Monday, June 28, 2004

Cape Town IRC compiles brief overview of how Congress works

Too many reporters in South Africa have been writing stories that indicate their utter ignorance of how Congress works, especially how laws are made.

Many of the websites we found that explain this topic are just too detailed for busy journalists, and we weren't sure how their (usually quite big) egos would react to being referred to a kid's site such as http://bensguide.gpo.gov/9-12/lawmaking/index.html.

In the end, we simply put together our own page on the U.S. Congress. Take a look: http://pretoria.usembassy.gov/wwwhit40.html.

Mark Dobson
IRC Director--South Africa

Friday, June 18, 2004

[Free e-book] Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction

Dear IRC Colleagus,

Maybe this e-book can be useful for American Corner or for IRC users.

Best

- IRC Jakarta

Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction
by Jeanne Smith
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7199p0zh/

Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter One— The Trickster Aesthetic: A Cross-Cultural Feminist Theory
Chapter Two— Monkey Business: Maxine Hong Kingston's Transformational Trickster Texts
Chapter Three— Comic Liberators and Word-Healers: The Interwoven Trickster Narratives of Louise Erdrich
Chapter Four— Tar and Feathers: Community and the Outcast in Toni Morrison's Trickster Novels
Chapter Five— Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited

Suggested citation:
Smith, Jeanne Rosier. Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7199p0zh/

IRC Jakarta, Indonesia
email: irc@usembassyjakarta.org

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Some public diplomacy items

Bruce Bawer, an American writer resident in Norway for the past few years, has written an article in the latest issue of the Hudson Review called "Hating America." It is a meditation on what he considers to be a prevailing attitude in Norway and W. Europe of irrational belligerence towards the U.S.

Farish Noor, a political scientist and human rights activist, has written a review of Helena Finn's article in Foreign Affairs last year about the importance of cultural diplomacy (The Case for Cultural Diplomacy: Engaging Foreign Audiences)

Interesting reading from two very different perspectives!

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Arab Human Development Report 2004

Arab.pdf

I am very late to post this, but anyway let me do it.
ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2003
Building a Knowledge Society
UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
ARAB FUND FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT