I spent the past many hours transcribing Michael Horowitz's talk on human rights at this past February's Veritas Forum. I want it backed up somewhere, which is why I'm posting it ( Read more... )

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society
Nadia Abu El-Haj, University of Chicago Press, 2001.

OMG before I start my notes let me just say how excited I am that we're finally reading a pre-history book, after what I wrote last night about how much I miss ancient history!!! This book is my ( Read more... )

The rest of my Algerian Civil War notes, continuation of this post. No formatting or consistency here. Just posting it because I want to have it accessible online in case anything happens to my computer's hard drive (too many horror stories). Passing right along ( Read more... )

The Algerian Civil War 1990-1998
Luis Martinez, C. Hurst & Co., Ltd., 2000.What Luis Martinez does in this book ( Read more... )

Rethinking the Economics of War: the Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed
Cynthia J. Arnson and I. William Zartman, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2005.On greed vs. grievance: “This book represents an attempt at such a synthesis, drawing on the path-breaking work of Collie rand others on the role of resource income, greed, and predation in fueling ( Read more... )

Wow, the end of the Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State game was intense! Two (or was it three?) lead changes with under 10 seconds of game time to go! I wonder who would have won had the referee called travel instead of foul at the very end of the game. Basketball is such a great way to pick up from where the Olympics left off. I'm so ready for March ( Read more... )

This week is the "February break" for New York state public schools, which means I won't have to go teach my kiddies. Now, a self-disciplined student would use that extra time to catch up on readings. But guess what I did?


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A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two People
Ilan Pappe, Cambridge University Press, 2004."In this book I attempt a new approach. I hope to do this without marginalizing the importance of the West, political elites, nationalism and the intra-national conflict, or ignoring the importance of some of the main changes chronicled by modernization ( Read more... )

When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
Mahmood Mamdani, Princeton University Press, 2001.

Goals:
1. I show the ways in which history writing has been complicit with imperialism, particularly in naturalizing political identities, Hutu and Tutsi, and in considering facts about place of origin (migration) as ( Read more... )

Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity
Talal Asad, Stanford University Press, 2003."What is the connection between 'the secular' as an epistemic category and 'secularism' as a political doctrine? Can they be objects of anthropological inquiry? What might an anthropology of secularism look like? This book attempts, in a ( Read more... )