Although the Vietnam War ended more than thirty years ago, historians remain as divided on what happened as the American people were during the war. Mark Moyar maps the ongoing battle between "orthodox" and "revisionist" Vietnam War historians: the first group, those who depict Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should…

"Service-learning" has been adopted by many colleges and universities as a way of instilling in students an ethic of community service. Its advocates typically distinguish it from simple volunteering, which lacks an academic component, and from internships, in which students acquire practical skills. The author argues that the rationales for…

This study examines the relationship between music preferences and civic activism among 182 participants aged 14-24 years. Our analyses show that participants who regularly listened to certain music genres such as classical, opera, musicals, new age, easy listening, house, world music, heavy metal, punk, and ska were significantly more likely to…

A number of dimensions of the democratic political process are important for understanding civic communities and civic engagement. While many of these aspects have been examined at the federal level, less is known about how these dynamics operate at the local level, especially in rural communities, and that, moreover, involve a specific issue. In…

This paper analyses the policy of reservation for lower castes in India. This policy is similar to that of affirmative action in the United States. The paper provides a brief overview of the caste system and discusses the types of groups that are eligible for reservation, based on data from government reports. The stance of this paper is that…

How can we promote student and civic engagement amongst our students? At Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the political science courses in the First Year Learning Communities Program have been using the "New York Times" as a supplemental reader to increase student engagement both inside and outside the classroom. The paper will examine the…

From the early 1990s onwards, various European Union (EU) reports have commented on the low level of European exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Asian region, and the invisibility of Europe in the Asian imagination in comparison with the United States. To overcome this problem, a series of policy and programme initiatives have been…

This essay presents Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential rhetoric as an iteration of an American synecdochal sublime. Eisenhower's rhetoric sought to re-aim civic sight beyond corporeal objects to the nation's transcendental essence. This rhetoric is intimately connected to prevailing political anxieties and exigencies, especially the problem of…

Social justice pedagogy appeals to experience as a form of empowerment and as a starting-point for working collaboratively in the diverse classroom. However, taking experience as unmediated and as an authoritative source of knowledge can function in ways that are counterproductive to the aims of social justice education. This essay examines the…

The primary focus of research that the authors have undertaken at New Mexico State University for the past several years can be summed up with the question--are Presidential Libraries educational institutions or are they simply political monuments and messages? The authors have conducted extensive investigations involving visitations to ten…

This article assesses the social and political significance of the international farmers' movement, La Via Campesina by exploring how it has evolved since its inception in 1993. It explores the movement's accomplishments and the tensions that exist between international expansion and a commitment to represent the local interests of member…

Four classes of ninth-grade students in an international school in East Asia used a set of web-based technology tools to evaluate two competing webpages about the Taiwan Straits. The findings highlight the ways these students developed disciplinary literacy in social studies by drawing upon cultural resources and contextual knowledge as they…

In this classroom narrative article I discuss some of my experiences as a teacher in an Australian government-funded English language development aid project during the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). The program formed part of an emergency response to the devastating violence that accompanied the Indonesian…

The infamous "Sydney Tar Ponds" are well known as one of the largest toxic waste sites of Canada, due to almost 100 years of steelmaking in Sydney, a once beautiful and peaceful city located on the east side of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This article begins with a contextual overview of the Tar Ponds issue including a brief…

The AsiaBarometer of 1,000 respondents shows that Hong Kong people have a great desire for materialistic attainment, and such an emphasis on materialism bodes ill for their quality of life. Negative assessments of the public life sphere, which encompasses the natural environment, the social welfare system, and the democratic system, also detract…