SIAS Faculty Book Gallery

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Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China

Turan Kayaoglu

Legal Imperialism examines the important role of nineteenth-century Western extraterritorial courts in non-Western states. These courts, created as a separate legal system for Western expatriates living in Asian and Islamic coutries, developed from the British imperial model, which was founded on ideals of legal positivism. Based on a cross-cultural comparison of the emergence, function, and abolition of these court systems in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China, Turan Kayaoglu elaborates a theory of extraterritoriality, comparing the nineteenth-century British example with the post-World War II American legal imperialism. He also provides an explanation for the end of imperial extraterritoriality, arguing that the Western decision to abolish their separate legal systems stemmed from changes in non-Western territories, including Meiji legal reforms, Republican Turkey's legal transformation under Ataturk, and the Guomindang's legal reorganization in China. Ultimately, his research provides an innovative basis for understanding the assertion of legal authority by Western powers on foreign soil and the influence of such assertion on ideas about sovereignty.
Leaving Yesler

Peter Bacho

Leaving Yesler features a sensitive, mixed race (Puerto Rican and black) protagonist (Bobby). Bobby s life is difficult in short order, he lost his mom to cancer and his older protective brother to Vietnam. His Filipino stepfather is old and not long for the world. The plot, which takes place in the politically tumultuous year of 1968, follows him from his last days in the Yesler Terrace housing project in Seattle to just short of his first day in college. Not only must he survive the dangers within the projects, he must also come to terms with questions about his ethnic identity and his sexuality. The novel is set within the literary realm of magical realism. The ghosts of Bobby s mother and older brother continuously reappear to comfort and advise him. It could be classified as Young Adult, although it is clearly not limited to such an audience. Essentially, this is a coming-of-age novel set in an urban environment, and it deals with serious issues in a young man s growth and development.
Mediated Identities: Youth, Agency and Globalization

Divya C. McMillin

Mediated Identities is an empirical examination of how youth identity is negotiated in urban and rural spaces where cultural, economic, and political forces compete for the allegiance of the young consumer and worker. Rich with fieldwork on teens and television in India, Germany, South Africa, and the United States, the book provides a new direction for the critical discussion of youth agency. It questions young people as autonomous consumers and examines the interpellatory forces of media and market. The application of postcolonial theory produces an incisive analysis of television and other media consumption as part of a process that bolsters the neocolonial imperatives of globalization. Simultaneously, the book focuses on the opportunism on both sides of the equation, on youth particularly in developing economies and the industries that need their cheap labor. In such opportunistic contexts, Mediated Identities addresses ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities.
Film, a Sound Art

Michel Chion and Claudia Gorbman

French critic and composer Michel Chion argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise—it enacts a process of audio-viewing. The audiovisual makes use of a wealth of tropes, devices, techniques, and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema.

The first half of Film, A Sound Art considers developments in technology, aesthetic trends, and individual artistic style that recast the history of film as the evolution of a truly audiovisual language. The second half explores the intersection of auditory and visual realms. With restless inventiveness, Chion develops a rhetoric that describes the effects of audio-visual combinations, forcing us to rethink sound film. He claims, for example, that the silent era (which he terms "deaf cinema") did not end with the advent of sound technology but continues to function underneath and within later films. Expanding our appreciation of cinematic experiences ranging from Dolby multitrack in action films and the eerie tricycle of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining to the way actors from different nations use their voices and words, Film, A Sound Art showcases the vast knowledge and innovative thinking of a major theorist.
Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame

Beverly Naidus

Arts for Change presents strategies and theory for teaching socially engaged art with an historical and contemporary overview of the field. The book features interviews with over thirty maverick artists/faculty from colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, whose pedagogy is drawn from and informs activist arts practice.

The issues these teaching artists address are provocative and diverse. Some came to this work through personal healing from injustice and trauma or by witnessing oppressions that became intolerable. Many have taught for decades, deeply influenced by social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, yet because the work is controversial, tenured positions are rare.
Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 6: Julian of Norwich: The Influence of Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations

Elisabeth Dutton, Anne Clark Bartlett, and Rosalynn Voaden

Compilation and miscellany manuscripts were widely owned in the late Middle Ages, by both the laity and the clergy. Here, their possible influence on Julian of Norwich's Revelations is explored. The book argues that formal features of compilation are evident in the text, deployed by Julian to give authority and didactic force to the theological debate in which she is engaged. Combining study of compilation manuscripts and manuscripts of the Revelations with structural analysis, it suggests important new ways of reading the Revelations, and makes a strong case for compilation as a literary form with creative potential.
What Is a Trade?: Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India

Greg Bell, Donald Fels, and Samuel K. Parker

What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India presents sixteen large-scale paintings that explore trade and globalization in India. Fels' conceptual starting point for this exhibition was Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's 1498 voyage to Malabar, India, in search of a direct sea route for the spice trade. What is a Trade? explores the historic and modern-day legacy of that expedition more than 500 years later. In 2004 and 2005, Fels traveled to Kerala (formerly Malabar), India, as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, to work with local commercial signboard painters on a body of work that examines globalization in India and traces its roots to Vasco's voyage. Most of the signboard painters had formerly worked as billboard painters -- until recently, all billboards in India were hand-painted, but cheaper and more efficient inkjet printers are making the painters obsolete. In light of this trend, Fels and his collaborators created work in the style of traditional hand-painted billboards and Bollywood advertising. The bright colors and strong graphic narratives make visually arresting statements about the historic and contemporary effects of trade and globalization. Greg Bell is curator and collection coordinator, 4Culture; Samuel K. Parker is associate professor, Interdisciplinary arts and sciences, University of Washington, Tacoma.
Victorio Acosta Velasco: An American Life

Michael Serizawa Brown

This work is a biography of Victorio Acosta Velasco, a Filipino-born journalist and labor leader who immigrated to the United States in 1924. At this time, thousands of young Filipinos were coming to America to further their education, find opportunity, and realize the idealism the U.S. was rumored to offer. Upon arriving in Seattle, however, Velasco learned that the 'American Dream' hardly applied to dark-skinned immigrants. Devalued by the workforce and spurned by white women, the disillusioned Velasco became involved in Filipino activities, but never conceded his place in American society. Amongst other achievements, he published poetry in nearly a dozen mainstream anthologies on American literature. Ultimately, by the end of the Second World War, Velasco had learned to approach his Caucasian relationships with more circumspection, and also began to experience intra-ethnic conflicts with other Filipinos. This book seeks to counter the negative, one-dimensional portraits of Asian men in popular media, and informs its readers of an authentic and challenging Filipino-American experience.
Hasegawa Nyozekan and Liberalism in Modern Japan

Mary Hanneman

This new in-depth study of Hasegawa Nyozekan (1895-1969) examines his life and intellectual contributions as a pre-eminent liberal reformer through his role as a journalist and social critic, particularly in pre-war and wartime Japan.
Wetlands: An Introduction to Ecology, the Law, and Permitting (2nd ed.)

Theda Braddock

This second edition explains what wetlands are and how they fit into our complex environmental systems. It incorporates recent court cases and regulations, discusses the functions and values of wetlands, and details the scientific classification of wetlands.

Completely updated, this new edition includes new chapters covering the science of wetlands; new developments in the permitting process, enforcement, jurisdiction, and takings; an expanded scientific and legal look at isolated wetlands; and an added look at the Corps administrative appeals process.

With the help of easy-to-understand flowcharts, the authors guide you through the delineation of wetlands and offer step-by-step guidance on the permit process and enforcement. As a result, you'll be able to determine which activities require a permit and which are exempt.

Other topics covered include political perspectives, ecological perspectives, wetland classification, wetland delineation, administrative penalties, and litigation and defenses.
Nationalism and the International Labor Movement: The Idea of the Nation in Socialist and Anarchist Theory

Michael Forman

The resurgence of nationalism accompanying the decline of Communism has been taken to indicate the failure of socialist theory to grasp the nature of this phenomenon. Against both those who argue that the radical tradition has ignored and underestimated nationalism and those who accuse it of economic reductionism, this careful analysis of the idea of the nation as it was developed in the work of the major thinkers of the international labor movement reveals evidence of how seriously they grappled with nationalism.

Each of the main sections of the book focuses on the most influential theorists of the international labor movement as it became organized and grew: Bakunin, Marx, and Engels and the concern of the First International (1864–1876) with class solidarity across political borders; Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bauer and the preoccupation of the Second International (1889-1914) with socialism in ethnically plural societies; Stalin and Gramsci in relation to the substitution by the Third International (1919–1943) of nation-building and national liberation for the old class project.

In the conclusion, the author examines the relationships among ethnic and civic nationality, national self-determination, republican institutions, and the process of globalization from the perspective of the post-Soviet era and in the light of social theory and Kant's ideas about cosmopolitan right.
The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture

Elaine Cardenas, Ellen Gorman, and Joanne Clarke Dillman

The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture is a study of the notorious automobile/sports utility vehicle. Featuring more than fifteen essays, this collection analyzes the Hummer through a wide array of disciplines, including material culture, marketing and advertising, popular culture, military technology, urban planning, and political economy. It provides a complete overview of the vehicle: production, marketing aspects, and cultural significance. The only book of its kind, The Hummer is of great value to cultural studies and American studies scholars and students, as well as to any general reader with an interest in contemporary American culture.
A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

Mike Allen and Larry Schweikart

For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.”

As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin.

A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction

Anne Beaufort

Composition research consistently demonstrates that the social context of writing determines the majority of conventions a writer must observe. Still, most universities organize the required first-year composition course as if there were an intuitive set of general writing "skills."

In College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Anne Beaufort reports a longitudinal study of one student's experience in first-year composition (FYC), in history, in engineering, and in his post-college writing. Her data illuminates the struggle of college students to transfer what they learn about "general writing" from one context to another. Her findings suggest ultimately not that we must abolish FYC, but that we must go beyond even genre theory in reconceiving it.

Accordingly, Beaufort would argue that the FYC course should abandon its hope to teach a sort of general academic discourse, and instead should systematically teach strategies of responding to contextual elements that impinge on the writing situation. Her data urges attention to issues of learning transfer, and to developmentally sound linkages in writing instruction within and across disciplines. Beaufort advocates special attention to discourse community theory, for its power to help students perceive and understand the context of writing.

Excerpt aviailable to read on the Utah State University Press
International Media Studies

Divya C. McMillin

International Media Studies is a bold approach to the field that situates media studies within the international context of the networked, globalized 21st century. Moving beyond the idea of the West and the Rest, this volume introduces audience/reception research from areas that have been previously underrepresented in media studies, such as Egypt, South East Asia, China, Taiwan, and Tibet.Using postcolonial theory, it addresses the issues of the overlapping narratives of global, national, and local identities; and showcases global media patterns from a variety of countries around the world. The text surveys the reception of a wide variety of media content and formats including television, cinema, magazines, and popular music. It addresses theoretical concepts such as hybridity and methods such as ethnography. International Media Studies is a comprehensive assessment of the state of media studies as it is being practiced throughout the world.
Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign

Michael K. Honey

The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.'s last crusade.

Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice.

With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People's Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America.
The Confederation Congress and the Creation of the American Trans-Appalachian Settlement Policy 1783-1787

Mike Allen

Immediately following the Revolutionary war, thousands of American pioneers began to settle the Trans-Appalachian West. Between 1783 and 1787, the Confederation Congress passed numerous laws to govern certain activities. This study of the creation of the first American western policy forms a microcosm through which to view the ongoing course of the American Revolution.
Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and Television Industries

William M. Kunz

This succinct overview explains conglomeration and regulation in the film and television industries, covering its history as well as the contemporary scene. Former producer William M. Kunz shows how the current structure of these industries has evolved and how this structure impacts the production and distribution of cultural products. Providing a critical view without taking a political stance, Kunz focuses on film and TV in order to give an in-depth portrait of these industries and their dynamic relationship to each other. Ideal as a supplement for a variety of media courses_such as media and society, policy, economics, and criticism_this student-friendly text includes synopses of key media regulations and policies, discussion questions, a glossary, and interesting sidebars.
Idling the Engine: Linguistic Skepticism in And Around Cortazar, Kafka, And Joyce

E. Joseph Sharkey

Some of the most important literary works of the twentieth century wrestle with a deep distrust of language, a distrust born of an untenable skepticism that insists on the manufacture of doubts where doubts are nonsensical. Common to each expression of this distrust is the often hidden premise that no knowledge or tool of knowledge, least of all language, can be trusted until an absolute justification can be provided for it. Idling the Engine examines the consequences of this skepticism as it appears in and around the work of Julio Cortázar, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce, each of whom was well aware of the crisis of language and the threat it was perceived to hold for literary endeavors like theirs. Almost as important as the study of the novels themselves is the study of their interpretation by critics, many of whom fail to question this skepticism about language because they themselves take it as axiomatic.

Author E. Joseph Sharkey uses the philosophies of language of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Ludwig Wittgenstein to counter the skepticism in question by showing that a language grounded in history instead of the transcendent is grounded nevertheless. Using Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the idling engine for the misguided search for a logical or metaphysical justification of language, Sharkey demonstrates how such "idling" pervades the novels of Cortázar, Kafka, and Joyce. As he does so, he argues that at their best these novels celebrate the marvelous efficacy of language and show that it is made possible precisely by virtue of the limitations that trouble the skeptics.
Washington Environmental Law Handbook

Theda Braddock

Written for a general audience that includes attorneys, land developers, businesses, and government officials, this Fourth Edition provides a general overview of Washington's state and federal statutory and regulatory framework. The author, an experienced environmental attorney, addresses recent environmental rulings, case law developments, and such key topics as the Growth Management Act, the State Environmental Policy Act, coastal zone management, shoreline regulation, critical area regulation, oil spill regulation, underground storage tanks, air and water quality, and natural resources damages.
Entrys

Peter Bacho

After being wounded in Vietnam, nineteen-year-old Rico Divina is sent home to a string of low-paying jobs and shabby apartments while trying to cope with the demons inside him. As an "Indipino" (half Yakima, half Filipino), Rico has come up against obstacles all his life--those of race, culture, nationality, and now the experience of war--that have left him without hope. In time he embarks on a course that is self-destructive and increasingly violent. People and situations present themselves, offering him the chance to turn his life around, but Rico, whether from lack of faith or pride, rejects them. The only thing that sustains him is writing his own story with a happy ending--something he has long suspected he will never have.
Out Here In The Out There: Essays In A Region Of Superlatives

Philip Heldrich

From the Kansas prairie to the California coast, these ten essays explore the idiosyncrasies of the American Southwest. The glitz of Las Vegas casinos, the devotion of Oklahoma football hooligans, the manufactured magic of Disneyland -- all are points of interest for Philip Heldrich, who finds in his own adventures paradoxical truths about our culture, our traditions, and the American Dream.

Poet and pop-culture aficionado Heldrich searches for the lyrical within his small midwestern meatpacking town and beyond. For Heldrich, lover of words, there is beauty to be found at the local dump: magazines (Kansas Farmer), discarded beverage bottles ("Golden Sound Basil Seed Drink"), even machine names (the "cram-a-lot" baler is a favorite). The resulting essays are a happy melding of social commentary with the best sort of travel writing. A finely crafted ode to target practice and male bonding set in a high-country meadow in Colorado quietly evolves into a memorial for a lost friend. Another piece perfectly captures the surreal nature of the academic conference, made even more dreamlike by taking place in Norman, Oklahoma, five hours before a championship football game. (Heldrich succumbs to Husker and Sooner mania.) Driving around "out there," whether it be Disneyland or the Central Plains, the author puts pen to paper, accurately capturing the essence of American culture.
The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy: The Medieval Roots of the Modern Networked City

Michael Kucher

The book reviews scholarly literature and archival sources including maps and diagrams, to better situate Siena's achievement in urban history and broadens our understanding of medieval technology and urban life.
Building Diaspora: Filipino Cultural Community Formation on the Internet

Emily Ignacio

The dramatic growth of the Internet in recent years has provided opportunities for a host of relationships and communities—forged across great distances and even time—that would have seemed unimaginable only a short while ago.

In Building Diaspora, Emily Noelle Ignacio explores how Filipinos have used these subtle, cyber, but very real social connections to construct and reinforce a sense of national, ethnic, and racial identity with distant others. Through an extensive analysis of newsgroup debates, listserves, and website postings, she illustrates the significant ways that computer-mediated communication has contributed to solidifying what can credibly be called a Filipino diaspora. Lively cyber-discussions on topics including Eurocentrism, Orientalism, patriarchy, gender issues, language, and "mail-order-brides" have helped Filipinos better understand and articulate their postcolonial situation as well as their relationship with other national and ethnic communities around the world. Significant attention is given to the complicated history of Philippine-American relations, including the ways Filipinos are racialized as a result of their political and economic subjugation to U.S. interests.

As Filipinos and many other ethnic groups continue to migrate globally, Building Diaspora makes an important contribution to our changing understanding of "homeland." The author makes the powerful argument that while home is being further removed from geographic place, it is being increasingly territorialized in space.
Understanding the Life of Point Loma

Bonnie Becker

An easy-to-read overview of the coastal sage scrub ecosystem and nearshore marine environment of the Point Loma peninsula. The authors, who are experts in their fields, describe the ecosystems, the biodiversity of the plant and animal communities, and the interdependence of the populations of those communities. Throughout the book, the importance of preserving these precious and diminishing resources is stressed. Well illustrated, this book is a "must read" for everyone interested in the facinating and rare resources of Point Loma.
Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 5: Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe

Liz Herbert McAvoy, Anne Clark Bartlett, and Rosalynn Voaden

The writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe show an awareness of traditional and contemporary attitudes towards women, in particular medieval attitudes towards the female body. This study examines the extent to which they make use of such attitudes in their writing, and investigates the importance of the female body as a means of explaining their mystical experiences and the insight gained from them; in both writers, the female body is central to their writing, leading to a feminised language through which they achieve authority and create a space in which they can be heard, particularly in the context of their religious and mystical experiences. The three archetypal representations of woman in the middle ages, as mother, as whore and as "wise woman", are all clearly present in the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; in examining the ways in which both writers make use of these female categories, McAvoy establishes the extent of their success in resolving the tension between society's expectations of them and their own lived experiences as women and writers. LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Literature, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 4: The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle

Claire Elizabeth McIlroy, Anne Clark Bartlett, and Rosalynn Voaden

Richard Rolle, the `hermit of Hampole', wrote an extensive body of religious literature that was widely disseminated in late medieval England; but although many of his works have received substantial editorial attention, they have as yet attracted only limited detailed critical analysis, with scholarship largely focused on establishing facts about his life and striking character. This study aims to correct this imbalance by re-examining his English prose works - Ego Dormio, The Commandment and The Form of Living - in terms of their literary form, content and appeal rather than their relationship to Rolle's biography. The author argues that in these devotional works (which appealed to a broad readership in late medieval England) Rolle successfully refines traditional affective strategies to develop an implied reader-identity, the individual soul seeking the love of God, which empowers each and every reader in his or her own spiritual journey. CLARE ELIZABETH MCILROY teaches at the University of Western Australia.
Wetlands Regulation: Case Law, Interpretation, and Commentary

Theda Braddock

Dissecting 72 key cases, Wetlands Regulation provides a unique, up-to-date examination of the original intent of wetlands law, court interpretations, and lessons the regulated community and attorneys can learn from these court decisions.

Organized into five sections, this book presents cases covering five major areas of concern: jurisdiction, the permit requirement, permitting procedures, enforcement, and regulatory takings. Each section begins with a discussion of basic cases and advances to recent and more complex cases, providing you with an overview of the evolution of wetlands regulation and court opinion. You'll read and learn from actual court decisions that rule on such regulatory challenges as the permitting authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the delineation of wetlands, the role of migratory birds in wetlands rulings and takings, the enforcement of Class I and Class II penalties, and the government's right to take private property or to limit activity on private land.

Each case discussion includes the court's official decision as well as an explanation of each case's circumstances, background, and principles in question. You'll get enough factual elements to be able to compare your own situation to those presented in each case.
Proofs that Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof

Jennifer J. Quinn and Arthur T. Benjamin

Mathematics is the science of patterns, and mathematicians attempt to understand these patterns and discover new ones using a variety of tools. In Proofs That Really Count, award-winning math professors Arthur Benjamin and Jennifer Quinn demonstrate that many number patterns, even very complex ones, can be understood by simple counting arguments. The book emphasizes numbers that are often not thought of as numbers that count: Fibonacci Numbers, Lucas Numbers, Continued Fractions, and Harmonic Numbers, to name a few. Numerous hints and references are given for all chapter exercises and many chapters end with a list of identities in need of combinatorial proof. The extensive appendix of identities will be a valuable resource. This book should appeal to readers of all levels, from high school math students to professional mathematicians.
Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue

Carolyn M. West

Break the silence surrounding Black women's experiences of violence!

Written from a Black feminist perspective by therapists, researchers, activists, and survivors, Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue sheds new light on an understudied field. For too long, Black women have been suffering the effects of violence in painful silence. This book—winner of the Carolyn Payton Early Career Award for its contribution to the understanding of the role of gender in the lives of Black women—provides a forum where personal testimony and academic research meet to show you how living at the intersection of many kinds of oppression shapes the lives of Black women. With moving case studies, in-depth discussions of activism and resistance, and helpful suggestions for treatment and intervention, this book will help you understand the impact of violence on the lives of Black women.

Topics you'll find in Violence in the Lives of Black Women include:

· using the arts to deal with sexual aggression in the Black community

· racial aspects of sexual harassment

· the consequences of head and brain injuries stemming from abuse

· domestic violence in African-American lesbian relationships

· strategies Black women use to escape violent living situations

· lifelong effects of childhood sexual abuse on Black women's mental health

· references and resources to help you learn more!
HIV/AIDS in Latin America the Challenges Ahead

Anabela Garcia-Abreu, Isabel Noguer, and Karen Cowgill

Information on HIV/AIDS epidemics in Latin America is disperse and lacks comprehensiveness. Sound and timely policies can limit the current and future impact of the epidemics but good policies are built on a strong epidemiological base and according to the countries' needs. The aim of this study was to assemble all the information available on the epidemiological pattern of the epidemics in Latin America and to gather information on current national surveillance capacity, national responses of the health sector to identify key areas where specific interventions are needed. Through national statistics, data published by international organizations, and databases searches, the authors collected data on the extent, trends and patterns of HIV/AIDS epidemic in 17 Latin American countries. Data on national surveillance systems and national responses from the health sector were gathered through questionnaires applied to managers of the national HIV/AIDS surveillance system, director of the National HIV/AIDS program, NGOs, and physicians. Despite relatively high rates of HIV infection in most countries, many Latin American countries have not yet faced a full-scale AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS falls within the framework of a low endemic setting; in the majority of the countries the epidemic is still concentrated in high-risk populations. Latin America has the necessary infrastructure to efficiently and effectively confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, the capacity to respond has been limited by political, technical and social problems. Several key problems on the areas of prevention, access to health and social services, human rights and national capacity were identified. The results of the study suggest that the main challenges to meeting the current needs are (i) availability of resources; (ii) institutional capacity to provide training in all areas; and (iii) cultural, social and religious factors.
Nelson's Run

Peter Bacho

Nelson is obsessed with avoiding work, long-term relationships and all other forms of responsibility. Sex, Nelson's other major obsession, is what brings him to the Philippines, having heard the archipelago's bawdy lore from a former mistress he had shared with his father. With dark humor and insight, Bacho explores the clash of American and Filipino culture, as Nelson soon finds himself pulled between Anita and Marta, two tango-dancing matriarchs, and embroiled in his own private heart of darkness. The resolution of this increasingly violent menage-a-trois takes place within the context of a talent contest, a civil war, a coronation and an exploding presidential candidate.