For much of the twentieth century, the May Fourth movement of 1919 was seen as the foundational moment of modernity in China. Recent examinations of literary and cultural modernity in China have, however, led to a questioning of this view. By approaching May Fourth from novel perspectives, the authors of the eight studies in this volume seek to contribute to the ongoing critique of the movement.
The essays are centered on the intellectual and cultural/historical motivations and practices behind May Fourth discourse and highlight issues such as strategies of discourse formation, scholarly methodologies, rhetorical dispositions, the manipulation of historical sources, and the construction of modernity by means of the reification of China’s literary past.
There are some twenty-five words for “snow” in the Inupiaq language. Each word denotes a different kind of snow—fresh powder snow, hard pack, soft snow, very wet snow, or just snow. Such fine distinction is reasonable, for over the centuries, Natives of the Arctic have had to rely on their knowledge of the snow to survive. Now Matthew Sturm has prepared an educational children’s book designed to teach a new generation of Arctic residents the importance of Arctic snow cover. Fully illustrated to demonstrate the cycle of the snow cover, Apun covers each phase of the “snow year.” Geared towards grades 3–4, this is a must read for elementary science classes.
There are some twenty-five words for “snow” in the Inupiaq language. Each word denotes a different kind of snow—fresh powder snow, hard pack, soft snow, very wet snow, or just snow. Such fine distinction is reasonable, for over the centuries, Natives of the Arctic have had to rely on their knowledge of the snow to survive. Now Matthew Sturm has prepared an educational children’s book designed to teach a new generation of Arctic residents the importance of Arctic snow cover. Fully illustrated to demonstrate the cycle of the snow cover, Apun covers each phase of the “snow year.” Geared towards grades 3–4, this is a must read for elementary science classes.
Rated Outstanding by the American Association of School Libraries
This is the first book to be written by autistic college students about the challenges they face. Aquamarine Blue 5 details the struggle of these highly sensitive students and shows that there are gifts specific to autistic students that enrich the university system, scholarship, and the world as a whole.
Dawn Prince-Hughes presents an array of writings by students who have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism, showing their unique ways of looking at and solving problems. In their own words, they portray how their divergent thinking skills could be put to great use if they were given an opportunity. Many such students never get the chance because the same sensitivity that gives them these insights makes the flicker of fluorescent lights and the sound of chalk on the board unbearable For simple—and easily remedied—reasons, we lose these students, who are as gifted as they are challenged.
Aquamarine Blue 5 is a showcase of the strength and resilient character of individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome. It will be an invaluable resource for those touched by this syndrome, their friends and families, and school administrators.
This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful.
Features include:
* coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families
* more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa
* keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations
* habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy
* a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds
* glossaries of botanical and habitat terms
* a full index for each volume
Wetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.
This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful.
Features include:
* coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families
* more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa
* keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations
* habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy
* a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds
* glossaries of botanical and habitat terms
* a full index for each volume
Wetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.
Applying the ethical concepts of Thomas Aquinas to contemporary moral problems, this book both presents new interpretations of Thomist theology and offers new insights into today's perplexing moral dilemmas. This volume addresses such contemporary issues as internalized oppression, especially as it relates to women and African-Americans; feminism and anger; child abuse; friendship and charity; and finally, justice and reason.
The collection revives Aquinas as an ethicist who has relevant things to say about contemporary concerns. These essays illustrate how Thomistic ethics can encourage and empower people in moral struggles. As the first book to use Aquinas to explore such issues as child abuse and oppression, it includes a variety of approaches to Aquinas's ethics.
Aquinas and Empowerment is a valuable resource for students of classical thought and contemporary ethics.
Economists and theologians usually inhabit different intellectual worlds. Economists investigate the workings of markets and tend to set ethical questions aside. Theologians, anxious to take up concerns raised by market outcomes, often dismiss economics and lose insights into the influence of market incentives on individual behavior. Mary L. Hirschfeld, who was a professor of economics for fifteen years before training as a theologian, seeks to bridge these two fields in this innovative work about economics and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.
According to Hirschfeld, an economics rooted in Thomistic thought integrates many of the insights of economists with a larger view of the good life, and gives us critical purchase on the ethical shortcomings of modern capitalism. In a Thomistic approach, she writes, ethics and economics cannot be reconciled if we begin with narrow questions about fair wages or the acceptability of usury. Rather, we must begin with an understanding of how economic life serves human happiness. The key point is that material wealth is an instrumental good, valuable only to the extent that it allows people to flourish. Hirschfeld uses that insight to develop an account of a genuinely humane economy in which pragmatic and material concerns matter but the pursuit of wealth for its own sake is not the ultimate goal.
The Thomistic economics that Hirschfeld outlines is thus capable of dealing with our culture as it is, while still offering direction about how we might make the economy better serve the human good.
To dismiss the work of philosophers and theologians of the past because of their limited perceptions of the whole of humankind is tantamount to tossing the tot out with the tub water. Such is the case when feminist scholars of religion and ethics confront Thomas Aquinas, whose views of women can only be described as misogynistic. Rather than dispense with him, Susanne DeCrane seeks to engage Aquinas and reflect his otherwise compelling thought through the prism of feminist theology, hermeneutics, and ethics.
Focusing on one of Aquinas's great intellectual contributions, the fundamental notion of "the common good"—in short, the human will toward peace and justice—DeCrane demonstrates the currency of that notion through a contemporary social issue: women's health care in the United States and, specifically, black women and breast cancer. In her skillful re-engagement with Aquinas, DeCrane shows that certain aspects of religious traditions heretofore understood as oppressive to women and minority groups can actually be parsed, "retrieved," and used to rectify social ills.
Aquinas, Feminism, and the Common Good is a bold and intellectually rigorous feminist retrieval of an important text by a Catholic scholar seeking to remain in the tradition, while demanding that the tradition live up to its emphasis on human equity and justice.
Not much escapes the intellect and imagination of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. Whether it be love, children, education, moral reasoning, happiness or the proper dispositions for human existence, St. Thomas seems an expert in all of it. Crime and criminal conduct are no exceptions to this general tendency with him. Not only does he have much to say about it, what he relates is perpetually fresh and surely the bedrock of what is now taken for granted. In this short treatise, the focus targets St. Thomas’s criminal codification – his law of crimes.
Indeed the magnanimity of his crimes code is a subject matter not yet treated in any detail in the scholarly literature. While parts and pieces are covered in many quarters, the literature has yet to develop a systematic, codified examination of Thomistic criminal law. The essence of the endeavor is threefold: first, how does St. Thomas factor the nature of the human person into the concept of criminal culpability and personal responsibility; second, what types of criminal conduct does St. Thomas specifically delineate and define; and lastly, what is Thomas’s view of mitigation and defense, as well as the corresponding punishment meted out for criminal conduct? This short commentary zeroes in on Thomistic Criminal Law – a project which will illuminate the root, the heritage and the foundation of modern criminal codification.
In contemporary discussions of abortion, both sides argue well-worn positions, particularly concerning the question, When does human life begin? Though often invoked by the Catholic Church for support, Thomas Aquinas in fact held that human life begins after conception, not at the moment of union. But his overall thinking on questions of how humans come into being, and cease to be, is more subtle than either side in this polarized debate imagines. Fabrizio Amerini—an internationally-renowned scholar of medieval philosophy—does justice to Aquinas’ views on these controversial issues.
Some pro-life proponents hold that Aquinas’ position is simply due to faulty biological knowledge, and if he knew what we know today about embryology, he would agree that human life begins at conception. Others argue that nothing Aquinas could learn from modern biology would have changed his mind. Amerini follows the twists and turns of Aquinas’ thinking to reach a nuanced and detailed solution in the final chapters that will unsettle familiar assumptions and arguments.
Systematically examining all the pertinent texts and placing each in historical context, Amerini provides an accurate reconstruction of Aquinas’ account of the beginning and end of human life and assesses its bioethical implications for today. This major contribution is available to an English-speaking audience through translation by Mark Henninger, himself a noted scholar of medieval philosophy.
All of us want to be happy and live well. Sometimes intense emotions affect our happiness—and, in turn, our moral lives. Our emotions can have a significant impact on our perceptions of reality, the choices we make, and the ways in which we interact with others. Can we, as moral agents, have an effect on our emotions? Do we have any choice when it comes to our emotions?
In Aquinas on the Emotions, Diana Fritz Cates shows how emotions are composed as embodied mental states. She identifies various factors, including religious beliefs, intuitions, images, and questions that can affect the formation and the course of a person's emotions. She attends to the appetitive as well as the cognitive dimension of emotion, both of which Aquinas interprets with flexibility. The result is a powerful study of Aquinas that is also a resource for readers who want to understand and cultivate the emotional dimension of their lives.
Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading is an original interpretation of one of the most compelling accounts of virtue in the Western tradition, that of the great theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274). Taking as its starting point Aquinas's neglected definition of virtue in terms of its "causes," this book offers a systematic analysis of Aquinas on the nature, genesis, and role of virtue in human life.
Drawing on connections and contrasts between Aquinas and contemporary treatments of virtue, Austin argues that Aquinas’s causal virtue theory retains its normative power today. As well as providing a synoptic account of Aquinas on virtue, the book includes an extended treatment of the cardinal virtue of temperance, an argument for the superiority of Aquinas's concept of "habit" over modern psychological accounts, and a rethinking of the relation between grace and virtue. With an approach that is distinctively theological yet strongly conversant with philosophy, this study will offer specialists a bold new interpretation of Aquinas’s virtue theory while giving students a systematic introduction with suggested readings from his Summa Theologiae and On the Virtues.
The state of Michigan hosts one of the largest and most diverse Arab American populations in the United States. As the third largest ethnic population in the state, Arab Americans are an economically important and politically influential group. It also reflects the diversity of national origins, religions, education levels, socioeconomic levels, and degrees of acculturation. Despite their considerable presence, Arab Americans have always been a misunderstood ethnic population in Michigan, even before September 11, 2001 imposed a cloud of suspicion, fear, and uncertainty over their ethnic enclaves and the larger community. In Arab Americans in Michigan Rosina J. Hassoun outlines the origins, culture, religions, and values of a people whose influence has often exceeded their visibility in the state.
With the capture of East Jerusalem by Israel in the Six-Day War, the historic spot became a magnifying lens for the conflict between Arabs and Jews. Gerald Caplan, a community psychiatrist renowned for his work with normal people under stress, explores in this study points of friction between the two populations and offers new insight into the sources of tension.
Dr. Caplan investigated the relations between Arabs and Jews in a variety of settings, ranging from a moment of crisis, the burning of a mosque, to more routine, everyday contacts, as in government offices and the market place. These interactions suggested a characteristic pattern of negotiating disputes, which was borne out in the course of a stand-up confrontation between the Arabs and the Israeli government over the payment of taxes. Fortified with his new understanding of the dynamics of Arab-Jewish behavior, Dr. Caplan then embarked on a pioneering effort to establish a vocational education program for the Arabs of Jerusalem.
His experiences, described in this book, enlarge the function of the community mental health consultant well beyond its traditional bounds. The conclusions are applicable throughout the world, wherever dissonance and strife prevail--be it Boston, Belfast, or Berlin.
How did Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood win power so quickly after the dramatic “Arab Spring” uprising that ended President Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year reign in February 2011? And why did the Brotherhood fall from power even more quickly, culminating with the popular “rebellion” and military coup that toppled Egypt’s first elected president, Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013? In Arab Fall, Eric Trager examines the Brotherhood’s decision making throughout this critical period, explaining its reasons for joining the 2011 uprising, running for a majority of the seats in the 2011–2012 parliamentary elections, and nominating a presidential candidate despite its initial promise not to do so. Based on extensive research in Egypt and interviews with dozens of Brotherhood leaders and cadres including Morsi, Trager argues that the very organizational characteristics that helped the Brotherhood win power also contributed to its rapid downfall. The Brotherhood’s intensive process for recruiting members and its rigid nationwide command-chain meant that it possessed unparalleled mobilizing capabilities for winning the first post-Mubarak parliamentary and presidential elections.
Yet the Brotherhood’s hierarchical organizational culture, in which dissenters are banished and critics are viewed as enemies of Islam, bred exclusivism. This alienated many Egyptians, including many within Egypt’s state institutions. The Brotherhood’s insularity also prevented its leaders from recognizing how quickly the country was slipping from their grasp, leaving hundreds of thousands of Muslim Brothers entirely unprepared for the brutal crackdown that followed Morsi’s overthrow. Trager concludes with an assessment of the current state of Egyptian politics and examines the Brotherhood’s prospects for reemerging.
The first book to present an analysis of Arab response to fascism and Nazism from the perspectives of both individual countries and the Arab world at large, this collection problematizes and ultimately deconstructs the established narratives that assume most Arabs supported fascism and Nazism leading up to and during World War II. Using new source materials taken largely from Arab memoirs, archives, and print media, the articles reexamine Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi responses in the 1930s and throughout the war.
While acknowledging the individuals, forces, and organizations that did support and collaborate with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism focuses on the many other Arab voices that identified with Britain and France and with the Allied cause during the war. The authors argue that many groups within Arab societies—elites and non-elites, governing forces, and civilians—rejected Nazism and fascism as totalitarian, racist, and, most important, as new, more oppressive forms of European imperialism. The essays in this volume argue that, in contrast to prevailing beliefs that Arabs were de facto supporters of Italy and Germany—since “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—mainstream Arab forces and currents opposed the Axis powers and supported the Allies during the war. They played a significant role in the battles for control over the Middle East.
As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants.
Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester's links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.
Vast social change has occurred in the Middle East since the oil boom of the mid-1970s. As the first anthropological study of an urban community in Saudi Arabia since that oil boom, Arabian Oasis City is also the first to document those changes.
Based on extensive interviews and participant observation with both men and women, the authors record and analyze the transformation that has occurred in this ancient oasis city throughout the twentieth century: the creation of the present Saudi Arabian state and of a new national economy based on the export of oil and the economic boom brought about by the dramatic increases in the price of oil following the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. In addition, the authors reveal the changes brought about by the fall in the price of oil beginning in 1982 and analyze the problems confronting ‘Unayzah in its aftermath.
By demonstrating that the area was not exclusively dominated by tribalism and Bedouin nomads, this empirical case study destroys stereotypical views about Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it proves the existence—prior to the coming of the modern Saudi Arabian state— of surplus agricultural and craft production and the full development of local, regional, and long-distance trade networks. It shows that women, although veiled, played active roles in work outside the household. The social impact of change over the years is, however, profound—especially the gradual replacement of the extended family by the nuclear family, changing patterns of husband-wife relationships, the impact of self-earned income on the status of women, and the emergence of a new middle class of employees and entrepreneurs. Because of the high degree of gender segregation in this area of research, Altorki and Cole give us a fortunate collaboration between a Saudi Arabian female scholar and an American male scholar experienced in research in the Middle East.
For decades, students learning the Arabic language have begun with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and then transitioned to learning spoken Arabic. While the MSA-first approach neither reflects the sociolinguistic reality of the language nor gives students the communicative skills required to fully function in Arabic, the field continues to debate the widespread adoption of this approach. Little research or evidence has been presented about the effectiveness of integrating dialect in the curriculum. With the recent publication of textbooks that integrate dialect in the Arabic curriculum, however, a more systematic analysis of such integration is clearly becoming necessary.
In this seminal volume, Mahmoud Al-Batal gathers key scholars who have implemented integration to present data and research on the method’s success. The studies address curricular models, students' outcomes, and attitudes of students and teachers using integration in their curricula. This volume is an essential resource for all teachers of Arabic language and those working in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL).
Arabic, one of the official languages of the United Nations, is spoken by more than half a billion people around the world and is of increasing importance in today’s political and economic spheres. The study of the Arabic language has a long and rich history: earliest grammatical accounts date from the 8th century and include full syntactic, morphological, and phonological analyses of the vernaculars and of Classical Arabic. In recent years the academic study of Arabic has become increasingly sophisticated and broad.
This state-of-the-art volume presents the most recent research in Arabic linguistics from a theoretical point of view, including computational linguistics, syntax, semantics, and historical linguistics. It also covers sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and discourse analysis by looking at issues such as gender, urbanization, and language ideology. Underlying themes include the changing and evolving attitudes of speakers of Arabic and theoretical approaches to linguistic variation in the Middle East.
Considering the communicative and symbolic roles of language in articulating national identity, Yasir Suleiman provides a fresh perspective on nationalism in the Middle East. The links between language and nationalism are delineated and he demonstrates how this has been articulated over the past two centuries.
Straddling the domains of cultural and political nationalism, Suleiman examines the Arab past (looking at the interpretation and reinvention of tradition, and myth-making); the clash between Arab and Turkish cultural nationalism in the 19th and early 20th century; readings of canonical treatises on the topic of Arab cultural nationalism, the major ideological trends linking language to territorial nationalism; and provides a research agenda for the study of language and nationalism in the Arab context.
This the first full-scale study of this important topic and will be of interest to students of nationalism, Arab and comparative politics, Arabic Studies, history, cultural studies and sociolinguistics.
The demand for information on learning Arabic has grown spectacularly as English-speaking people have come to realize how much there is yet to know about other parts of the world. It is fitting that this Arabic Language Handbook, complementing Georgetown University Press's exceptional Arabic language textbooks, is the first in a new series: Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics. Sparked by the new demand, this reprint of a genuinely "gold-standard" language volume provides a streamlined reference on the structure of the Arabic language and issues in Arabic linguistics, from dialectics to literature. Originally published in 1967, the essential information on the structure of the language remains accurate, and it continues to be the most concise reference summary for researchers, linguists, students, area specialists, and others interested in Arabic.
The Arabic Language was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Arabic, with its rich literary heritage, is one of the major languages of the world. It is spoken by about one hundred million people inhabiting a wide and important area of the Middle East. Yet the language and its significant role in history are little known in the English-speaking countries except among specialists. This book will, it is hoped, help to introduce the language and demonstrate its importance to a wider audience.
Professor Philip K. Hitti of Princeton University writes in the foreword: "Until recently Arabic studies in this country had been limited to the graduate level and confined to a few universities. Since World War II they have inched their way to the undergraduate curriculum of a small number of universities. But they are still top-heavy and anemic. They will so remain unless they send their roots deeper down into high schools and enlist the interest of a widening circle of nonspecialists.
"Hence the value of this work by Professor Chejne. It is a commendable attempt to introduce the Arabic language, with its features and problems, to students and nonspecialists, to tell the story of its dramatic evolution from a tribal dialect to one of the few carriers of world culture, to indicate its unique relation to the religion of Islam and its role in the development of modern Arab nationalism. The book, written in a language intelligible to the layman, sums up what is already known and presents the contribution of the author."
In this classic of Arabic linguistics, A. F. L. Beeston explains the principles underlying the phonology, morphology, syntax, script, and grammar of modern written Arabic, which has changed little since Arabic grammarians outlined the language in the eighth century.
Originally published in 1970, The Arabic Language Today begins with a useful introduction to the development of the language from the fifth and sixth centuries through the nineteenth century. Beeston goes on to describe the logical structure of the language, to consider the development of the lexicon, and to comment on how the language has diverged from the Classical.
For general and comparative linguists who want to know how Arabic works and for people with some working knowledge of the language who want to know more about the theory behind it, Beeston's work is a fine structural analysis and careful examination of Standard Arabic from a theoretical standpoint.
Concise and brief in length, this book presents a wealth of information and is a challenging yet rewarding read for linguists, scholars, and students of Arabic. It includes an appendix of script styles and a bibliography.
Since The Arabic Linguistic Tradition was published in 1990, the field of Arabic linguistics has grown significantly. New journals, societies, and professional groups are flourishing as more contemporary linguists pursue the study of the Arabic language and its origins.
This book remains a touchstone in the field of Arabic linguistics. It is one of the first books to cover the whole range of language in Arabic culture and to offer a historical linguistic survey of the Arabic language from Classical to Modern Standard Arabic. The expert authors discuss pure grammatical theory as well as the context of language as it is used in religion, literature, law, and other disciplines.
The Arabic Linguistic Tradition presents a concise overview of the most important issues in theoretical and speculative linguistics in the Arabic tradition, from their origins in the eighth century through the codification of grammar in the tenth century to its decline in the fifteenth century. This volume represents the highest level of scholarship in English on phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic theory as they were developed by the major Arabic grammarians including Sibawayhi and al-Khalil ibn Ahmad.
Graduate students and scholars of Arabic linguistics and historical linguists will find this book to be a timeless classic.
Despite the status of Arabic as a global language and the high demand to learn it, the field of Arabic second language acquisition remains underinvestigated. Second language acquisition findings are crucial for informing and advancing the field of Arabic foreign language pedagogy including Arabic language teaching, testing, and syllabus design.
Arabic Second Language Learning and Effects of Input, Transfer, and Typology provides data-driven empirical findings for a number of basic and high-frequency morphosyntactic structures with two novel typological language pairings, examining Arabic second language acquisition data from adult L1 Chinese- and Russian-speaking learners of Arabic as a foreign language. Alhawary’s study examines the different processes, hypotheses, and acquisition tendencies from the two learner groups, and documents the extent of the successes and challenges faced by such learners in their L2 Arabic grammatical development during the first three years of learning the language. In addition, the book offers both theoretical and practical implications related to input exposure, L1 and L2 transfer, and typological and structural proximity effects.
This book serves as a valuable resource for both second language acquisition experts and foreign language teaching practitioners.
This introduction to major topics in the field of Arabic sociolinguistics examines key issues in diglossia, code-switching, gendered discourse, language variation and change, and language policies. It introduces and evaluates various theoretical approaches and models, and it illustrates the usefulness and limitations of these approaches to Arabic with empirical data. Reem Bassiouney explores how current sociolinguistic theories can be applied to Arabic and, conversely, what the study of Arabic can contribute to our understanding of the function of language in society.
Graduate students of Arabic language and linguistics as well as students of sociolinguistics with no knowledge of Arabic will find this volume to be an indispensable resource.
The textbook includes twenty lessons aimed at introducing Arabic sounds and writing system in a programmed method of instruction, supported by images and audio tapes*. The Manual consists of two parts. Part One includes a suggested methodology to guide teachers and students and Part Two contains basic communication needs in both Arabic script and transliteration to create a climate of enjoyable learning while students are acquiring the sounds and letters.
Raji M. Rammuny is Professor of Arabic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous books, including Advanced Standard Arabic through Authentic Texts and Audiovisual Materials, Parts 1 and 2, also published by the University of Michigan Press.
*The CD accompanying Arabic Sounds and Letters can be obtained from the UM Language Resource Center. Contact them by email at flacs@umich.edu or by phone at 734-764-3521.
The distinguished Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, in this summary of his own work, examines the status of Arab thought in the late twentieth century. Al-Jabri rejects what he calls the current polarization of Arab thought between an imported modernism that disregards Arab tradition and a fundamentalism that would reconstruct the present in the image of an idealized past.
Both past and present intellectual currents are examined. Al-Jabri first questions the current philosophical positions of the liberals, the Marxists, and the fundamentalists. Then he turns to history, exploring Arab philosophy in the tenth and twelfth centuries, a time of political and ideological struggle. In the writings of Ibn Hazm and Averroës, he identifies the beginnings of Arab rationalism, a rationalism he traces through the innovative fourteenth–century work of Ibn Khaldun.
Al-Jabri offers both Western readers and his own compatriots a radical new approach to Arab thought, one that finds in the past the roots of an open, critical rationalism which he sees as emerging in the Arab world today.
Though more than sixty years have passed since the signing of the proclamation of the State of Israel, the impact of that epochal event continues to shape the political policies and public opinion of not only the Middle East but much of the world. The consequent conflict between Arabs and Israelis for sovereignty over the land of Palestine has been one of the most bloody, intractable, and drawn-out of modern times. It continues today in cycles of aggressive violence followed by temporary, tenuous ceasefires that are marked and complicated by resolute opinions and fractious religious ideologies. In this timely volume, noted military historian Ian J. Bickerton cuts through the complex perspectives in order to explain this struggle in objective detail, describing its history from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I to the present day.
In concise and clear prose, Bickerton argues that the present problem can be traced to the fact that each side is trapped by a conception of their past from which they seem unable to break free. This attachment and reaction to history has had a negative influence on the decision-making of Arabs and Israelis since 1948. Ultimately, Bickerton maintains that the use of armed force has not, and will not, resolve the issues that have divided Israelis and Arabs.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict is a plea for reasoned diplomacy in a situation that has been dominated by extreme violence. This book will appeal to a wide general audience seeking a balanced understanding of this enduring struggle that still dominates headlines.
What is an Arab? Though many in the West would answer that question with simplistic stereotypes, the reality is far more complex and interesting. Arabs themselves have been debating Arab identity since pre-Islamic times, coming to a variety of conclusions about the nature and extent of their “Arabness.” Likewise, Westerners and others have attempted to analyze Arab identity, reaching mostly negative conclusions about Arab culture and capacity for self-government.
To bring new perspectives to the question of Arab identity, Iraqi-born scholar Nissim Rejwan has assembled this fascinating collection of writings by Arab and Western intellectuals, who try to define what it means to be Arab. He begins with pre-Islamic times and continues to the last decades of the twentieth century, quoting thinkers ranging from Ibn Khaldun to modern writers such as al-Ansari, Haykal, Ahmad Amin, al-'Azm, and Said. Through their works, Rejwan shows how Arabs have grappled with such significant issues as the influence of Islam, the rise of nationalism, the quest for democracy, women's status, the younger generation, Egypt's place in the Arab world, Israel's role in Middle Eastern conflict, and the West's "cultural invasion."
By letting Arabs speak for themselves, Arabs in the Mirror refutes a prominent Western stereotype—that Arabs are incapable of self-reflection or self-government. On the contrary, it reveals a rich tradition of self-criticism and self-knowledge in the Arab world.
Cowell and Moss detail strategies used by speakers of this highly polysynthetic language to form complex words and illustrate how word formation interacts with information structure. They discuss word order and discourse-level features, treat the special features of formal discourse style and traditional narratives, and list gender-specific particles, which are widely used in conversation. Appendices include full sets of inflections for a variety of verbs.
Arapaho is spoken primarily in Wyoming, with a few speakers in Oklahoma. The corpus used in The Arapaho Language spans more than a century of documentation, including multiple speakers from Wyoming and Oklahoma, with emphasis on recent recordings from Wyoming. The book cites approximately 2,000 language examples drawn largely from natural discourse - either recorded spoken language or texts written by native speakers.
With The Arapaho Language, Cowell and Moss have produced a comprehensive document of a language that, in its departures from its nearest linguistic neighbors, sheds light on the evolution of grammar.
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