A fascinating and challenging inquiry into black identity and its shifting meaning throughout U.S. history Scientific research has now established that race should be understood as a social construct, not a true biological division of humanity. In Imagining Black America, Michael Wayne explores the construction and reconstruction of black America from the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown in 1619 to Barack Obama’s reelection. Races have to be imagined into existence and constantly reimagined as circumstances change, Wayne argues, and as a consequence the boundaries of black America have historically been contested terrain. He discusses the emergence in the nineteenth century—and the erosion, during the past two decades—of the notorious “one-drop rule.” He shows how significant periods of social transformation—emancipation, the Great Migration, the rise of the urban ghetto, and the Civil Rights Movement—raised major questions for black Americans about the defining characteristics of their racial community. And he explores how factors such as class, age, and gender have influenced perceptions of what it means to be black. Wayne also considers how slavery and its legacy have defined freedom in the United States. Black Americans, he argues, because of their deep commitment to the promise of freedom and the ideals articulated by the Founding Fathers, became and remain quintessential Americans—the “incarnation of America,” in the words of the civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph.

Most statements today about higher education begin with the assumption that it should be relevant. That it should be relevant, however, does not settle the matter. The significance of relevance depends on the power of something else that is more fundamental. Relevance may be a true standard of judgment, but it does not stand by itself. Assuming higher education should be relevant, the question emerges, relevant to what? Why? How? At what costs? And, relevant in what sense? These are some of the central questions animating this study. The Relevance of Higher Education: Exploring a Contested Notion, edited by Timothy L. Simpson examines the relevance of higher education by bringing together the work of historians, political scientists, and educational philosophers. The contributors probe the meaning of relevance in its many guises, providing an historical and philosophical account of the roots of this concept and its impact on the institution of higher education. Furthermore, The Relevance of Higher Education provides a critical evaluation of the impact of relevance on our understanding of the political and economic relationship between higher education and society. This study suggests views of relevance that could guide the future of higher education. By providing penetrating analysis, this text thoroughly explores relevance and its underlying assumptions, potential implications and long-lasting effects on higher education and society. The Relevance of Higher Education provides the tools necessary to develop a rich framework for understanding relevance and its impact on higher education and society.

This book presents perspectives on the past and present state of the understanding of snake origins. It reviews and critiques data and ideas from paleontology and neontology (herpetology), as well as ideas from morphological and molecular phylogenetics. The author reviews the anatomy and morphology of extant snakes. Methods are also critiqued, including those empirical and theoretical methods employed to hypothesize ancestral ecologies for snakes. The modern debate on squamate phylogeny and snake ingroup phylogeny using molecules and morphology is examined critically to provide insights on origins and evolution. Key Features Important major evolutionary transformation in vertebrate evolution Continuing historical debate in vertebrate paleontology Of wide interest to a core audience of paleontologists, herpetologists, and morphologists Author acknowledged as prominent contributor to debate over snake origins Based on remarkable well preserved fossil specimens

A professor and three children go to South America to look for a missing sea captain. They encounter many obstacles and mishaps in their search. Based on a children's book by Jules Verne.

Most statements today about higher education begin with the assumption that it should be relevant. That it should be relevant, however, does not settle the matter. The significance of relevance depends on the power of something else that is more fundamental. Relevance may be a true standard of judgment, but it does not stand by itself. Assuming higher education should be relevant, the question emerges, relevant to what? Why? How? At what costs? And, relevant in what sense? These are some of the central questions animating this study. The Relevance of Higher Education: Exploring a Contested Notion, edited by Timothy L. Simpson examines the relevance of higher education by bringing together the work of historians, political scientists, and educational philosophers. The contributors probe the meaning of relevance in its many guises, providing an historical and philosophical account of the roots of this concept and its impact on the institution of higher education. Furthermore, The Relevance of Higher Education provides a critical evaluation of the impact of relevance on our understanding of the political and economic relationship between higher education and society. This study suggests views of relevance that could guide the future of higher education. By providing penetrating analysis, this text thoroughly explores relevance and its underlying assumptions, potential implications and long-lasting effects on higher education and society. The Relevance of Higher Education provides the tools necessary to develop a rich framework for understanding relevance and its impact on higher education and society.

Is Kant really the 'bourgeois' philosopher that his advocates and opponents take him to be? In this bold and original re-thinking of Kant, Michael Wayne argues that with his aesthetic turn in the Third Critique, Kant broke significantly from the problematic philosophical structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. Through his philosophy of the aesthetic Kant begins to circumnavigate the dualities in his thought. In so doing he shows us today how the aesthetic is a powerful means for imagining our way past the apparent universality of contemporary capitalism. Here is an unfamiliar Kant: his concepts of beauty and the sublime are reinterpreted as attempts to socialise the aesthetic while Wayne reconstructs the usually hidden genealogy between Kant and important Marxist concepts such as totality, dialectics, mediation and even production. In materialising Kant's philosophy, this book simultaneously offers a Marxist defence of creativity and imagination grounded in our power to think metaphorically and in Kant's concept of reflective judgment. Wayne also critiques aspects of Marxist cultural theory that have not accorded the aesthetic the relative autonomy and specificity which it is due. Discussing such thinkers as Adorno, Bourdieu, Colletti, Eagleton, Lukacs, Ranciere and others, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique presents a new reading of Kant's Third Critique that challenges Marxist and mainstream assessments of Kant alike.

Polarization. Division. Hate. Many Americans wonder how our politics became dysfunctional-and what it will take to fix it. Historian Michael Santos takes readers on a journey to the heart of the American nation and the values that have allowed us to overcome previous challenges, sometimes in spite of ourselves. He remembers the heroes and heroines who challenged us to be better versions of ourselves. Santos addresses a series of interrelated questions: What are the legacies of this country, handed down to us by the Founders? What have previous generations done to keep the principles upon which the Republic rests alive and to advance their implications for more and more people? Where were the fault lines that put the American experiment at risk, and how have we overcome them? And when we have failed to overcome them, what possible lessons are there for an understanding of what America is and can become? By offering these historical perspectives, Santos helps readers overcome the current crisis in faith about the present challenges and future prospects for the American experiment.

Between 1945 and 1968, the possibility of Mutual Assured Destruction led to a host of odd realities, including the creation of an affable cartoon turtle named Bert who taught millions of school children that nuclear war was survivable if they simply learned how to "duck and cover." Meanwhile, fear of Communism played out against the backdrop of potential Armageddon to provide justification for a variety of covert operations involving regime change, political assassination, and sometimes bizarre plot twists. United States Foreign Policy 1945-1968: The Bomb, Spies, Stories, and Lies takes a fresh look at this complex, often confusing, and frequently farcical period in American and world history.

Between 1945 and 1968, the possibility of Mutual Assured Destruction led to a host of odd realities, including the creation of an affable cartoon turtle named Bert who taught millions of school children that nuclear war was survivable if they simply learned how to "duck and cover." Meanwhile, fear of Communism played out against the backdrop of potential Armageddon to provide justification for a variety of covert operations involving regime change, political assassination, and sometimes bizarre plot twists. United States Foreign Policy 1945-1968: The Bomb, Spies, Stories, and Lies takes a fresh look at this complex, often confusing, and frequently farcical period in American and world history.

Fishermen from New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces once made a reputation by driving their schooners under a full press of sail in a howling gale on their run into market, fueling the popular imagination with romantic images of Captains Courageous. But by the early twentieth century, they seemed destined to go the way of workers ashore, who had been displaced by new technologies. Then fate intervened in the form of the International Fishermen's Races. Clouds of White Sail tells the story of how schoonermen were able to reignite the public's love affair with the beauty of their ships and the romance of the sea and hold onto their way of life in a way that few other workers were able. Michael Wayne Santos's narrative takes a page from the fo'c'sle traditions from which he draws; like the men whose saga he immortalizes, he not only loves a good story but also knows how to tell one.

This book offers a clarion call, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, to "try something!" And not just any something. A systematic, integrated, chronological, multi-disciplinary approach to reinvigorate the teaching of the liberal arts and put them back where they belong-at the center of a student's educational experience. It does not pretend to offer a cure-all or a one-size-fits-all solution to everything that is ailing American higher education, or even secondary education. It does, however, offer a place to begin a discussion, to invite experimentation, and to initiate reform based on solid pedagogy and 2,500 years of time-tested wisdom in the human experience. As such it should be of interest to many people. Those in higher education serious about the crisis facing their institutions could benefit from taking up the gauntlet this volume throws down. For students and parents, the book raises alternatives and poses some hard questions that they should be asking not only as they consider colleges and universities, but of their secondary schools. In fact, anyone who keeps a close eye on the state of education would be interested in what this book adds to the discussion.

Autonomousagentsandmulti-agentsystemsarecomputationalsystemsinwhich several (semi-)autonomous agents interact with each other or work together to performsomesetoftasksorsatisfysomesetofgoals.Thesesystemsmayinvolve computational agents that are homogeneous or heterogeneous, they may involve activities on the part of agents having common or distinct goals, and they may involve participation on the part of humans and intelligent agents. ThisvolumecontainsselectedpapersfromPRIMA2004, the 7thPaci?cRim InternationalWorkshoponMulti-agents, heldinAuckland, NewZealand, during August8 13,2004in conjunctionwith the8thPaci?cRim InternationalConf- ence on Arti?cial Intelligence (PRICAI 2004). PRIMA is a series of workshops on autonomous agents and multi-agents that focusses on the research activities in the Asian and Paci?c Rim countries. PRIMA 2004 was built upon the great successes of its predecessors. Fifty-two papers were submitted to the workshop, each paper was reviewed by three internationally renowned program committee members. After careful review, 24 papers were selected for this volume. We would like to thank all the authors who submitted papers to the workshop. We would also like to thank all the program committee members for their diligent work in reviewing the papers.Wewouldliketothankourinvitedspeakers, SandipSenandToruIshida. Additionally, we thank the editorial sta? of Springer for publishing this volume in the series Lecture Notes in Arti?cial Intelligence. Lastly, we want to thank our sponsors, the Auckland University of Technology s Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI), and the University of Auckland s Department of Computer Science, for the ?nancial support provided."

Reopening an investigation into the death of a plantation overseer (Duncan Skinner) almost a century and a half ago, Death of an Overseer is part murder mystery, part essay on the art of historical detection, and part seminar on the history of the slavery and the Old South. In this skillfully written book, Michael Wayne uses a complex murder case to teach readers the art of historical evidence and allows them to weigh competing interpretations and come to their own conclusions.

Marx's 'Das Kapital' cannot be put into a box marked "economics." It is a work of politics, history, economics, philosophy and even in places, literature (yes Marx's style is that rich and evocative). "Marx's 'Das Kapital' For Beginners" is an introduction to the Marxist critique of capitalist production and its consequences for a whole range of social activities such as politics, media, education and religion. 'Das Kapital' is not a critique of a particular capitalist system in a particular country at a particular time. Rather, Marx's aim was to identify the essential features that define capitalism, in whatever country it develops and in whatever historical period. For this reason, Das Kapital is necessarily a fairly general, abstract analysis. As a result, it can be fairly difficult to read and comprehend. At the same time, understanding Das Kapital is crucial for mastering Marx's insights to capitalism.

"Marx's 'Das Kapital' For Beginners" offers an accessible path through Marx's arguments and his key questions: What is commodity? Where does wealth come from? What is value? What happens to work under capitalism? Why is crisis part of capitalism's DNA? And what happens to our consciousness, our very perceptions of reality and our ways of thinking and feeling under capitalism? Understanding and learn from Marx's work has taken on a fresh urgency as questions about the sustainability of the capitalist system in today's global economy intensify.

This book offers a clarion call, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, to "try something!" And not just any something. A systematic, integrated, chronological, multi-disciplinary approach to reinvigorate the teaching of the liberal arts and put them back where they belong-at the center of a student's educational experience. It does not pretend to offer a cure-all or a one-size-fits-all solution to everything that is ailing American higher education, or even secondary education. It does, however, offer a place to begin a discussion, to invite experimentation, and to initiate reform based on solid pedagogy and 2,500 years of time-tested wisdom in the human experience. As such it should be of interest to many people. Those in higher education serious about the crisis facing their institutions could benefit from taking up the gauntlet this volume throws down. For students and parents, the book raises alternatives and poses some hard questions that they should be asking not only as they consider colleges and universities, but of their secondary schools. In fact, anyone who keeps a close eye on the state of education would be interested in what this book adds to the discussion.

This book presents perspectives on the past and present state of the understanding of snake origins. It reviews and critiques data and ideas from paleontology and neontology (herpetology), as well as ideas from morphological and molecular phylogenetics. The author reviews the anatomy and morphology of extant snakes. Methods are also critiqued, including those empirical and theoretical methods employed to hypothesize ancestral ecologies for snakes. The modern debate on squamate phylogeny and snake ingroup phylogeny using molecules and morphology is examined critically to provide insights on origins and evolution. Key Features Important major evolutionary transformation in vertebrate evolution Continuing historical debate in vertebrate paleontology Of wide interest to a core audience of paleontologists, herpetologists, and morphologists Author acknowledged as prominent contributor to debate over snake origins Based on remarkable well preserved fossil specimens