A Crisis in Human Rights: Genocide in Darfur and Beyond
Focusing on the crisis in Darfur, the speakers will offer a comprehensive view of how and why a conflict evolves into a full-fledged genocide. The Darfur genocide has involved not just the outright immediate killing of people, but also the creation of conditions that have made life impossible by chasing people out into the desert and destroying their homes, villages, food supplies and livelihoods. Speakers will present eyewitness accounts of events on the ground in Darfur as well as academic res
Does Humor Belong in Buddhism?
The Buddha Shakyamuni is said to have asked, "How can anyone laugh who knows of old age, disease, and death?" Despite the severity of this rhetorical question, Buddhists through the centuries and across cultures have incorporated humor into their religious lives. The literary, ritual, and artistic traditions of the Buddhist world contain a variety of humorous and comedic elements that challenge the representation of Buddhism as a humorless doctrine of detached austerity. As a result of this imag
The Holloway Series in Poetry: Aaron Kunin
A rising star in the poetry world, Kunin is also a literary critic and a novelist. His formally innovative work has been described as "tragicomic," and it is with a certain thrill that one realizes his poems have managed to bundle shame with hilarity, high tension with the highly ridiculous, sharp wit with ominous portents.
His first book, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005), was devised as a "value-neutral Paradise Lost" in which the structures of belief, shame, and hierarchy are explored b
The View From Abroad: Is America Broken?
John Micklethwait, the newly appointed Editor of The Economist, talks with Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism about the direction he is taking the magazine, and about America's role in the world.
Presented by: The Graduate School of Journalism, The Economist, Haas School of Business, Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, and the World Affairs Council.
Building for the Big One
Using this activity, students will learn about the effects of earthquakes and how various soil types react during an earthquake. This lesson gives students first-hand experience in making design decisions similar to those made in the real world.
Corneal Ulceration in South East Asia
This dataset has been added as an experimental use of Open Context for public health data sharing applications. Corneal ulceration is a major cause of blindness in many parts of the world, but in South East Asia the WHO estimates that there are as many as 12 million blinding ulcers every year in a population of 1.6 billion. Now that we know the main causes of these ulcers it is possible to prevent the occurrence of most of them with simple, grass-roots, public health measures. The development of
NASA CONNECT Hidden Treasures: Landscape Archaeology
In NASA CONNECT: Landscape Archaeology: Hidden Treasures, students will learn how researchers and scientists use data collected through remote sensing to study hidden features on the Earth's surface and to discover the environmental and archaeological effects left by ancient cultures. Students will see how archaeologists use the math concepts of coordinate geometry and powerful geographic information system (GIS) software to solve current world problems by investigating clues from the past. Grad
"A Traitor to the Movement"?: A Former SDS and Women's Liberation Activist Testifies before Congress
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded in 1962 to change the world by fostering participatory democracy and personal authenticity. Heavily influenced by civil rights organizations, SDS initially operated in inner cities and college campuses to combat racism and discrimination. By the mid-1960s, many activists focused on antiwar activities as American troop involvement in Vietnam escalated. Frustrated with male domination in SDS, leftist women formed feminist splinter groups that eve
An Undocumented Worker Describes the Impact of the World Trade Center Attack
This undocumented worker was left without work when the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001. The hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who staff low paying jobs in the service industries are often invisible, despite their important contributions to the nation's economy. Largely unprotected by labor laws and ineligible for social security and unemployment insurance, these immigrants struggle to support themselves as well as, in many cases, family and relatives in thei
"Continued Employment after the War?": The Women's Bureau Studies Postwar Plans of Women Workers
During World War II, the defense industry expanded and American men mobilized for military service. Many women found jobs previously unavailable to them in aircraft plants, shipyards, manufacturing companies, and the chemical, rubber, and metals factories producing war materials. These jobs paid higher salaries than those traditionally categorized as "women's work," such as teaching, domestic service, clerical work, nursing, and library science. Married women were discouraged from working outsid
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
The Internet Modern History Sourcebook is one of series of history primary sourcebooks. It is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures. Although this part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project began as a way to access texts that were already available on the Internet, it now contains hundreds of texts made available locally.
Romeo and Juliet Teacher's Guide
Written in conjunction with Cal Shakes' 2008 production of Romeo and Juliet, this comprehensive Teacher's Guide serves to engage students with summaries, activities, games, and relevant readings about the themes and time period of the play . The theme of this guide is "You Just Don’t Understand." Cue your students to look for the misunderstandings in the play and how the world of the play creates and perpetuates them.
14 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863
Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture co
03 - A Southern World View: the Old South and Proslavery Ideology
Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects.
Pio Pico Researchers Participatory Action Research: From Classroom to Community, Transforming Teachi
Emily Wolk is a teacher of a group of students, aged 8-11 years old, called the Pio Pico Researchers. Together, since the group started in 1996, the group convinced the city of Santa Ana to install a signal light at one of the most dangerous intersections in the city, in the immediate vicinity of Pio Pico School. Wolk used an alternative inquiry method called Participatory Action-Research (PAR) with her students. The children used radar guns, plotted data on a computerized mapping system called
Building Bridges, Dams, Power Plants
The large development projects of the 1930s, designed to serve a growing population, helped shape California in many ways. Most are still integral today. Photographs show the progress of two massive Northern California projects: the Golden Gate Bridge, which links San Francisco and Marin County, and the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most recognized bridges in the world. It is unique not only because of its vermilion o
Diversity in the Changing State
The Gold Rush had a tremendous impact on the population and culture of California. Before the Gold Rush, the population consisted mainly of Native Californians and Californios (settlers and landowners of mixed Spanish, Native Californian, and African descent). But gold fever brought people to California from all over the country and world. The Anglo Americans (of English, Irish, or Scots descent), other Europeans (including Italians, Russians, and others), Chinese, Asians, African Americans, and
Growing Ethnic Diversity
People from around the world continued to come to California in the early 1900s, many in search of work and a better life.
These images reflect some of the diverse ethnic groups that came to the West Coast from locations around the globe. They also illustrate some of the challenges they faced in assimilating into California society.
Hard Times
The US stock market crash of 1929 set off the most severe economic depression in the Western world. The so-called Great Depression lasted more than a decade, until approximately 1941. In the United States, the general atmosphere was one of desolation, as expressed in the Dorothea Lange photograph "Thirteen Million Unemployed Fill the City in the Early Thirties," which shows men leaning against a wall in San Francisco. Many photographs in this topic were taken by Lange, one of the primary chronic
The Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
The Kamusi Project is a collaborative work by people all over the world. Together we are working to establish new dictionaries and learning resources for the Swahili language - Kiswahili- both within Swahili and between Swahili and English. Swahili is the most widely spoken African language, with as many as 100 million speakers in East and Central Africa. Swahili is a national language of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, and it is an official language of the African Union. We invite you to become a
