Culture
Southeast Asian Politics: Song, Philippine Feminist Movement
This song, entitled Maria and sung in Tagalog (a Philippine language), challenges cultural constructions of women as passive, as sex objects or domestic cooks. “Maria” is used as a generic term for woman. The song identifies heroines such as Lorena Barros, Gabriela Silang, and Tandang Sora.
Short Teaching Module: Chinese Propaganda Posters
Visual images provide valuable material for the exploration of childhood, youth and history.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Painting, Santa Barraza
A representation of Malinche painted by a renowned Chicana visual artist and teacher from Texas. It depicts the beautiful, life-giving Malintzin, is a tiny image, crafted on metal, and meant to evoke ex-voto and other devotional images from Mexico.
Short Teaching Module: Children, Culture, and Folktales
For this particular lesson we examined two classic tales that while similar in many respects, highlight regional cultural differences especially in regard to childhood ideals.
Short Teaching Module: Play in Tokugawa Japan
At the beginning of a lecture on the daily life of townsmen in Edo (Tokyo), I first presented an image of Tokugawa-period (1600–1868) Japanese children. This detail from an ink painting by Hanabusa Itchô (1562–1724) shows a childhood experience common to both sexes: watching a puppet show.
Soviet Dissidents and the "Brain Drain"
In the beginning of 1989, Henry Kissinger met with Mikhail Gorbachev for an informal conversation about the future of U.S.-Soviet cooperation, particularly concerning economic opportunities in the Soviet Union. The problem for U.S.-Soviet trade was the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the 1974 U.S.
Plans for Reorganizing Solidarity
Prior to the historic roundtable talks that took place between February and April 1989 in Poland, preparations took place on many levels.
Mikhail Gorbachev Reports on the Trilateral Commission
During the significant changes that were brewing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev (leader of the Soviet Union) met with members of the Trilateral Commission, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, North America, and Europ
Hungary announces 1956 is a "People's Uprising"
On 23 June 1988, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (Communist) Central Committee established a committee to analyze Hungary's political, economic and social development during the preceding thirty years. The issue of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary became a political flashpoint.
A Yugoslav Ambassador reports on the current situation in Romania
As the government of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania began to collapse in a wave of strikes and riots, Moscow looked on with growing concern. Shortly before Christmas 1989, the Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs met with the Yugoslav ambassador to the Soviet Union to discuss the situation.