Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology
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The Aesop's Fable Paradigm
An Unlikely Intersection of Folklore and Science
by Various Authors
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
The Aesop's Fable Paradigm is a collection of essays that explore the cutting-edge intersection of Folklore and Science. From moralizing fables to fantastic folktales, humans have been telling stories about animals-animals who can talk, feel, think, and make moral judgments just as we do- for a very long time. In contrast, scientific studies of the mental lives of animals have professed to be investigating the nature of animal minds slowly, cautiously, objectively, with no room for fanciful tales, fables, or myths. But, recently, these folkloric and scientific traditions have merged in an unexpected and shocking way: scientists have attempted to prove that at least some animal fables are actually true.
These interdisciplinary chapters examine how science has targeted the well-known Aesop's fable "The Crow and the Pitcher" as their starting point. They explore the ever-growing set of experimental studies, which purport to prove that crows possess an understanding of higher-order concepts like weight, mass, and even Archimedes' insight about the physics of water displacement.
The Aesop's Fable Paradigm explores how these scientific studies are doomed to accomplish little more than to mirror anthropomorphic representations of animals in human folklore and reveal that the problem of folkloric projection extends far beyond the "Aesop's Fable Paradigm" into every nook and cranny of research on animal cognition.
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Have the Mountains Fallen?
Two Journeys of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War
by Jeffrey Lilley
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
After surviving the blitzkrieg of World War II and escaping from three Nazi prison camps, Soviet soldier Azamat Altay fled to the West and was charged as a traitor in his homeland of Kyrgyzstan in Soviet Central Asia. Chingiz Aitmatov became a hero of Kyrgyzstan, propelled by family loss to write novels about the everyday lives of his fellow citizens. While both came from small villages in the beautiful mountainous countryside, they found themselves caught on opposite sides of the Cold War struggle between world superpowers. Altay became the voice of democracy on Radio Liberty, broadcasting back into his shuttered homeland, while Aitmatov rose through the ranks of Soviet society, a quiet rebel whose prose masked ugly truths about Soviet communism. Yet just as they seemed to be pulled apart by the divisions of the Cold War, they found their lives intersecting in compelling ways, joined by a common mission to save their people. Have the Mountains Fallen? traces the lives of these two men as they confronted the full threat and legacy of the Soviet empire. Through narratives of loss, love, and longing for a homeland forever changed, a clearer picture emerges of the struggle for freedom inside the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
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Praying with the Senses
Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice
by Vlad Naumescu
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in the age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
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Fighting for America
The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519–1871
by Jeremy Black
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Prize winning author Jeremy Black traces the competition for control of North America from the landing of Spanish troops under Hernn Corts in modern Mexico in 1519 to 1871 when, with the Treaty of Washington and the withdrawal of most British garrisons, Britain accepted American mastery in North America. In this wide-ranging narrative, Black makes clear that the process by which America gained supremacy was far from inevitable. The story Black tells is one of conflict, diplomacy, geopolitics, and politics. The eventual result was the creation of a United States of America that stretched from Atlantic to Pacific and dominated North America. The gradual withdrawal of France and Spain, the British accommodation to the expanding U.S. reality, the impact of the American Civil War, and the subjugation of Native peoples, are all carefully drawn out. Black emphasizes contingency not Manifest Destiny, and reconceptualizes American exceptionalism to take note of the pressures and impact of international competition.
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Got Sun?
200 Best Native Plants for Your Garden
by Carolyn Harstad
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Are you looking for more butterflies and birds in your yard? Do you enjoy seasonal color and beauty? Are you concerned about environmental issues such as water conservation and pollution control? Do you yearn for simple, maintenance-free gardening? Arranged in a question-and-answer format, Got Sun? showcases native trees, shrubs, ground covers, ferns, vines, grasses, and over 100 sun-friendly perennials for your home garden. Illustrated with detailed drawings and beautiful color photographs, this is a book to keep close at hand as you plan and plant your garden.
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Broken Wings
The Hungarian Air Force, 1918–45
by Stephen L. Renner
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Drawing upon a wealth of previously untranslated documents, Broken Wings tells how a European nation built an entire air force in secret. Carved up and banned from having a military air service after World War I, Hungary became determined to rearm itself. In the early 1920s, Allied inspectors were evaded and obstructed at every turn; great efforts were made to stockpile equipment from the Great War; and the Hungarian government promoted the development of commercial aviation, partly as a front for military flight operations. The clandestine rearmament program could not depend on manufacturing at home but instead secretly accepted whichever planes Italy and Germany would sell them. During the late 1930s, the Hungarian air force went from operating as a secret branch of the army to an independent modernizing force in its own right. Hungarian air power played a great role in a victorious border skirmish with Slovakia in 1939. The cost of the reemergence of the Hungarian air force, however, was heavy: growing Nazi influence over the country, as Germany increasingly supplied aircraft and training. Inevitably, Hungary entered the Second World War on the side of the Axis in 1941, with its air force soon dwindling in independence and effectively becoming a Luftwaffe auxiliary force. Called back home to defend Hungary from incessant Allied bombings, the Hungarian air force ended the Second World War much as they had the First - salvaging aircraft parts from downed invaders and fighting until they no longer had airfields from which to operate.
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The Stigmatized Vernacular
Where Reflexivity Meets Untellability
by Various Authors
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
As part of this multilayered conversation about stigma, this volume discusses the relationship between the stigmatized individual and our role as researchers. Here we address our own perspectives as researchers struggling with stigma issues and tellability, as well as scholarly reflexive concerns dealing with what can't be said when working with stigmatized groups or topics. The disciplinary focus of folklore positions us well to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized, but it also propels us toward analysis of the performance of stigma, the process of stigmatization, and the political representation of stigmatized populations. These perspectives come to the fore in this book, as does the multilayered nature of stigma-its ability to reproduce, overlap, and spread, not just in terms of replication but also in terms of the ethnographer's ability to apprehend it and her ability to research and write about it.
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Grand Theory in Folkloristics
by Various Authors
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Why is there no "Grand Theory" in the study of folklore? Talcott Parsons (1902—1979) advocated "grand theory," which put the analysis of social phenomena on a new track in the broadest possible terms. Not all sociologists or folklorists accept those broad terms, some still adhere to the empirical level. Through a forum sponsored by the American Folklore Society, the diverse answers to the question of such a theory arrived at substantial agreement: American folklorists have produced little "grand theory." One speaker even found all the theory folklorists need in the history of philosophy. The two women in the forum (Noyes and Mills) spoke in defense of theory that is local, "apt," suited to the audience, and "humble", the men (Bauman and Fine) reached for something Parsons might have recognized. The essays in this collection, developed from the forum presentations, defend diverse positions, but they largely accept the longstanding concentration in American folkloristics on the quotidian and local.
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Muslim Americans in the Military
Centuries of Service
by Edward E. Curtis
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Since the Revolutionary War, Muslim Americans have served in the United States military, risking their lives to defend a country that increasingly looks at them with suspicion and fear. In Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service, Edward E. Curtis illuminates the long history of Muslim service members who have defended their country and struggled to practice their faith. Profiling soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors since the dawn of our country, Curtis showcases the real stories of Muslim Americans, from Omer Otmen, who fought fiercely against German forces during World War I, to Captain Humayun Khan, who gave his life in Iraq in 2004. These true stories contradict the narratives of hate and fear that have dominated recent headlines, revealing the contributions and sacrifices that these soldiers have made to the United States.
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Earth Eats
Real Food Green Living
by Annie Corrigan
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Focusing on local products, sustainability, and popular farm-to-fork dining trends, Earth Eats: Real Food Green Living compiles the best recipes, tips, and tricks to plant, harvest, and prepare local food. Along with renowned chef Daniel Orr, Earth Eats radio host Annie Corrigan presents tips, grouped by season, on keeping your farm or garden in top form, finding the best in-season produce at your local farmers market, and stocking your kitchen effectively. The book showcases what locally produced food will be available in each season and is amply stuffed with more than 200 delicious, original, and tested recipes, reflecting the dishes that can be made with these local foods. In addition to tips and recipes, Corrigan and Orr profile individuals who are on the front lines of the changing food ecosystem, detailing the challenges they and the local food movement face.
With more than 140 color photos, Earth Eats showcases local food at its finest and features everything the local grower and food enthusiast needs to know all year round, including how to cook up a healthy compost heap, nurture a failing bee colony, create an all-natural deer repellant, and ferment delicious vegetables.
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China's Brave New World
And Other Tales for Global Times
by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjings bookstore, the Librairie Avant-Garde, where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucaults philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwells 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen Chinaor post-9/11 America?
In these often playful, always enlightening "tales," Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom poses these and other questions as he journeys from 19th-century China into the future, and from Shanghai to Chicago, St. Louis, and Budapest. He argues that simplistic views of China and Americanization found in most soundbite-driven media reports serve us poorly as we try to understand Chinas place in the current world orderor our own.
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Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts
by Various Authors
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Case studies examining the individual's role in how traditional Chinese performing arts like music and dance are represented, maintained, and cultivated.
Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts examines the key role of the individual in the development of traditional Chinese performing arts such as music and dance. These artists and their artistic works-the "faces of tradition" -come to represent and reconfigure broader fields of cultural production in China today. The contributors to this volume explore the ways in which performances and recordings, including singing competitions, textual anthologies, ethnographic videos, and CD albums, serve as discursive spaces where individuals engage with and redefine larger traditions and themselves. By focusing on the performance, scholarship, collection, and teaching of instrumental music, folksong, and classical dance from a variety of disciplines-these case studies highlight the importance of the individual in determining how traditions have been and are represented, maintained, and cultivated.
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Days of Knight
How the General Changed My Life
by Kirk Haston
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
What happens when a 6' 9" kid from Lobelville, Tennessee is recruited by legendary basketball coach Bob Knight? Kirk Haston’s life was changed forever with just a two-minute phone call. Containing previously unknown Knight stories, anecdotes, and choice quotes, fans will gain an inside look at the notoriously private man and his no-nonsense coaching style. Which past Hoosier basketball greats returned to talk to and practice with current teams? How did Knight mentally challenge his players in practices? How did the players feel when Knight was fired? In this touching and humorous book, Haston shares these answers and more, including his own Hoosier highs shooting a famous three-point winning shot against number one ranked Michigan State and lows losing his mom in a heartbreaking tornado accident. Days of Knight is a book every die-hard IU basketball fan will treasure.
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Russia and the Golden Horde
The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History
by Charles Halperin
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
This revelatory study of Russian medieval history and the age of Mongolian conquest “infuses the subject with fresh insights and interpretations” (History).
In the 13th century, a Mongolian confederation known as The Golden Horde dominated a vast region including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Caucuses. Though it would hold power into the 15th century, the influence of the Mongolian Empire on Russian history and culture has been all but ignored. Only in recent years have historians, archeologists, and philologists started to shed much needed light on this significant period of Mongol rule.
In this enlightening new study, historian Charles Halperin assesses these recent findings to provide a comprehensive view of this chapter in Russian medieval history, offering a new interpretation of what role the Mongols played in the story of Russia.
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Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
by Alfred Kinsey
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Originally published in 1953, the material presented in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was derived from personal interviews with nearly 6,000 women; from studies in sexual anatomy, physiology, psychology, and endocrinology. The study revealed the incidence and frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and how such factors as age, decade of birth, and religious adherence are reflected in patterns of sexual behavior. The authors make comparisons of female and male sexual activities and investigate the factors, which account for the similarities and differences between female and male patterns of behavior and provide some measure of the social significance of the various types of sexual behavior.
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Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts
by Levi S. Gibbs
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts examines the key role of the individual in the development of traditional Chinese performing arts such as music and dance. These artists and their artistic works—the "faces of tradition"—come to represent and reconfigure broader fields of cultural production in China today. The contributors to this volume explore the ways in which performances and recordings, including singing competitions, textual anthologies, ethnographic videos, and CD albums, serve as discursive spaces where individuals engage with and redefine larger traditions and themselves. By focusing on the performance, scholarship, collection, and teaching of instrumental music, folksong, and classical dance from a variety of disciplines—these case studies highlight the importance of the individual in determining how traditions have been and are represented, maintained, and cultivated.
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1915 Diary of S. An-sky
A Russian Jewish Writer at the Eastern Front
by S. A. An-sky
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
S. An-sky was by the time of the First World War a well-known writer, a longtime revolutionary, and an ethnographer who pioneered the collection of Jewish folklore in Russia's Pale of Settlement. In 1915, An-sky took on the assignment of providing aid and relief to Jewish civilians trapped under Russian military occupation in Galicia. As he made his way through the shtetls there, close to the Austrian frontlines, he kept a diary of his encounters and impressions, written in Russian. His diary entries present a detailed reflection of his daily experiences. He describes conversations with wounded soldiers in hospitals, fellow Russian and Jewish aid workers, Russian military and civilian authorities, and Jewish civilians in Galicia and parts of the Pale. Although most of his diaries were lost, two fragments survived and are preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Translated and annotated here by Polly Zavadivker, these fragments convey An-sky's vivid firsthand descriptions of civilian and military life in wartime. He recorded the brutality and violence against the civilian population, the complexities of interethnic relations, the practices and limitations of philanthropy and medical care, Russification policies, and antisemitism. In the late 1910s, An-sky used his diaries as raw material for a lengthy memoir in Yiddish published under the title The Destruction of Galicia.
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Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia, and the Internet
by Kimberly Hall
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
How can teachers introduce Islam to students when daily media headlines canprejudice students' perception of the subject? Should Islam be taught differently in secular universities than in colleges with a clear faith-based mission? What are strategies for discussing Islam and violence without perpetuating stereotypes? The contributors of Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia, and the Internet address these challenges head-on and consider approaches to Islamic studies pedagogy, Islamophobia and violence, and suggestions for how to structure courses. These approaches acknowledge the particular challenges faced when teaching a topic that students might initially fear or distrust. Speaking from their own experience, they include examples of collaborative teaching models, reading and media suggestions, and ideas for group assignments that encourage deeper engagement and broader thinking. The contributors also share personal struggles when confronted with students (including Muslim students) and parents who suspected the courses might have ulterior motives. In an age of stereotypes and misrepresentations of Islam, this book offers a range of means by which teachers can encourage students to thoughtfully engage with the topic of Islam.
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General Maxime Weygand, 1867-1965
Fortune and Misfortune
by Anthony Clayton
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
The career of the French general Maxime Weygand offers a fascinating glimpse into the perils and politics of military leadership and loyalty in the interwar years and after Frances defeat in 1940. Of obscure birth, Weygand had an outstanding career during WWI as chief of staff for Marshal Foch and served France after the war in Poland and Syria before returning home. Alarmed by Nazi Germanys rearmament, Weygand locked horns with a political leadership skeptical of the growing military threat, leading to accusations that his desire for a strong army was anti-democratic. With German invaders again threatening Paris, Weygand argued for armistice rather than face certain military defeat. No friend of the newly-installed Vichy government, Weygand was soon shuffled off to North Africa, where he plotted the army’s return to the Allied cause. After the German entry into Unoccupied France, Weygand was imprisoned. Released at wars end, he was rearrested on the orders of Charles de Gaulle and afterwards fought to restore his name. In this concise biography, Anthony Clayton traces the vertiginous changes in fortune of a soldier whose loyalty to France and to the French army was unwavering.
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Showers Brothers Furniture Company
The Shared Fortunes of a Family, a City, and a University
by Carrol Ann Krause
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
When the Showers family arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, the railroad had only recently come to town and a modest university was struggling to survive. Having spent the prior 18 years moving from place to place, the family decided to settle down and invest its modest resources to start a furniture company. The business proved to be extremely profitable and a stroke of good fortune for the small community. The companys success strengthened Bloomington's infrastructure, helping to develop new neighborhoods, and the philanthropic acts of the Showers family supported the towns continued development. The familys contributions helped Indiana University through difficult times and paved the way to its becoming the largest university in the state. In this detailed history of Showers Brothers, Carrol Krause tells the story of a remarkably successful collaboration between business, town, and gown.
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Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR
by Dean J. Kotlowski
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
In this major biography of an important politician and statesman, Dean Kotlowski presents the life of Paul V. McNutt, a great understudied figure in the era of FDR. McNutt was governor of Indiana, high commissioner to the Philippines (while serving he helped 1,300 Jews flee Nazi Germany for Manila), head of the WWII Federal Security Agency, and would-be presidential candidate. Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR explores McNutts life, his era, and his relationship with Franklin Roosevelt. It sheds light on the expansion of executive power at the state level during the Great Depression, the theory and practice of liberalism as federal administrators understood it in the 1930s and 1940s, the mobilization of the American home front during World War II, and the internal dynamics of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. McNutts life underscores the challenges and changes Americans faced during an age of economic depression, global conflict, and decolonialization.
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Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany
by Valerie Weinstein
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Today many Germans remain nostalgic about "classic" film comedies created during the 1930s, viewing them as a part of the Nazi era that was not tainted with antisemitism. In Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany, Valerie Weinstein scrutinizes these comic productions and demonstrates that film comedy, despite its innocent appearance, was a critical component in the effort to separate "Jews" from "Germans" physically, economically, and artistically. Weinstein highlights how the German propaganda ministry used directives, pre- and post-production censorship, financial incentives, and influence over film critics and their judgments to replace Jewish "wit" with a slower, simpler, and more direct German "humor" that affirmed values that the Nazis associated with the Aryan race. Through contextualized analyses of historical documents and individual films, Weinstein reveals how humor, coded hints and traces, absences, and substitutes in Third Reich film comedy helped spectators imagine an abstract "Jewishness" and a "German" identity and community free from the former. As resurgent populist nationalism and overt racism continue to grow around the world today, Weinsteins study helps us rethink racism and prejudice in popular culture and reconceptualize the relationships between film humor, national identity, and race.
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The ANC's War Against Apartheid
Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Liberation of South Africa
by Stephen R. Davis
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
For nearly three decades, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), waged a violent revolutionary struggle against the apartheid state in South Africa. Stephen Davis works with extensive oral testimonies and the heroic myths that were constructed after 1994 to offer a new history of this armed movement. Davis deftly addresses the histories that reinforce the legitimacy of the ANC as a ruling party, its longstanding entanglement with the South African Communist Party, and efforts to consolidate a single narrative of struggle and renewal in concrete museums and memorials. Davis shows that the history of MK is more complicated and ambiguous than previous laudatory accounts would have us believe, and in doing so he discloses the contradictions of the liberation struggle as well as its political manifestations.
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Syria's Democratic Years
Citizens, Experts, and Media in the 1950s
by Kevin W. Martin
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
The years 19541958 in Syria are popularly known as "The Democratic Years," a brief period of civilian government before the consolidation of authoritarian rule. Kevin W. Martin provides a cultural history of the period and argues that the authoritarian outcome was anything but inevitable. Examining the flourishing broadcast and print media of the time, he focuses on three public figures, experts whose professionslaw, the military, and medicineprojected modernity and modeled the new Arab citizen. This experiment with democracy, however abortive, offers a model of governance from Syrias historical experience that could serve as an alternative to dictatorship.
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Judaism, Liberalism, & Political Theology
by Jerome E. Copulsky
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology provides the first broad encounter between modern Jewish thought and recent developments in political theology. In opposition to impetuous associations of Judaism and liberalism and charges that Judaism cannot engender a universal political order, the essays in this volume propose a new and richly detailed engagement between Judaism and the political. The vexed status of liberalism in Jewish thought and Judaism in political theology is interrogated with recourse to thinking from across the Continental tradition.
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Claiming Society for God
Religious Movements and Social Welfare
by Nancy J. Davis
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies used by religiously orthodox (what some would call "fundamentalist") movements around the world. Rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of taking over civil society. Claiming Society for God tells the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States, showing how these movements, grounded in a communitarian theology, are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, rotating credit societies, schools, charitable organizations, worship centers, and businesses. These networks are already being called states within states, surrogate states, or parallel societies, and in Egypt brought the Muslim Brotherhood to control of parliament and the presidency. This bottom-up, entrepreneurial strategy is aimed at making religion the cornerstone of society.
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Rising Tides
Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century
by John R. Wennersten
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Global climate change and global refugee crises will soon become inextricably interlinked. A new tsunami of climate refugees flows across the earth. We are now at the moment of truth.
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The Mouse and the Myth
Sacred Art and Secular Ritual of Disneyland
by Dorene Koehler
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Rituals mark significant moments in our lives - perhaps none more significant than moments of lightheartedness, joy, and play. The rituals that bond humanity create our most transcendent experiences and meaningful memories. Rituals of play are among the most sacred of any of the rites in which humanity may engage. Although we may fail to recognize rituals of play, they are always present in culture, providing a kind of psychological release for their participants, child and adult alike. Ritual is central to storytelling. Story and practice are symbiotic. Their relationship reflects the vitality of the soul. Disneyland is an example of the kind of container necessary for the construction of rituals of play. This work explores the original Disney theme park in Anaheim as a temple cult. It challenges the disciplines of mythological studies, religious studies, film studies, and depth psychology to broaden traditional definitions of the kind of cultural apparatus that constitute temple culture and ritual. It does so by suggesting that Hollywood’s entertainment industry has developed a platform for mythic ritual. After setting the ritualized "stage", this book turns to the practices in Disneyland proper, analyzing the patrons traditions within the framework of the park and beyond. It explores Disneyland’s spectacles, through selected shows and parades, and concludes with an exploration of the parks participation in ritual renewal.
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War and Technology
by Jeremy Black
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
In this engaging book, Jeremy Black argues that technology neither acts as an independent variable nor operates without major limitations. This includes its capacity to obtain end results, as technologys impact is far from simple and its pathways are by no means clear. After considering such key conceptual points, Black discusses important technological advances in weaponry and power projection from sailing warships to aircraft carriers, muskets to tanks, balloons to unmanned dronesin each case, taking into account what difference these advances made. He addresses not only firepower but also power projection and technologies of logistics, command, and control. Examining military technologies in their historical context and the present centered on the Revolution in Military Affairs and Military Transformation, Black then forecasts possible future trends.
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From New York to San Francisco
Travel Sketches from the Year 1869
by Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Welcome to an America you’ve never seen. Where anyone can drop by the White House and visit the President between 10 a.m. and noon; where cowcatchers are bloodied daily on train tracks between New York and Boston; where spent bullets are strewn across Civil War battlefields, and Indians still roam Yosemite Valley; where pigs rut in the sand-and-clay streets of Washington, DC., and the weather-bleached skeletons of oxen and horses line the old mail roads across the West. For three hot summer months in 1869, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody, the nephew of famed composer Felix Mendelssohn, traveled by train across the United States accompanied by his older cousin. His letters back home to Prussia offer fascinating glimpses of a young, rapidly growing America. Unceasingly annoyed at the Americans tendency to spit all the time, the Prussian aristocrats seemingly visited everyone and everywhere: meeting President Grant and Brigham Young; touring Niagara Falls, Mammoth Cave, the Redwoods, and Yosemite; taking in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, San Francisco, and the still war-ravaged city of Richmond; and crossing the continent by rail just two months after the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads had been joined at Promontory, Utah.
Full of marvelous tales and insightful observations, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody’s letters are a revealing window to a long-ago America.
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Shatterzone of Empires
Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands
by Larry Wolfe
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Shatterzone of Empires is a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries. In this vast territory, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically widespread, multicultural region at several levelslocal, national, transnational, and empireand through multiple approachessocial, cultural, political, and economicthis volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and how and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this specific region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.
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Off the Planet
Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema
by Rebecca Leydon
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Over the last decade, music and sound have been increasingly recognized as an important - if often neglected - aspect of film production and film studies. Off the Planet comprises a lively, stimulating, and diverse collection of essays on aspects of music, sound, and Science Fiction cinema. Following a detailed historical introduction to the development of sound and music in the genre, individual chapters analyze key films, film series, composers, and directors in the postwar era. The first part of the anthology profiles seminal 1950s productions such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, the first Godzilla film, and Forbidden Planet. Later chapters analyze the work of composer John Williams, the career of director David Cronenberg, the Mad Max series, James Cameron’s Terminators, and other notable SF films such as Space Is the Place, Blade Runner, Mars Attacks!, and The Matrix. Off the Planet is an important contribution to the emerging body of work in music and film. Contributors include leading film experts from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
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Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures
by Jeremy Black
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
What if there had been no World War I or no Russian Revolution? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815, or if Martin Luther had not nailed his complaints to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, or if the South had won the American Civil War? The questioning of apparent certainties or "known knowns" can be fascinating and, indeed, "What if?" books are very popular. However, this speculative approach, known as counter factualism, has had limited impact in academic histories, historiography, and the teaching of historical methods. In this book, Jeremy Black offers a short guide to the subject, one that is designed to argue its value as a tool for public and academe alike. Black focuses on the role of counter factualism in demonstrating the part of contingency, and thus human agency, in history, and the salutary critique the approach offers to determinist accounts of past, present, and future.
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Gardening in the Lower Midwest
A Practical Guide for the New Zones 5 and 6
by Diane Heilenman
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
"... a common-sense handbook for gardeners... It will help slacken the stress level that gardening was never meant to bring." HortScience"{Diane Heilenman} gets to the heart, the soul and the humor shared by all in the gardening world... both a practical reference and an inspiration... " The Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN)Diane Heilenman tells novice and experienced gardeners how to cope in this difficult and trying climate, create gardens appropriate for the region, and select flowers, plants, trees, and shrubs that will be happyand in turn make us happy. The gardening columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Heilenman is also a gifted thinker who grapples with what it means to garden in our time.
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The Defiant Life of Vera Figner
Surviving the Russian Revolution
by Lynne Ann Hartnett
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
This engaging biography tells the dramatic story of a Russian noblewoman turned revolutionary terrorist. Born in 1852 in the last years of serfdom, Vera Figner came of age as Imperial Russian society was being rocked by the massive upheaval that culminated in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At first a champion of populist causes and women's higher education, Figner later became a leader of the terrorist party the People's Will and was an accomplice in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Drawing on extensive archival research and careful reading of Figner's copious memoirs, Lynne Ann Hartnett reveals how Figner survived the Bolshevik revolution and Stalin's Great Purges and died a lionized revolutionary legend as the Nazis bore down on Moscow in 1942.
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All Things Are Possible
The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America
by David Edwin Harrell
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
This is the first objective history of the great revivals that swept the country after World War II. It tells the story of the victories and defeats of such giants of the revival as William Branham, Oral Roberts, Jack Coe, T. L. Osborn, A. A. Allen. It also tells of the powerful present day evangelists who are carrying on the revival, including Robert Schambach and Morris Cerullo. The book includes pictures of Schambach, Allen, Cerullo, Branham, Roberts, Osborn, Coe and many others. Those who lived through the great revival of the 1950s and 1960s will be thrilled to read about those exciting days. Those who do not remember those days need to read this book to see what has led us up to this present moment in time.
David Edwin Harrell, Jr. is a professor of history at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He has tried to write this book in an objective way, although you may not agree with all that he says. Dr. Harrell has visited Schambach revivals.
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Hopeless but Optimistic
Journeying through America's Endless War in Afghanistan
by Douglas A. Wissing
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Award-winning journalist Douglas A. Wissings poignant and eye-opening journey across insurgency-wracked Afghanistan casts an unyielding spotlight on greed, dysfunction, and predictable disaster while celebrating the everyday courage and wisdom of frontline soldiers, idealistic humanitarians, and resilient Afghans. As Wissing hauls a hundred pounds of body armor and pack across the Afghan warzone in search of the ground truth, US officials frantically spin a spurious victory narrative, American soldiers try to keep their body parts together, and Afghans try to stay positive and strain to figure out their next move after the US eventually leaves. As one technocrat confided to Wissing, "I am hopeless but optimistic. “Wissing is everywhere in Afghanistan, sharing an impressionistic view from little white taxis coursing across one of the world’s most mine-ridden places; a perilous view from outside the great walls surrounding Americas largest base, sequestered Bagram Air Field; and compelling inside views from within embattled frontline combat outposts, lumbering armored gun trucks and flitting helicopters, brain trauma clinics, and Kabul’s Oz-like American embassy. Its Afghan life on the streets; the culture and institutions that anneal them; the poetry that enriches them. It includes the perspectives of cynical military lifers and frightened short-timers; true believers and amoral grabbers; Americans and Afghans trying to make sense of two countries surreally contorted by war-birthed extractive commerce. Along with a deep inquiry into the 21st-century American way of war and an unforgettable glimpse of the enduring culture and legacy of Afghanistan, Hopeless but Optimistic includes the real stuff of life: the austere grandeur of Afghanistan and its remarkable people; warzone dining, defecation, and sex; as well as the remarkable shopping opportunities for men whose job is to kill.
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Jihad and the West
Black Flag over Babylon
by Mark Silinsky
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
U.S. Department of Defense analyst Mark Silinsky reveals the origins of the Islamic State's sinister obsession with the Western world. Once considered a minor irritant in the international system, the Caliphate is now a dynamic and significant actor on the world’s stage, boasting more than 30,000 foreign fighters from 86 countries. Recruits consist not only of Middle-Eastern-born citizens, but also a staggering number of "Blue-Eyed Jihadists," Westerners who leave their country to join the radical sect. Silinsky provides a detailed and chilling explanation of the appeal of the Islamic State and how those abroad become radicalized, while also analyzing the historical origins, inner workings, and horrific toll of the Caliphate. By documenting the true stories of men, women, and children whose lives have been destroyed by the radical group, Jihad and the West presents the human face of the thousands who have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered by the Islamic State, including Kayla Mueller, who was kidnapped, given to the Caliphates leader as a sex slave, and ultimately killed.
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Obama on the Home Front
Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
by John D. Graham
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
The record of any American President attracts attention, but Barack Obama, the first African-American president in the nation’s 240-year history, is of special interest. Obama came into office as the economy was careening into the worst downturn since the Great Depression. On the political front, he would be challenged by the intense congressional polarization faced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, exacerbated by the rise of the Tea Party movement. In this comprehensive assessment of domestic policymaking, John D. Graham considers what we may learn from the Obama presidency about how presidents can best implement their agendas when Congress is evenly divided. What did Obama pledge to do in domestic policy and what did he actually accomplish? Why did some initiatives succeed and others fail? Did Obamas policies contribute to the losses experienced by the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2014? In carefully documented case studies of economic policy, health care reform, energy and environmental policy, and immigration reform, Graham asks whether Obama was effective at accomplishing his agenda. Counterfactuals are analyzed to suggest ways that Obama might have been even more effective than he was and at less political cost to his party. This book builds on Grahams well-received analysis in Bush on the Home Front, elaborating and applying a theory of presidential effectiveness in a polarized political environment.
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Defending the Filibuster
The Soul of the Senate
by Richard A. Arenberg
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Many argue that the Senate filibuster is undemocratic or even unconstitutional. Recent legislative disputes have brought criticism of Senate rules into sharp relief, and demands for abolition or reform of the filibuster have increased. In Defending the Filibuster, a veteran Senate aide and a former Senate Parliamentarian maintain that the filibuster is fundamental to the character of the Senate, protecting the rights of the minority in American politics, assuring stability and deliberation in government, and helping to preserve constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers. Richard A. Arenberg and Robert B. Dove provide an instructive historical overview of the development of Senate rules, describe related procedures and tactics, and argue passionately for measured reforms.
Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events, this edition includes a new chapter recounting the events of 201213 that led to the first use of the "nuclear option" to restrict the use of the filibuster for presidential nominations, as well as a new foreword by former US Senator Olympia Snowe. The authors offer a stimulating assessment of the likelihood of further changes in Senate procedure and make their own proposals for reform.
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Touching America's History
From the Pequot War Through WWII
by Meredith Mason Brown
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Things you can see and touch can bring to mind the time when the items were made and used. In Touching America's History, Meredith Mason Brown uses twenty objects to summon up major developments in America's history. The objects range in date from a Pequot stone axe head probably made before the Pequot War in 1637, to the western novel Dwight Eisenhower was reading while waiting for the weather to clear so that the Normandy Invasion could begin, and to a piece of a toilet bowl found in the bombed-out wreckage of Hitler's home in the Bavarian alps in 1945. Among the other historically evocative items are a Kentucky rifle carried by Col. John Floyd, killed by Indians in 1783; a letter from George Washington explaining why he will not be able to attend the Constitutional Convention; shavings from the scaffold on which John Brown was hanged; a pistol belonging to Gen. William Preston, in whose arms Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston bled to death after being shot at the Battle of Shiloh; and the records of a court-martial for the killing by an American officer of a Filipino captive during the Philippine War. Together, the objects call to mind nothing less than the birth, growth, and shaping of what is now America.
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A Zionist Among Palestinians
by Hillel Bardin
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
A Zionist among Palestinians offers the perspective of an ordinary Israeli citizen who became concerned about the Israeli military's treatment of Palestinians and was moved to work for peace. Hillel Bardin, a confirmed Zionist, was a reservist in the Israeli army during the first intifada when he met Palestinians arrested by his unit. He learned that they supported peace with Israel and the then-taboo proposal for a two-state solution, and that they understood the intifada as a struggle to achieve these goals. Bardin began to organize dialogues between Arabs and Israelis in West Bank villages, towns, and refugee camps. In 1988, he was jailed for meeting with Palestinians while on active duty in Ramallah. Over the next two decades, he participated in a variety of peace organizations and actions, from arranging for Israelis to visit Palestinian communities and homes, to the joint jogging group "Runners for Peace," to marches, political organizing, and demonstrations supporting peace, security, and freedom. In this very personal account, Bardin tries to come to grips with the conflict in a way that takes account of both Israeli-Zionist and Palestinian aims.
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Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict in Africa
by Edmond J. Keller
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
Reflecting on the processes of nation-building and citizenship formation in Africa, Edmond J. Keller believes that although some deep parochial identities have eroded, they have not disappeared and may be more assertive than previously thought, especially in instances of political conflict. Keller reconsiders how national identity has been understood in Africa and presents new approaches to identity politics, intergroup relations, state-society relations, and notions of national citizenship and citizenship rights. Focusing on Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Rwanda, he lays the foundation for a new understanding of political transition in contemporary Africa.
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Giants in Their Tall Black Hats
Essays on the Iron Brigade
by Kent Gramm
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
"Editors Alan Nolan and Sharon Eggleston Vipond's insightful essays provide fresh perspectives on the Iron Brigade's exploits, detailing military and political events in the words of actual combatants." Military ReviewOriginally called "The Black Hat Brigade" because the soldiers wore the regular armys dress black hat instead of the more typical blue cap, the Iron Brigade was the only all-Western brigade in the Eastern armies of the Union. From Brawner Farm and Second Bull Run to Chancellorsville and Gettysburgthe Western soldiers earned and justified the proud name Iron Brigade. And when the war was over, the records showed that it led all federal brigades in percentage of deaths in battle. These essays, by some of the best known historians of the brigade, spotlight significant moments in the history of the Civil Wars most celebrated unit.
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UNESCO on the Ground
Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage
by Various Authors
Part of the Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology series
For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies and recommendations for dealing with intangible cultural heritage. What has been the effect of such sweeping global policies on those actually affected by them? How connected is UNESCO with what is happening every day, on the ground, in local communities? Drawing upon six communities ranging across three continents-from India, South Korea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia and China-and focusing on festival, ritual, and dance, this volume illuminates the complexities and challenges faced by those who find themselves drawn, in different ways, into UNESCO's orbit. Some struggle to incorporate UNESCO recognition into their own local understanding of tradition, others cope with the fallout of a failed intangible cultural heritage nomination. By exploring locally, by looking outward from the inside, the essays show how a normative policy such as UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage policy can take on specific associations and inflections. A number of the key questions and themes emerge across the case studies and three accompanying commentaries: issues of terminology, power struggles between local, national and international stakeholders, the value of international recognition, and what forces shape selection processes. With examples from around the world, and a balance of local experiences with broader perspectives, this volume provides a unique comparative approach to timely questions of tradition and change in a rapidly globalizing world.
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