Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
General Population ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
Two Populations ◽  
Different Levels

This introductory chapter discusses the roots of the conflict between Muslim and Jews in France. It reviews the cultural and historical connections linking these two populations. It describes the vastly different levels of Muslim and Jewish communal development in the metropole that created sharply divergent processes of integration. By the early twenty-first century, Jews proved more economically mobile, better educated, and professionally better placed than the general population and certainly than French Muslims. However, the organized community was often criticized for failing to defend Jewish interests successfully, particularly with regard to foreign policy around Israel. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Introduction

Saw ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Benjamin Poole
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
First Century ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory chapter provides an overview of SAW (2004). SAW is a horror film that is entirely representative of the era that created it: the early twenty-first century witnessed a threatened America whose national confidence was shattered, and shady Middle Eastern wars played out in abject images of torture and suffering. Like the aeons of horror tales that precede it, the film is an essay in morality as well as mortality; its antagonist cleaves to a logical, if bloody moral code, while no victim is wholly without guilt. As with all of the best horror, SAW is interested in the spiritual and physical potential of the human body and soul. This aspect of gratification is abundantly evident in the gross extremities of SAW's survival horror. The particular focus is sadism and body trauma, which the film details with surgical precision.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elana Levine
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Feminine Identity ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory chapter briefly tackles the broad scope of scholarly literature on feminized popular culture, and also provides an overview of this area in the twenty-first century. Its focus is on forms of early-twenty-first-century popular culture that are strongly associated with femininity—the social and economic forces that create such culture, the ways these cultural products speak to and about feminine identity, and the ways that audiences, readers, and users engage with and experience this culture. In addition, the chapter details in brief the influences, both current and historic, which inform the central themes of this volume, as well as the aims and specific lines of inquiry that this volume seeks to pursue.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Chudacoff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
College Sports ◽  
Classroom Activity ◽  
Intercollegiate Athletic ◽  
Sports History ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to synthesize the narrative of college sports history since 1950 in order to convey a fuller understanding of how and why “game changers” have created today's intercollegiate athletic landscape. These game changers involve money, media, race, gender, and reform. The chapter also traces the development of American college sports, which emerged in the mid-nineteenth century from the efforts by male undergraduates to engage in out-of-the-classroom activity independent from the strict faculty control that governed their college lives. By the early twenty-first century, the reality of commercialism and professionalism within the idealistic realm of amateurism characterized college sports more than ever before. A brief overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteenth Point in the Twenty-First Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-41
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Knock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores American foreign policy and the country’s global position in the early twenty-first century, and in particular during the presidency of Donald Trump, employing the historical background of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Specifically, the chapter discusses the importance of Wilson’s fourteenth point, which emphasizes the need for international cooperation and mutual understanding among nations. It explains why the United States needs internationalism and a strong foreign policy. The chapter concludes by stating the need for America’s involvement with the United Nations, in the midst of Trump’s efforts to separate America from the international community.

The first failed empire of the 21st century

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Surface Phenomena ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twenty First Century

American foreign policy has been recently dominated by the venture into Iraq. This has not gone well. Most criticism has focused on ‘mistakes’ – there were not enough US troops, or they were of the wrong type, the Iraqi army was mistakenly disbanded after it surrendered, looting was not anticipated, oil expectations were unreal, the US depended too much on Iraqi exile claims, and so forth. Indeed, these were mistakes. 250,000 troops trained also in police roles would have made a difference. So might Iraqi army units converted into security police. So might better planning all round. But the mistakes were only the surface phenomena of a more profound American failure. The Iraq venture was doomed from the outset by the attempt to create what some neo-conservatives styled a ‘New American Empire’. This exaggerated American powers, made facile historical comparisons with previous Empires, mis-identified the enemy, and mis-identified the century we live in. This early twenty-first century attempt at Empire is failing. There will not be others.

Continuing Visions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
William Blake ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Protest Group ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dead Man

The questions that drove Blake’s American reception, from its earliest moments in the nineteenth century through to the explosion of Blakeanism in the mid-twentieth century, did not disappear. Visions of America continued to be part of Blake’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American legacy. This chapter begins with the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by the British Ridley Scott but had an American-authored screenplay and was based on a 1968 American novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It moves to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man and Paul Chan’s twenty-first century social activism as part of a protest group called The Friends of William Blake, exploring common themes of democracy, freedom, limit, nationhood, and poetic shape.

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