Def Political Poetry Slam

You are to write, rehearse and offer a perfect performance of a political poem in “slam style”.

1. Watch some poetry slam performances. Simply enter “poetry slam” and/or “def poetry jam” into the YouTube browser.

A former colleague turned me on to Taylor Mali. Take a few moments to watch What Teachers Make and Speak with Conviction.

I also respect the following examples by: Alicia Keys, Lauryn Hill and Shane Koyczan

2. Choose a theme and/or a country from our course.
3. Write and revise. Aim for a 3-5 minute piece.
4. Practice, practice, practice. Find your voice, then perfect it.
5. Stand and deliver in class. Speak with passion, conviction and diction. We want to hear you loud and clear. We will have a 90 minute political poetry slam. This is a healthy competition. We will vote on the winners. Prizes will be alloted.

This is the last hurrah for us. Let’s do it right.

Incongruous Paradigms?

Are capitalism and environmentalism incongruous paradigms?
Post a 750 word essay (one page, single-spaced) which begins with a specific, complex and refutable thesis.

Then read  responses of your classmates (at least 3 of them). Then leave an incisive 1 paragraph comment on 3 essays. Commenting is not optional.

Come to class ready for healthy debate.

Chinese aim for the Ivy League

The book spawned a genre, selling more than two million copies in China on the premise that any child, with the proper upbringing, could be Ivy League material.

Now, eight years after the publication of “Harvard Girl,” bookstore shelves here are laden with copycat titles like “How We Got Our Child Into Yale,” “Harvard Family Instruction” and “The Door of the Elite.”

Their increasing popularity points to the preoccupation – some might say a single-minded national obsession – of a growing number of middle-class Chinese parents: getting their children into America’s premier universities.

Read Chinese aim for the Ivy League from The IHT

Putin's Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of the classic text provides the most current and authoritative assessment of Russia available. Distinguished scholars offer a full-scale assessment of Putin’s leadership, exploring the daunting domestic and international implications of Putin”s reign.

Read selected essays (on topics of domestic policy, the economy and foreign policy) from this books for free at Google Books. I particularly  impressed by Petrov and Slider’s essay, “Putin and the Regions”.

Ghosts of the South

It was over a lunch of Confederate fried steak in Columbia, S.C., that I realized something crucial about North and South. A passport ought to be required to travel from one to the other. Despite decades of economic and cultural homogenization, the regions remain as different as basketball and NASCAR. That thought occurred when my lunch partner, a man named Chris Sullivan, told me this: “To say the War Between the States was about slavery is like saying the Revolutionary War was about tea.” And he meant it, sure as the pear trees bloom in sun-washed Columbia, the South is rising once again…

The article

Response Sheet

Populism Lecture Series

Here are a series of lectures that I have devised. In creating these lectures I relied heavily on the scholarship of Duke University’s Lawrence Goodwyn and Richard Hofstadter.

Notes on Goodwyn’s Introduction to A Short History of Agrarian Revolt in America

The Alliance Develops a Movement Culture

Discovering the Limits of Populism in America

The Legacy and Irony of The Rise and Fall of Populism

My Class Lecture on Western Settlement and the Rise and Fall of Populism

Goodwyn’s book on Populism is available for free at here

Contradictions in China, and the rise of a family

The Lius are China’s first-generation billionaires, born into a world of Mao suits, food rations, price controls and Communist slogans. And the story of how they made their fortune is considered one of the guiding myths of China’s Communist party, a symbol of this country’s transformation over the last 30 years, since its unlikely embrace of capitalism. But their story also betrays the contradictions of modern China — a country where the average factory worker makes less than $50 a week.
“The puzzle is not why the Liu brothers succeeded, but why there are not more like them in China,” says Huang Yasheng, who teaches at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an expert on Chinese entrepreneurs. “Rural China represents a vast pool of entrepreneurial capabilities and substantial business opportunities.”

As the global economy enters its first drastic downturn since China opened to the world, analysts say this country is searching for a more sustainable path to growth.

Read on from The IHT