Death by Masculinity

On Friday, May 23rd, a 22-year-old man killed four men and two women and injured 13 more people at the University of California Santa Barbara, citing women who were not “attracted” to him or “looked down on [him] as an inferior man” as the primary cause for his violent outbreak

“To Say Nothing”: Variations on the Theme of Silence in Selected Works by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sandra Cisneros, and María Luisa Bombal

This paper explores the various ways in which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s La Respuesta, Sandra Cisneros’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and María Luisa Bombal’s “The Tree” address the theme of silence. It interrogates how the female characters in each of these works are silenced as well as their responses to that oppression. Meaning is subjective, so writing is a safe outlet for the oppressed. These works each identify an oppressor, either a husband or the male dominated church, as well as an oppressed individual, who is the female lead. In La Respuesta, the Catholic church, and specifically “Sor Filotea” tries to silence Sor Juana. She regards silence as a tool because “what it signifies may be understood” in its absence (43). Brígida, from Bombal’s “The Tree” suffers under the oppression of her aged husband, Luis. She uses silence as a weapon and chooses it to rebel against her inability to communicate. Cisneros focuses very specifically on language and the ability to produce sound in “Woman Hollering Creek.” Her female character, Cleófilas, is silenced by her husband’s physical and emotional abuse. She must literally break her silence with a holler in order to overcome his oppression. Each of these women regards silence differently, but in one form or another, each of their female characters manages to break through that silence and out of their oppression

A Confession of a Blonde Asian Girl

I never realized I was an Asian. Nor was I aware I was from South Korea. The thought of identifying myself as Asian was redundant for I was, indeed, from Asia where Asian people lived. So when I no longer lived amongst “my own people,” I was immediately labeled, “Asian.” However, I wasn’t exactly excited about the new label. Not that I was in denial of my Asian heritage, but I didn’t comprehend people’s continuous need to point out the obvious. Yes, I am Asian, but you are only looking at a microscopic part of me. My ethnicity had no more significance than saying, “I am a girl.” However, whether I liked it or not, people constantly reminded me of my Asianness. [excerpt

Learning the Fighting Game: Black Americans and the First World War

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and immediately after the war. This study explorers early NAACP activism, the Garveyite movement, and the early foundations of the Civil Rights Movement

Nation-state Crises in the Absence and Presence of Segment States: The Case of Nicaragua

This study provides a critical examination of the relationship between segment states and nationalist crises through a consideration of Nicaragua\u27s recent history. Nicaragua experienced a nationalist crisis from 1981 to the mid-1980s. That crisis ended with the creation of two autonomous regions on the Atlantic Coast. Although relations between the common state and the new segment state proved difficult over the next few years, the new arrangement held for two decades. Roughly around 2007, however, a new nation-state crisis emerged in Nicaragua. Taking advantage of the fact that Nicaragua provides an opportunity to compare two nation-state crises across time, this study asks whether the country\u27s pattern of nation-state crisis, creation of a segment state, and emergence of a second nationalist crisis may mean that segment states are endogenous to nation-state crises. In addition, it raises the question of whether, if fully followed through, autonomy arrangements may prove stabilizing under certain contexts

A Surgeon’s Duty

Dr. Albert Gaillard Hall described a scenario in where he was tricked by his soldiers; “At our rendezvous, on three successive mornings, men reported sick, complaining of backache and headache, and with a very heavily coated tongue, but without other symptoms. Thinking it might prove an oncoming fever, I excused the first and second lots, and then saw that they were ‘old-soldiering the surgeon.’ Long afterwards one of the men explained the trick. The camp was surrounded by rose-bushes in bloom, and a liberal chewing of rose-leaves a little before sick call produced the effect I saw on the tongue. This is but an illustration of innumerable devices to mislead the surgeon and get excused from duty or to escape the battlefield.” [excerpt

An Experimental Study of Complex-Offer Auctions from Wholesale Energy Markets

A Payment Cost Minimization auction has been proposed as an alternative to the Offer Cost Minimization auction for use in wholesale electric power markets with an intention to lower procurement cost of electricity. Efficiency concerns have been raised for this proposal while assuming that the true production costs would be revealed to the auctioneer in a competitive market. Using an experimental approach, the study compares the performance of these two complex-offer auctions, controlling for the level of unilateral market power. The analysis finds that neither auction results in allocations that correspond to the true cost revelation. Two auctions perform similarly in terms of procurement cost and efficiency. Surprisingly, consumer prices in a competitive environment approach the prices of an environment with market power. It appears that the expected institutional effects for procurement cost and efficiency are greatly dominated by the effects of anti-competitive behavior due to the offer complexity and a cyclical nature of market demand

The National Muslim Forum Nepal: Experiences of Conflict, Formations of Identity

With Nepal\u27s recent transition to state secularism, the politicization of Muslim religious identity has emerged with increasing vitality. One particular pan-Nepali Muslim organization, the Rastriya Muslim Mane Nepal (National Muslim Forum Nepal), offers a window into the complex relationship between national and religious identity that animates this politicization. Through analysis of the National Muslim Forum\u27s earliest discourses, produced between 2005 and 2006, both immediately before and after the people\u27s revolution that resulted in the declaration of Nepal as a secular state, this essay highlights the ways that experiences of conflict coupled with a national political transition shape and contribute to this politicization. It also offers a picture of some of the ways in which conceptions of the nation and religious community come together to help define the forum\u27s call for a new Muslim religio-political identity across a diverse Nepali national population. [excerpt