An Introduction to the U.S. Congress

An Introduction to the U.S. Congress PDF

Author: Charles Bancroft Cushman

Publisher: M.E. Sharpe

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780765621580

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What does Congress do? How does it do it? Why is it such a complicated institution? This concise primer offers students and general readers a brief and systematic introduction to Congress and the role it plays in the US political system. Drawing on his experience as a former Congressional staff member, the author explores the different political natures of the House and Senate, examines Congress's interaction with other branches of the Federal government, and looks ahead to the domestic and foreign challenges that are likely to drive the Congressional agenda for decades to come. The book provides revealing insights into the sometimes-contradictory Congressional responsibilities of representation and lawmaking; oversight and appropriation; and managing and organizing the government. It includes a case study (on the formation of the Department of Homeland Security) that sheds light on Congress's often-complicated procedures. The book also includes boxed features on Congressional action - highlighting such topics as file sharing and student loans - that show students how Congress's work affects their lives. Chapter-ending lists of web resources add to the book's usefulness.

Ecoambiguity

Ecoambiguity PDF

Author: Karen Thornber

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2012-03-02

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 0472028146

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East Asian literatures are famous for celebrating the beauties of nature and depicting people as intimately connected with the natural world. But in fact, because the region has a long history of transforming and exploiting nature, much of the fiction and poetry in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages portrays people as damaging everything from small woodlands to the entire planet. These texts seldom talk about environmental crises straightforwardly. Instead, like much creative writing on degraded ecosystems, they highlight what Karen Laura Thornber calls ecoambiguity—the complex, contradictory interactions between people and the nonhuman environment. Ecoambiguity is the first book in any language to analyze Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese literary treatments of damaged ecosystems. Thornber closely examines East Asian creative portrayals of inconsistent human attitudes, behaviors, and information concerning the environment and takes up texts by East Asians who have been translated and celebrated around the world, including Gao Xingjian, Ishimure Michiko, Jiang Rong, and Ko Un, as well as fiction and poetry by authors little known even in their homelands. Ecoambiguity addresses such environmental crises as deforesting, damming, pollution, overpopulation, species eradication, climate change, and nuclear apocalypse. This book opens new portals of inquiry in both East Asian literatures and ecocriticism (literature and environment studies), as well as in comparative and world literature.

Remembering the Forgotten War

Remembering the Forgotten War PDF

Author: Philip West

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-02-12

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1317461037

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In contrast to the many books that use military, diplomatic, and historic language in analyzing the Korean War, this book takes a cultural approach that emphasizes the human dimension of the war, an approach that especially features Korean voices. There are chapters on Korean art on the war, translations into English of Korean poetry by Korean soldiers, and American soldier poetry on the war. There is a photographic essay on the war by combat journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Max Desfor. Another chapter includes and analyzes songs on the Korean War - Korean, American, and Chinese - that illuminate the many complex memories of the war. There is a discussion of Korean films on the war and a chapter on Korean War POWs and their contested memories. More than any other nonfiction book on the war, this one shows us the human face of tragedy for Americans, Chinese, and most especially Koreans. June 2000 was the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War; this moving volume is intended as a commemoration of it.

Decentralization and Adat Revivalism in Indonesia

Decentralization and Adat Revivalism in Indonesia PDF

Author: Adam D. Tyson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-07-02

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1136958622

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This book examines the dynamic process of political transition and indigenous (adat) revivalism in newly decentralized Indonesia. Based on original fieldwork and using case studies from Sulawesi to illustrate the key arguments, this book provides an overview of the key analytical concepts, and a concise review of relevant stages in Indonesian history.

Nature, Environment and Culture in East Asia

Nature, Environment and Culture in East Asia PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-07-15

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9004253041

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Since in the current global environmental and climate crisis East Asia will play a major role in negotiating solutions, it is vital to understand East Asian cultural variations in approaching and solving environmental challenges in the past, present, and future. The interdisciplinary volume Nature, Environment and Culture in East Asia. The Challenge of Climate Change, edited by Carmen Meinert, explores how cultural patterns and ideas have shaped a specific understanding of nature, how local and regional cultures develop(ed) coping strategies to adapt to environmental and climatic changes in the past and in the present and how various institutions and representatives might introduce their ideas and agendas in future environmental and climate policies on national levels and in international negotiating systems.

The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics

The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics PDF

Author: Jamie Davidson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-03-12

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1134118201

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This important resource provides detailed coverage of the growing significance of adat in Indonesian politics. It identifies its origins, the historical factors that have conditioned it and the reasons behind its recent blossoming.

A Global History of Literature and the Environment

A Global History of Literature and the Environment PDF

Author: John Parham

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 1108107680

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In A Global History of Literature and the Environment, an international group of scholars illustrate the immense riches of environmental writing from the earliest literary periods down to the present. It addresses ancient writings about human/animal/plant relations from India, classical Greece, Chinese and Japanese literature, the Maya Popol Vuh, Islamic texts, medieval European works, eighteenth-century and Romantic ecologies, colonial/postcolonial environmental interrelations, responses to industrialization, and the emerging literatures of the world in the present Anthropocene moment. Essays range from Trinidad to New Zealand, Estonia to Brazil. Discussion of these texts indicates a variety of ways environmental criticism can fruitfully engage literary works and cultures from every continent and every historical period. This is a uniquely varied and rich international history of environmental writing from ancient Mesopotamian and Asian works to the present. It provides a compelling account of a topic that is crucial to twenty-first-century global literary studies.

East Asian Ecocriticisms

East Asian Ecocriticisms PDF

Author: S. Estok

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-03-26

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1137345365

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East Asian Ecocriticisms presents original essays from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China that define and characterize trends in East Asian ecocriticism. Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives in environmental thought and scholarship, this volume presents valuable and original contributions to global conversations.