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Political Emotions: Why Love Matters For Justice
by Martha C. NussbaumMartha Nussbaum asks: How can we sustain a decent society that aspires to justice and inspires sacrifice for the common good? Amid negative emotions endemic even to good societies, public emotions rooted in love--intense attachments outside our control--can foster commitment to shared goals and keep at bay the forces of disgust and envy.
The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood
by Susan EngelDespite American education’s recent mania for standardized tests, testing misses what really matters about learning: the desire to learn in the first place. Curiosity is vital, but it remains a surprisingly understudied characteristic. The Hungry Mind is a deeply researched, highly readable exploration of what curiosity is, how it can be measured, how it develops in childhood, and how it can be fostered in school. “Engel draws on the latest social science research and incidents from her own life to understand why curiosity is nearly universal in babies, pervasive in early childhood, and less evident in school…Engel’s most important finding is that most classroom environments discourage curiosity…In an era that prizes quantifiable results, a pedagogy that privileges curiosity is not likely to be a priority.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today “Susan Engel’s The Hungry Mind, a book which engages in depth with how our interest and desire to explore the world evolves, makes a valuable contribution not only to the body of academic literature on the developmental and educational psychology of children, but also to our knowledge on why and how we learn.” —Inez von Weitershausen, LSE Review of Books
Retrieving Realism
by Hubert DreyfusFor Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.
Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age
by Nelson TebbeNelson Tebbe shows how a method called social coherence offers a way to resolve conflicts between advocates of religious freedom and proponents of equality law. Based on the way people reason through moral problems in everyday life, it can lead to workable solutions in a wide range of issues, including gay rights and women’s reproductive choice.
Liberalism’s Religion
by Cécile LabordeCécile Laborde argues that religion is more than a statement of belief or a moral code. It refers to comprehensive ways of life, theories of justice, modes of association, and vulnerable collective identities. By disaggregating these dimensions, she addresses questions about whether Western secularism and religion can be applied more universally.
Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire
by Jennifer Pitts PittsIt is commonly believed that international law originated in relations among European states that respected one another as free and equal. In fact, as Jennifer Pitts shows, international law was forged at least as much through Europeans’ domineering relations with non-European states and empires, leaving a legacy still visible in the unequal structures of today’s international order. Pitts focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great age of imperial expansion, as European intellectuals and administrators worked to establish and justify laws to govern emerging relationships with non-Europeans. Relying on military and commercial dominance, European powers dictated their own terms on the basis of their own norms and interests. Despite claims that the law of nations was a universal system rooted in the values of equality and reciprocity, the laws that came to govern the world were parochial and deeply entangled in imperialism. Legal authorities, including Emer de Vattel, John Westlake, and Henry Wheaton, were key figures in these developments. But ordinary diplomats, colonial administrators, and journalists played their part too, as did some of the greatest political thinkers of the time, among them Montesquieu and John Stuart Mill. Against this growing consensus, however, dissident voices as prominent as Edmund Burke insisted that European states had extensive legal obligations abroad that ought not to be ignored. These critics, Pitts shows, provide valuable resources for scrutiny of the political, economic, and legal inequalities that continue to afflict global affairs.
Institutionalization of the Parliament in Bangladesh: A Study of Donor Intervention for Reorganization and Development
by A.T.M. ObaidullahThis book explores the institutionalization process with regard to the Parliament in Bangladesh, and seeks to identify the main constrains that hinder the Parliament from serving as the uppermost representative body for all segments of society.This book sheds valuable new light on key reform initiatives carried out by donor communities in collaboration with the Bangladesh Parliament between the years 1991 and 2015 by presenting an extensive selection of donor proposals to make the Parliament a more potent political institution. The book also focused on the barriers of strengthening oversight, fiscal oversight in particular, resourcing parliament and its secretariat, hindering gender equality and gender responsiveness, counteracting forces that are weakening rule of law, civil liberty of the citizens, constitutionalism and democratic consolidation in the country. The book presents a comparative picture of the pre- and post-reform Bangladesh Parliament, highlighting on the issue of how much the donor assistance can help promote institutionalization of the parliament and democratic consolidation of a developing country. The book will be of immense value to all scholars interested in democratic governance, administrative reforms, policy studies and the role of parliament as a watchdog ensuring accountability, transparency and national integrity.
Institutionalization of the Parliament in Bangladesh: A Study of Donor Intervention for Reorganization and Development
by A.T.M. ObaidullahThis book explores the institutionalization process with regard to the Parliament in Bangladesh, and seeks to identify the main constrains that hinder the Parliament from serving as the uppermost representative body for all segments of society.This book sheds valuable new light on key reform initiatives carried out by donor communities in collaboration with the Bangladesh Parliament between the years 1991 and 2015 by presenting an extensive selection of donor proposals to make the Parliament a more potent political institution. The book also focused on the barriers of strengthening oversight, fiscal oversight in particular, resourcing parliament and its secretariat, hindering gender equality and gender responsiveness, counteracting forces that are weakening rule of law, civil liberty of the citizens, constitutionalism and democratic consolidation in the country. The book presents a comparative picture of the pre- and post-reform Bangladesh Parliament, highlighting on the issue of how much the donor assistance can help promote institutionalization of the parliament and democratic consolidation of a developing country. The book will be of immense value to all scholars interested in democratic governance, administrative reforms, policy studies and the role of parliament as a watchdog ensuring accountability, transparency and national integrity.
Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness And Responsibility In American Legal Culture
by Susanna L. BlumenthalHeadline-grabbing murders are not the only cases in which sanity has been disputed in the American courtroom. Susanna Blumenthal traces this litigation, revealing how ideas of human consciousness, agency, and responsibility have shaped American jurisprudence as judges struggled to reconcile Enlightenment rationality with new sciences of the mind.
The Oracle and the Curse: A Poetics Of Justice From The Revolution To The Civil War
by Caleb SmithCaleb Smith explores the confessions, trial reports, maledictions, and martyr narratives that juxtaposed law and conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion and shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.
Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals
by Mark EdmundsonAn ARTery Best Book of the Year An Art of Manliness Best Book of the Year In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme, Mark Edmundson says. We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth. Self and Soul is an impassioned effort to defend the values of the Soul. “An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness and self-regard…Throughout Self and Soul, Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor…[A] powerful, heartfelt book.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post “[Edmundson’s] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a ‘real education’ in the humanities, inspired by the goal of ‘human transformation’ and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like…[It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies—and his own chosen lifestyle.” —Mathew Reisz, Times Higher Education “Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living.” —Kirkus Reviews
Bonaparte
by Patrice GueniffeyPatrice Gueniffey, the leading French historian of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic age, takes up the epic narrative at the heart of this turbulent period: the life of Napoleon himself, from his boyhood in Corsica, to his meteoric rise during the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, to his proclamation as Consul for Life in 1802.
Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau And Nineteenth-century Science
by Robert M. ThorsonWalden's Shore explores Thoreau's understanding of the "living rock" on which life's complexity depends--not as metaphor but as physical science. Robert Thorson's subject is Thoreau the rock and mineral collector, interpreter of landscapes, and field scientist whose compass and measuring stick were as important to him as his plant press.
A History in Sum: 150 Years Of Mathematics At Harvard, 1825-1975
by Steve NadisIn the twentieth century, American mathematicians began to make critical advances in a field previously dominated by Europeans. Harvard's mathematics department was at the center of these developments. A History in Sum is an inviting account of the pioneers who trailblazed a distinctly American tradition of mathematics--in algebraic geometry, complex analysis, and other esoteric subdisciplines that are rarely written about outside of journal articles or advanced textbooks. The heady mathematical concepts that emerged, and the men and women who shaped them, are described here in lively, accessible prose. The story begins in 1825, when a precocious sixteen-year-old freshman, Benjamin Peirce, arrived at the College. He would become the first American to produce original mathematics--an ambition frowned upon in an era when professors largely limited themselves to teaching. Peirce's successors transformed the math department into a world-class research center, attracting to the faculty such luminaries as George David Birkhoff. Influential figures soon flocked to Harvard, some overcoming great challenges to pursue their elected calling. A History in Sum elucidates the contributions of these extraordinary minds and makes clear why the history of the Harvard mathematics department is an essential part of the history of mathematics in America and beyond.
Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, And The People
by Nadia UrbinatiIn Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the ills that beset the body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of the messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy. Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: the unpolitical, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: the wall separating the free forum of public opinion from governmental institutions that enact the will of the people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes the public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues the aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible the issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as the mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions. Urbinati focuses less on the overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to "the people," and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.
Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, And The People
by Nadia UrbinatiIn Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the ills that beset the body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of the messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy. Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: the unpolitical, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: the wall separating the free forum of public opinion from governmental institutions that enact the will of the people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes the public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues the aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible the issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as the mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions. Urbinati focuses less on the overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to "the people," and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.
A New Republic of Letters: Memory And Scholarship In The Age Of Digital Reproduction
by Jerome McGannJerome McGann's manifesto argues that the history of texts and how they are preserved and accessed for interpretation are the overriding subjects of humanist study in the digital age. Theory and philosophy no longer suffice as an intellectual framework. But philology--out of fashion for decades--models these concerns with surprising fidelity.
The Fight for Interracial Marriage Rights in Antebellum Massachusetts
by Amber D. MoultonThough Massachusetts banned slavery in 1780, prior to the Civil War a law prohibiting marriage between whites and blacks reinforced the state’s racial caste system. Amber Moulton recreates an unlikely collaboration of reformers who sought to rectify what they saw as an indefensible injustice, leading to the legalization of interracial marriage.
Democracy: A Case Study
by David A. MossHistorian David Moss adapts the case study method made famous by Harvard Business School to revitalize our conversations about governance and democracy and show how the United States has often thrived on political conflict. These 19 cases ask us to weigh choices and consequences, wrestle with momentous decisions, and come to our own conclusions.
Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences And Philosophy In The Renaissance (I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history #19)
by Dag Nikolaus HasseDag Nikolaus Hasse shows how ideological and scientific motives led to the decline of Arabic traditions in European culture. The Renaissance was a turning point: on the one hand, Arabic scientific traditions reached their peak of influence in Europe; on the other, during this period the West began to forget, or suppress, its debt to Arabic culture.
Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism
by Stephanie L. MudgeLeft-leaning political parties play an important role as representatives of the poor and disempowered. They once did so by promising protections from the forces of capital and the market’s tendencies to produce inequality. But in the 1990s they gave up on protection, asking voters to adapt to a market-driven world. Meanwhile, new, extreme parties began to promise economic protections of their own—albeit in an angry, anti-immigrant tone. To better understand today’s strange new political world, Stephanie L. Mudge’s Leftism Reinvented analyzes the history of the Swedish and German Social Democrats, the British Labour Party, and the American Democratic Party. Breaking with an assumption that parties simply respond to forces beyond their control, Mudge argues that left parties’ changing promises expressed the worldviews of different kinds of experts. To understand how left parties speak, we have to understand the people who speak for them. Leftism Reinvented shows how Keynesian economists came to speak for left parties by the early 1960s. These economists saw their task in terms of discretionary, politically-sensitive economic management. But in the 1980s a new kind of economist, who viewed the advancement of markets as left parties’ main task, came to the fore. Meanwhile, as voters’ loyalties to left parties waned, professional strategists were called upon to “spin” party messages. Ultimately, left parties undermined themselves, leaving a representative vacuum in their wake. Leftism Reinvented raises new questions about the roles and responsibilities of left parties—and their experts—in politics today.
The Hatred of Literature
by William MarxFor 2,500 years literature has been condemned in the name of authority, truth, morality and society. But in making explicit what a society expects from literature, anti-literary discourse paradoxically asserts the validity of what it wishes to deny. The threat to literature’s continued existence, William Marx writes, is not hatred but indifference.
The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (The\w. E. B. Du Bois Lectures #19)
by Stuart HallIn this work drawn from lectures delivered in 1994 a founding figure of cultural studies reflects on the divisive, deadly consequences of our politics of identification. Stuart Hall untangles the power relations that permeate race, ethnicity, and nationhood and shows how oppressed groups broke apart old hierarchies of difference in Western culture.
The Educationalization of Student Emotional and Behavioral Health: Alternative Truth
by Teresa L. SullivanThis book examines the current political, social, and economic positions that push the responsibility for the emotional health of students onto schools. The context of recent education reform asks schools to mitigate adverse emotional health of students by developing and implementing broad programming, curriculum, and policies immersed in cognitive behavioral approaches. The design plan is intended to build resilience and develop strategies in students that will enable them to succeed despite adverse structural conditions. The swindle of education reform is that it deflects and blames families, youth, and the school system for the social ills of society. From the perspective of a thirty year Massachusetts educator and high school principal emerges an alternative reality that not only challenges decades of education reform entrenched in victim blaming but also exposes a serious responsibility gap.
The Educationalization of Student Emotional and Behavioral Health: Alternative Truth
by Teresa L. SullivanThis book examines the current political, social, and economic positions that push the responsibility for the emotional health of students onto schools. The context of recent education reform asks schools to mitigate adverse emotional health of students by developing and implementing broad programming, curriculum, and policies immersed in cognitive behavioral approaches. The design plan is intended to build resilience and develop strategies in students that will enable them to succeed despite adverse structural conditions. The swindle of education reform is that it deflects and blames families, youth, and the school system for the social ills of society. From the perspective of a thirty year Massachusetts educator and high school principal emerges an alternative reality that not only challenges decades of education reform entrenched in victim blaming but also exposes a serious responsibility gap.