By Xavier Reader, The University of Western Australia
La Belle Epoque — translated as the good times or the beautiful era — was a phenomenon that took place throughout pre-war Western Europe, but is no better preserved than in metropolitan Paris, where the feeling and conceptualisation of Belle Epoque existed in a highly concentrated form.
Read MoreBy Sophia Hernandez Tragesser, University of St. Thomas
In 1933, a Zionist film crew produced a cornerstone Israeli film, Oded Hanoded, depicting a child’s adventures in the Jezreel Valley at the forefront of Jewish civilization amidst Arab Bedouins. This film embodied the Zionist struggle for an ethno-religious homeland by presenting strong European-Jewish characters engaged in a life-and-death battle for survival against hostile land.
Read MoreBy Carla Graciano, Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Perra Brava, written by Orfa Alarcón, is a Mexican narco-novel that will act as the focal point of this essay. Perra most often translates to bitch or female dog, and most of the time, women are the ones who are on the receiving end of this epithet.
Read MoreArt museums in the United States are not exempt from the current social and political divisiveness of our times. Recent events within the art world have revealed a call to action for museums to no longer be neutral institutions, but instead take a more active role in promoting social justice narratives, being the redistribution of power, influence, and value,[1]in order to maintain relevance within society and resolve a historic lack of diversity.
Read MoreEdwin Tran
The rise of militant jihadist organizations in the Middle East is often thought of in simplistic and blanketed terms. Unfortunately, diverse and distinct groups, such as Hezbollah and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are grouped into a single category, and are often explained in broad terms.
Read MoreBy Nick McIndoe
Since the end of World War II, global governance has been characterized by the presence of international institutions, which are charged to pursue global justice. However, there is presently much conjecture regarding the justice of such institutions. In this paper, I introduce two main branches of global justice, namely ‘substantive justice’ and ‘procedural justice.’ Then, I apply these concepts to the World Trade Organization in order to analyse its policies, practices, and structural foundations. For an international institution that allegedly promotes economic and international trade equality, my findings are troubling.
Read MoreBy David deHaas
The 1960s were a time of many social and political movements representing the diverse voices and concerns amongst the fragmented American populous. The particular causes of these movements consisted of clashes between standard cultural norms that characterized American society, and communities that resisted this standard. I would posit that a substantial causal factor of these clashes was a widespread crises of human identity.
Read MoreBy Jeanette Tong Gin Yen
Science fiction and Fantasy, falling under the general classification of imaginative literature, have an established tradition of charting the impossible through narratives that verge on possible, often articulating underlying concerns about our social worlds through the paradox of ‘(im)possibilities’.
Read MoreLarisa Coffey-Wong
Despite the numerous, well-documented differences that exist between Ridley Scott’s loose filmic adaption of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, as first and foremost an adaptation, Blade Runner necessarily has some points of similarity with its source text.
Read MoreCatherine J. Bruns
Over two hundred years after the French Revolution, historians have yet to reach a consensus as to what caused the bloody overthrow of one of Europe’s leading political regimes. While previous research has focused on the revolutionary policy and legislative changes that occurred during this period, there has been little focus on the involvement of related subject--the political actor.
Read MoreBy M. Ethan Johnson
It’s been nearly two weeks since the Hermit Kingdom declared that it had successfully launched and detonated a hydrogen bomb—much to the surprise and dismay of the international community.
Major news outlets have argued, minimalized, and debased the plausibility of a nuclear Democratic Republic of North Korea, but let’s consider such a world.
Read MoreBy Hsin-Ta Tsai
Should the universality of the UDHR be applied to the people of Tibet in the first place, discounting its sociocultural context? To answer this question, we have to consider the appropriateness of having some principles or a set of human rights regulations that all cultures and nations can agree upon, a rather Western cosmopolitan view on international ethical issues. In cosmopolitanism, national borders are morally irrelevant because “a truly moral rule or code will be applicable to everyone.” However, it raises concerns knowing that most of the debates about international ethics come from Western traditions of moral theory.
Read MoreBy Charles Badger
On March 3, Carol Browner granted a half hour interview with Apollon following her convocation. “The nation that leads in green jobs will be the leader of the 21st Century,” she declared in her speech before the student population. In wide-ranging remarks, she cited everything from melting polar ice caps to U.S. military’s transportation cost in Afghanistan to “knowing your neighbors” as reasons to support the United States’ transition to a cleaner and more sustainable future.
Read MoreDuring Carol Browner’s March 3rd Convocation lecture, she discussed many of the alternative energy sources being considered for development as a means to kick the United States’ oil addiction. As Charles Badger noted in his editorial, some environmentalists in attendance were in disagreement with Browner’s policy-driven approach to environmental pragmatism.
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