight comprehensive federally funded evaluations of the effectiveness of needle-exchange programs (both domestic and foreign-country based) concluded that such schemes reduced the rate of HIV transmission and did not lead to an increase in drug use.
Legacy of the Clinton Bubble
Authors: Canova Timothy A.
Published: February 2012

The conventional wisdom has held that economic policy was a great success under Bill Clinton in the 1990s and a failure ever since. Hillary Clinton has made the comparison often, promising to end "the seven year detour" and "attack poverty by making the economy work again." In January, in response to the president's State of the Union Address, Barack Obama stated that it was "George Bush's Washington that let the banks and financial institutions run amok and take our economy down this dangerous road."
From the Many, 99 Percent
Authors: Serpe Nick
Published: February 2012

Occupying for what? Answers abound, which can make the voices of the 99 percent sound like a cacophony. Not everyone shows up for the same reasons, but through the dominant themes run the threads of capital. “No demands” may be a difficult sell to the skeptics, but the internal result has been remarkable. The Occupations have managed to draw together the pieces of a fragmented Left—sectarians and liberals, socialists and anarchists, union workers and greens—under a single banner, while allowing us to maintain our differences. Mayors around the country may have deployed their police forces to tear down encampments, including the one in Zuccotti Park, but official and unofficial OWS groups continue to meet and are planning next steps.
Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession
Authors: Ball Laurence , Mazumder Sandeep
Published: February 2012

This paper examines inflation dynamics in the United States since 1960, with a particular focus on the Great Recession. A puzzle emerges when Phillips curves estimated over 1960–2007 are used to predict inflation over 2008–10: inflation should have fallen by more than it did. We resolve this puzzle with two modifications of the Phillips curve, both suggested by theories of costly price adjustment: we measure core inflation with the weighted median of consumer price inflation rates across industries, and we allow the slope of the Phillips curve to change with the level and variance of inflation. We then examine the hypothesis of anchored inflation expectations. We find that expectations have been fully “shock-anchored” since the 1980s, while “level anchoring” has been gradual and partial, but significant. It is not clear whether expectations are sufficiently anchored to prevent deflation over the next few years. Finally, we show that the Great Recession provides fresh evidence against the New Keynesian Phillips curve with rational expectations.
Print Culture, High-Cultural Consumption, and Thomson's The Seasons , 1780–1797
Authors: Jung Sandro
Published: February 2012

Embedding James Thomson's popular long poem The Seasons (1730) in the print cultural contexts of the 1780s and 1790s, the essay examines the text's extensive afterlife and studies different printed responses to the production. Specifically, it investigates, among a range of material culture spin-offs and visual adaptations, a selection of fine-printed editions (and their paratextual interpretation of Thomson's classic) targeted at middle-to upper-class consumers, the high-cultural furniture print of scenes fromg The Seasons by Angellica Kauffman, and the appropriation of Thomson's work by Thomas Stothard, one of the most popular book illustrators at the end of the eighteenth century, for two numbers of the ephemeral diary-cum-almanac, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas .
'Lay Aside My Character': The Personate Novel and Beyond
Authors: Lamb Jonathan
Published: February 2012

Fiction became the preferred form of narrative in the politics and popular culture of England from the 17th century onwards because it depended heavily on the idea and function of the person, as opposed to the character. In the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke the person was situated in a network of representations that Hobbes calls fictions, and out of these fictions political reality was understood to emerge. But owing to the provisional constitution of the person, partly imagined and partly real, room was made available for a figure who was neither a character nor a person, nor yet what Catherine Gallagher has called a nobody. This is the author, isolated from the restrictions and advantages of civil society whom Hobbes also called the natural, as opposed to the artificial, person. The author has an uneven relation to fiction, and to the systems of conjecture and representation that make fiction probable and ultimately constitutive of the real. The author prefers romance, and traces her genealogy from Don Quixote.
Crusoe's Island of Misfit Things
Authors: Festa Lynn
Published: February 2012

Focusing on Defoe's Robinson Crusoe , this essay examines the way descriptions give shape and delineated form to subjects and objects (human, animal, and thing) and work to articulate divisions between them. Taking up eighteenth-century debates over the status of description, the article focuses on the status of particular details: the skins that Crusoe fashions into his wardrobe; the botched shoes or "Pair of somethings" he contrives for his feet; the unpaired shoes that wash up on shore following the shipwreck; and the footpring he finds in the sand. In Robinson Crusoe, subject and object are mutually constituting, both in the material sense that persons and things make one another, and in the formal literary sense that Crusoe, like his readers, must struggle to work the heterogeneous elements of the novelist world into meaningful unity, making things—shoes, skins, or even footprints—fit the person, or making the person fit the thing.
Reading Mistakes in Heliodorus
Authors: Black Scott
Published: February 2012

Heliodorus's Ethiopian Story was translated into English three times during the long eighteenth century and considered a model of the "romance or novel" throughout the century. This essay examines this important work to expand our sense of what texts constituted the "novel" in the eighteenth-century British print marketplace, and also to argue that Heliodorus himself addresses the issues of transmission and translation that define his place in literary history. The Ethiopian Story is a sophisticated and self-conscious narrative that critiques the archaic and foreign adventure stories it adapts. At the same time, Heliodorus complements his critique of these residual forms with self-conscious versions of them, which seek to preserve and even to amplify the strangely productive mode of reading such adventure stories enable. The Ethiopian Story offers a model of the novel, or romance, as a dialogic genre organized by the irreducible interplay between narrative self-consciousness and the pleasures of readerly mistakes.
Utopian Socialism, Women's Emancipation, and the Origins of Middlemarch
Authors: Allison Mark
Published: February 2012

This essay seeks to illuminate two perennial questions of George Eliot scholarship--the origins of Middlemarch , and Eliot's attitude toward the "Woman Question"--by exploring the novel's connections with utopian socialism. By tracing allusions to pre-Marxian socialism in the novel and in Eliot's diary and notebooks, I demonstrate that it was crucial to the genesis, and is fundamental to the structure, of Middlemarch . Because the utopian socialists considered women's emancipation the crux of social renovation, I argue that Eliot's appropriation of their doctrines quietly aligns her with the proto-feminism of the contemporaneous women's suffrage movement.