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Generation Palestine
Voices from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement
Edited by Rich Wiles
Pluto Press, 2013

The unique model of apartheid, colonisation and military occupation that Israel imposes on the Palestinians, along with myriad violations of international law, have made Palestine the moral cause of a generation. Yet many people continue to ask, ‘what can we do?’

Generation Palestine helps to answer this question by bringing together Palestinian and international activists in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The movement aims to pressure Israel until it complies with International Law, mirroring the model that was successfully utilised against South African apartheid.

With essays written by a wide selection of contributors, Generation Palestine follows the BDS movement’s model of inclusivity and collaboration. Contributors include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ken Loach, Iain Banks, Ronnie Kasrils, Professor Richard Falk, Ilan Pappe, Omar Barghouti, Ramzy Baroud and Archbishop Attallah Hannah, alongside other internationally acclaimed artists, writers, academics and grassroots activists.

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Georges Woke Up Laughing
Long-Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home
Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Eugene Fouron
Duke University Press, 2001
Combining history, autobiography, and ethnography, Georges Woke Up Laughing provides a portrait of the Haitian experience of migration to the United States that illuminates the phenomenon of long-distance nationalism, the voicelessness of certain citizens, and the impotency of government in an increasingly globalized world. By presenting lively ruminations on his life as a Haitian immigrant, Georges Eugene Fouron—along with Nina Glick Schiller, whose own family history stems from Poland and Russia—captures the daily struggles for survival that bind together those who emigrate and those who stay behind.
According to a long-standing myth, once emigrants leave their homelands—particularly if they emigrate to the United States—they sever old nationalistic ties, assimilate, and happily live the American dream. In fact, many migrants remain intimately and integrally tied to their ancestral homeland, sometimes even after they become legal citizens of another country. In Georges Woke Up Laughing the authors reveal the realities and dilemmas that underlie the efforts of long-distance nationalists to redefine citizenship, race, nationality, and political loyalty. Through discussions of the history and economics that link the United States with countries around the world, Glick Schiller and Fouron highlight the forces that shape emigrants’ experiences of government and citizenship and create a transborder citizenry. Arguing that governments of many countries today have almost no power to implement policies that will assist their citizens, the authors provide insights into the ongoing sociological, anthropological, and political effects of globalization.
Georges Woke up Laughing will entertain and inform those who are concerned about the rights of people and the power of their governments within the globalizing economy.

“In my dream I was young and in Haiti with my friends, laughing, joking, and having a wonderful time. I was walking down the main street of my hometown of Aux Cayes. The sun was shining, the streets were clean, and the port was bustling with ships. At first I was laughing because of the feeling of happiness that stayed with me, even after I woke up. I tried to explain my wonderful dream to my wife, Rolande. Then I laughed again but this time not from joy. I had been dreaming of a Haiti that never was.”—from Georges Woke Up Laughing

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The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies
Lucinda Mosher
Georgetown University Press, 2022

A comprehensive collection provides guidance and deep insight from a variety of experts in this emerging field

The rapidly developing field of interreligious studies fosters scholarship engaging two or more religious traditions at a time. Inherently multidisciplinary, the field brings the academic consideration of religions into conversation with the humanities and social sciences, employing relational, intersectional, experiential, and dialogical methodologies as it examines the interrelationship of individuals and groups with differing alignments toward religion.

Edited by Lucinda Mosher, The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies features an international roster of practitioners of or experts on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Ruism, Humanism, and African, North American, and South American Indigenous lifeways. Each author offers a unique perspective on the nature of this emerging discipline.

This companion provides fifty thought-provoking chapters on the history, priorities, challenges, distinguishing pedagogies, and practical applications of interreligious studies. Anyone who seeks a deeper appreciation of this relatively new academic field will find it useful as a textbook or research resource.

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Germany Unified and Europe Transformed
A Study in Statecraft
Philip D. Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice
Harvard University Press, 1995

Officials mingled in the lobby of the Oktyabrskaia Hotel--shaking hands, sipping champagne, signing their names--and Germany was united. In this undramatic fashion, the international community closed the book on the drama of divided Germany. But nothing so momentous could be quite so quiet and uncomplicated, as this volume makes strikingly clear. This is the first book to go behind the scenes through access to still not opened archives in many countries. Germany Unified and Europe Transformed discloses the moves and maneuvers that ended the Cold War division of Europe.

Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, who served in the White House during these years, have combed a vast number of documents and other sources in German and Russian as well as English. They also interviewed the major actors in the drama--George Bush, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Eduard Shevardnadze, James Baker, Anatoly Chernyayev, Brent Scowcroft, Horst Teltschik, and many others. Their firsthand accounts merge to create a complete, detailed, and powerfully immediate picture of what happened. The book takes us into Gorbachev's world, illuminating why the Soviet leader set such cataclysmic forces in motion in the late 1980s and how these forces outstripped his plans. We follow the tense debates between Soviet and East German officials over whether to crush the first wave of German protesters--and learn that the opening of the Berlin Wall was in fact one of the greatest bureaucratic blunders in human history. The narrative then reveals the battle for the future of East Germany as it took shape between West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the reform Communist leader, Hans Modrow--East Germany's "little Gorbachev." Zelikow and Rice show how Kohl and George Bush held off the reactions of governments throughout Europe so that Kohl could awaken East Germans to the possibility of reunification on his terms. Then the battle over the future of the NATO alliance began in earnest.

The drama that would change the face of Europe took place largely backstage, and this book lets us in on the strategies and negotiations, the nerve-racking risks, last-minute decisions, and deep deliberations that brought it off. It is the most authoritative depiction of contemporary statecraft to appear in decades.

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Germany Unified and Europe Transformed
A Study in Statecraft, With a New Preface
Philip D. Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice
Harvard University Press, 1997

Officials mingled in the lobby of the Oktyabrskaia Hotel--shaking hands, sipping champagne, signing their names--and Germany was united. In this undramatic fashion, the international community closed the book on the drama of divided Germany. But nothing so momentous could be quite so quiet and uncomplicated, as this volume makes strikingly clear. This is the first book to go behind the scenes through access to still not opened archives in many countries. Germany Unified and Europe Transformed discloses the moves and maneuvers that ended the Cold War division of Europe.

Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, who served in the White House during these years, have combed a vast number of documents and other sources in German and Russian as well as English. They also interviewed the major actors in the drama--George Bush, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Eduard Shevardnadze, James Baker, Anatoly Chernyayev, Brent Scowcroft, Horst Teltschik, and many others. Their firsthand accounts merge to create a complete, detailed, and powerfully immediate picture of what happened. The book takes us into Gorbachev's world, illuminating why the Soviet leader set such cataclysmic forces in motion in the late 1980s and how these forces outstripped his plans. We follow the tense debates between Soviet and East German officials over whether to crush the first wave of German protesters--and learn that the opening of the Berlin Wall was in fact one of the greatest bureaucratic blunders in human history. The narrative then reveals the battle for the future of East Germany as it took shape between West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the reform Communist leader, Hans Modrow--East Germany's "little Gorbachev." Zelikow and Rice show how Kohl and George Bush held off the reactions of governments throughout Europe so that Kohl could awaken East Germans to the possibility of reunification on his terms. Then the battle over the future of the NATO alliance began in earnest.

The drama that would change the face of Europe took place largely backstage, and this book lets us in on the strategies and negotiations, the nerve-racking risks, last-minute decisions, and deep deliberations that brought it off. It is the most authoritative depiction of contemporary statecraft to appear in decades.

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Germany's Wild East
Constructing Poland as Colonial Space
Kristin Kopp
University of Michigan Press, 2012
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, representations of Poland and the Slavic East cast the region as a primitive, undeveloped, or empty space inhabited by a population destined to remain uncivilized without the aid of external intervention. These depictions often made direct reference to the American Wild West, portraying the eastern steppes as a boundless plain that needed to be wrested from the hands of unruly natives and spatially ordered into German-administrated units.

While conventional definitions locate colonial space overseas, Kristin Kopp argues that it was possible to understand both distant continents and adjacent Eastern Europe as parts of the same global periphery dependent upon Western European civilizing efforts. However, proximity to the source of aid translated to greater benefits for Eastern Europe than for more distant regions.

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The Giant’s Rival
The USSR and Latin America, Revised Edition
Cole Blasier
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
The Giant's Rival is an authoritative survey of Soviet relations with Latin America. Blasier provides a concise account of Soviet diplomatic, economic, and political-military involvement in the region, focusing on the post-1970 period.

This revised edition includes chapters analyzing developments since 1983. Blasier views the origins of the Sandinista revolution, and its relation to international Communism, and how the Nicaraguan government has grown dependent on Soviet oil, arms, and economic and political assistance.  He also describes the growing relations between the New Jewel Movement in Grenada and Moscow before it was toppled by the U.S. invasion. Blasier explains how U.S. policies have affected Soviet outcomes and makes proposals for protecting and advancing U.S. interests.
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Gifts in the Age of Empire
Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639
Sinem Arcak Casale
University of Chicago Press, 2023
Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts.

When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts.
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Global Perspectives on the United States
Pro-Americanism, Anti-Americanism, and the Discourses Between
Edited by Virginia R. Dominguez and Jane C. Desmond
University of Illinois Press, 2017
This daring collaborative effort showcases dialogues between international scholars engaged with the United States from abroad. The writers investigate the analytic methods and choices that label certain talk, images, behaviors, and allusions as "American" and how to read the data on such material. The editors present the essays in pairs that overlap in theme or region. Each author subsequently comments on the other's work. A third scholar or team of scholars from a different discipline or geographic location then provides another level of analysis. Contributors: Andrzej Antoszek, Sophia Balakian, Zsófia Bán, Sabine Bröck, Ian Condry, Kate Delaney, Jane C. Desmond, Virginia R. Dominguez, Ira Dworkin, Richard Ellis, Guillermo Ibarra, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Giorgio Mariani, Ana Mauad, Loes Nas, Edward Schatz, Manar Shorbagy, Kristin Solli, Amy Spellacy, and Michael Titlestad.
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Grand Illusion
The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France
Karen Fiss
University of Chicago Press, 2009

Franco-German cultural exchange reached its height at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, where the Third Reich worked to promote an illusion of friendship between the two countries. Through the prism of this decisive event, Grand Illusion examines the overlooked relationships among Nazi elites and French intellectuals. Their interaction, Karen Fiss argues, profoundly influenced cultural production and normalized aspects of fascist ideology in 1930s France, laying the groundwork for the country’s eventual collaboration with its German occupiers.

Tracing related developments across fine arts, film, architecture, and mass pageantry, Fiss illuminates the role of National Socialist propaganda in the French decision to ignore Hitler’s war preparations and pursue an untenable policy of appeasement. France’s receptiveness toward Nazi culture, Fiss contends, was rooted in its troubled identity and deep-seated insecurities. With their government in crisis, French intellectuals from both the left and the right demanded a new national culture that could rival those of the totalitarian states. By examining how this cultural exchange shifted toward political collaboration, Grand Illusion casts new light on the power of art to influence history.

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The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs
How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
William O. Beeman
University of Chicago Press, 2008
 
For more than twenty-five years, the United States and Iran have been diplomatically estranged, each characterizing the other not only as a political adversary, but also as devious, threatening, and essentially evil. According to William O. Beeman’s provocative book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs,” such demonization is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as both countries have embraced exactly the policies and rhetoric that would particularly threaten or insult the other. Drawing on his experience as a linguistic anthropologist, Beeman parses how political leaders have used historical references, religious associations, and the mythology of evil to inflame their own citizens against the foreign country, and proposes a way out of this dangerous debacle.
 
“William Beeman’s analysis of dissonant perceptions of Iran and the USA is compelling and important. . . . I am particularly grateful for this work.”—James Peacock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
 
“[Beeman] is more interested in informing the reader than in impressing his peers. The other strength of the book lies in the author’s knowledge of Iranian history and culture. . . . It challenges the reader and forces him to question stereotypes about Iran and Washington’s perspective on the country.”—Abbas William Samii, Middle East Journal
 
 
 
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Gringos Get Rich
Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music
Eunice Rojas
University of Alabama Press, 2024

Documents counterimperialism in Chilean music since the 1960s

Gringos Get Rich: Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music examines anti-Americanism in Latin America as manifested in Chilean music in recent history. From a folk-based movement in the 1960s and early 1970s to underground punk rock groups during the Pinochet regime, to socially conscious hip-hop artists of postdictatorship Chile, Chilean music has followed several left-leaning transnational musical trends to grapple with Chile’s fluctuating relationship with the United States. Eunice Rojas’s innovative analysis introduces US readers to a wide swath of Chilean musicians and their powerful protest songs and provides a representative and long view of the negative influences of the United States in Latin America.

Much of the criticism of the United States in Chile’s music centers on the perception of the United States as a heavy-handed source of capitalist imperialism that is exploitative of and threatening to Chile’s poor and working-class public and to Chilean cultural independence and integrity. Rojas incorporates Antonio Gramsci’s theories about the difficulties of struggles for cultural power within elitist capitalist systems to explore anti-Americanism and anti-capitalist music. Ultimately, Rojas shows how the music from various genres, time periods, and political systems attempts to act as a counterhegemonic alternative to Chile’s political, cultural, and economic status quo.

Rojas’s insight is timely with recent political trends toward the right in the Americas. There is also increased interest in and acceptance of popular song lyrics as literary texts. The book will appeal to Latin Americanists, ethnomusicologists, scholars of popular culture and international relations, students, and general readers.
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The Guise of Exceptionalism
Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States
Robert Fatton
Rutgers University Press, 2021
The Guise of Exceptionalism compares the historical origins of Haitian and American exceptionalisms. It also traces how exceptionalism as a narrative of uniqueness has shaped relations between the two countries from their early days of independence through the contemporary period. Exceptionalism is at the core of every national founding narrative. It allows countries to purge history of injurious stains, and embellish it with mythical innocence and claims of distinction. Exceptionalism also builds the bonds of solidarity that forge an imagined national fellowship of the chosen, but it excludes those deemed unfit for membership because of their race, ethnicity, gender, or class. Exceptionalism, however, is not frozen. As a social invention, it changes over time, but always within the parameters of its original principles. Our capacity to reinvent it is dependent on the degree of hegemony achieved by the ruling class, and if this class has the infrastructural power to gradually co-opt and include €the groups it had once excluded.
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