front cover of Between the Eagle and the Sun
Between the Eagle and the Sun
Traces of Japan
Ihab Hassan
University of Alabama Press, 1996

A fascinating memoir by Egypt-born American literary theorist and writer Ihab Hassan about his life in Japan. Part recollection, part cultural perception, Between the Eagle and the Sun records his journey, living and seeing himself sometimes as another, assaying always to read the hieroglyphs of his past in the scripts of Japan. As lucid as it is intensely felt, at once lyrical and critical, the work offers a beguiling vision of Japan and, by tacit contrast, of America. For writing, the author says, is more than praise or blame, it is also knowledge, empathy, and delight. These attributes are evident in Hassan's treatment of Japanese culture, its people and scenes. Indeed, the people, rendered in vibrant portraits throughout the book, abide when all the shadows of romance and exasperation have fled.

True to its moment, the work also reinvests the forms of memoir, travel, and quest. Cultural essays, travel anecdotes, autobiographical meditations, portraits of Japanese friends, a section titled "Entries, A to Z," fit into a tight frame, with clear transitions from one section to another. The style, however, alters subtly to suit topic, occasion, and mood.

Japan may not hold the key to this planet's future; no single nation does. Yet the continuing interest in its history, society, and people and the incresed awareness of its recent trends and growing global impact engage an expanding audience. Avoiding cliches, sympathetic to its subject yet analytical, unflinching in judgment, and withal highly personal, Between the Eagle and the Sun offers a unique image of its subject by a distinguished and well-traveled critic, at home in several cultures.

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Creating Old World Wisconsin
The Struggle to Build an Outdoor History Museum of Ethnic Architecture
John D. Krugler
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
With its charming heirloom gardens, historic livestock breeds, and faithfully recreated farmsteads and villages that span nearly 600 acres, Old World Wisconsin is the largest outdoor museum of rural life in the United States. But this seemingly time-frozen landscape of rustic outbuildings and rolling wooded hills did not effortlessly spring into existence, as John D. Krugler shows in Creating Old World Wisconsin.
            Visionaries, researchers, curators, and volunteers launched a massive preservation initiative to salvage fast-disappearing immigrant and migrant architecture. Dozens of historic buildings in the 1970s were transported from locations throughout the state to the Kettle Moraine State Forest. These buildings created a backdrop against which twenty-first-century interpreters demonstrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century agricultural techniques and artisanal craftsmanship. The site, created and maintained by the Wisconsin Historical Society, offers visitors a unique opportunity to learn about the state’s rich and ethnically diverse past through depictions of the everyday lives of its Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, German, Polish, African American, and Yankee inhabitants.
            Creating Old World Wisconsin chronicles the fascinating and complex origins of this outdoor museum, highlighting the struggles that faced its creators as they worked to achieve their vision. Even as Milwaukee architect and preservationist Richard W. E. Perrin, the Society's staff, and enthusiastic volunteers opened the museum in time for the national bicentennial in 1976, the site was plagued by limited funds, bureaucratic tangles, and problems associated with gaining public support. By documenting the engaging story of the challenges, roadblocks, false starts, and achievements of the site's founders, Krugler brings to life the history of the dedicated corps who collected and preserved Wisconsin's diverse social history and heritage.
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front cover of Dollar, Dove, and Eagle
Dollar, Dove, and Eagle
One Hundred Years of Palestinian Migration to Honduras
Nancie L. Gonzalez
University of Michigan Press, 1993
Examination of the dynamics of the Palestinian diaspora in Honduras
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Eagle
Janine Rogers
Reaktion Books, 2015
A symbol of power, divinity, war, and justice, the eagle has been one of the most dominant birds in the human imagination for millennia. Exploring the rich history of this bird and its portrayal in art, film, literature, and poetry, this book examines how eagles became an emblematic creature that also embodies the paradoxes of our existence.
           
Janine Rogers reveals that while humans associate eagles with light and learning, they also connect the birds to death and corruption. Eagles adorn flags, crests, and other emblems, but as she shows, they have also been relentlessly persecuted and perceived as predatory threats to livestock. While considering these contradictions, Rogers argues that eagles have suffered from the effects of human activities for years, from pesticide use to habitat destruction and global warming. She demonstrates the dangers of not saving eagles from destruction, as they are key to controlling pest populations and clearing carcasses. Featuring many illustrations of eagles in the wild, art, and popular culture, Eagle shines new light on our complex relationship with these birds, their international significance, and the dire implications of losing them to contemporary ecological threats.
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front cover of The Eagle and the Virgin
The Eagle and the Virgin
Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940
Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, eds.
Duke University Press, 2006
When the fighting of the Mexican Revolution died down in 1920, the national government faced the daunting task of building a cohesive nation. It had to establish control over a disparate and needy population and prepare the country for global economic competition. As part of this effort, the government enlisted the energy of artists and intellectuals in cultivating a distinctly Mexican identity. It devised a project for the incorporation of indigenous peoples and oversaw a vast, innovative program in the arts. The Eagle and the Virgin examines the massive nation-building project Mexico undertook between 1920 and 1940.

Contributors explore the nation-building efforts of the government, artists, entrepreneurs, and social movements; their contradictory, often conflicting intersection; and their inevitably transnational nature. Scholars of political and social history, communications, and art history describe the creation of national symbols, myths, histories, and heroes to inspire patriotism and transform workers and peasants into efficient, productive, gendered subjects. They analyze the aesthetics of nation building made visible in murals, music, and architecture; investigate state projects to promote health, anticlericalism, and education; and consider the role of mass communications, such as cinema and radio, and the impact of road building. They discuss how national identity was forged among social groups, specifically political Catholics, industrial workers, middle-class women, and indigenous communities. Most important, the volume weighs in on debates about the tension between the eagle (the modernizing secular state) and the Virgin of Guadalupe (the Catholic defense of faith and morality). It argues that despite bitter, violent conflict, the symbolic repertoire created to promote national identity and memory making eventually proved capacious enough to allow the eagle and the virgin to coexist peacefully.

Contributors. Adrian Bantjes, Katherine Bliss, María Teresa Fernández, Joy Elizabeth Hayes, Joanne Hershfield, Stephen E. Lewis, Claudio Lomnitz, Rick A. López, Sarah M. Lowe, Jean Meyer, James Oles, Patrice Olsen, Desmond Rochfort, Michael Snodgrass, Mary Kay Vaughan, Marco Velázquez, Wendy Waters, Adriana Zavala

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front cover of Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear
Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear
Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands
Robert H. Brunswig
University Press of Colorado, 2020
Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear explores advances in the prehistory and early history of Numic hunter-gatherers in the Rocky Mountain West through the presentation and analysis of archaeological and historic research on the period from the earliest established presence in the Rockies and its borderlands more than a thousand years ago to the forced removal of Ute, Shoshone, and other tribes to reservations in the mid-nineteenth century.
 
New research into Numic archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography is significantly changing the understanding of migratory patterns, cultural interactions, chronology, and shared cultural-religious practices of regionally defined Numic branches and non-Numic populations of the American West. Contributors examine case studies of Ute and Shoshone material culture (ceramics, lithics, features and structures, trade and seasonal migration), chronology (dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence), and subsistence systems (hunting camps, game drives, faunal and botanical evidence of food sources). They also delineate different hunter-gatherer “ethnic groups” who co-occupied or interacted within one another’s territories through trade, raiding, or seasonal subsistence migrations, such as the Late Fremont/Ute and the Shoshone or the early Navajo/Ute and the Shoshone.
 
With a strong emphasis on diverse cases and new and original archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic lines of evidence, Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear interweaves anthropological theory and innovative applications of leading-edge scientific methodologies and technologies. The book presents a cross-section of field, laboratory, and ethnohistoric studies—including indigenous consultation—that explore past, recent, and ongoing developments in Numic cultural history and prehistory. It will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology, as well as private and government cultural resource specialists and museum staff.
 
Contributors:
Richard Adams, John Cater, Christine Chady, David Diggs, Rand Greubel, John Ives, Byron Loosle, Curtis Martin, Sally McBeth, Lindsay Montgomery, Bryon Schroeder, Matthew Stirn
 
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Through Their Eyes
A Community History of Eagle, Circle, and Central
Edited by Michael Koskey, Laurel Tyrrell, and Varpu Lotvonen
University of Alaska Press, 2018
The towns of Eagle, Circle, and Central are tucked away in the cold, rugged, and sparsely populated central-eastern interior of Alaska. These communities have fewer than three hundred residents in an area of more than 22,000 square miles. Yet they are closely linked by the Yukon River and by history itself.
Through their Eyes is a glimpse into the past and present of these communities, showing how their survival has depended on centuries of cooperation. The towns have roots in the gold rushes but they are also located within the traditional territories of the Hän Hwëch’in, the Gwichyaa Gwich’in, and Denduu Gwich’in Dena (Athabascan) peoples. Over time, residents have woven together new heritages, adopting and practicing each other’s traditions. This book combines oral accounts with archival research to create a rich portrayal of life in rural Alaska villages. Many of the stories come directly from the residents of these communities, giving an inside perspective on the often colorful events that characterize life in Eagle, Circle, and Central.
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front cover of With the Possum and the Eagle
With the Possum and the Eagle
The Memoir of a Navigator's War over Germany and Japan
Ralph Nutter
University of North Texas Press, 2005


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