Teaching The Contemporary World

Consanguinity in the contemporary world.

The rarity of consanguineous marriage in much of the industrialized world, and the current restriction or outright prohibition of first-cousin unions in a majority of US states and in East Asian countries such as China, North and South Korea and the Philippines, has led many commentators to overlook the fact that the Out-of-Africa migration some 60,000–70,000 years ago had been undertaken by qu...

Links and the Teaching of Contemporary Issues in the Francophone World

FOLLOWING MY INSTITUTION's big push several years ago for distance­ learning initiatives, faculty members would be rewarded for designing courses to be taught simultaneously at our various campuses worldwide. For the first time, I integrated internet resources and embraced the con­ cept of rhizomatic and easily adaptable hypersyllabi in the courses I teach in French language and literature at a...

Democratic Challenges in the Contemporary World

Adam Smith and the contemporary world

This paper argues that many of Adam Smith’s insights, particularly those in his Theory of moral sentiments, have a relevance to contemporary thought about economics and ethics that is currently underappreciated. In economics, for example, Smith was concerned not only with the sufficiency of self-interest at the moment of exchange but also with the wider moral motivations and institutions requir...

Globalization in the Contemporary Cuban Art World

As the Cuban revolution approaches its fiftieth anniversary, Cuba has become a more consumer-oriented society. The island country stands at the crossroads of several systems, each associated with alternative models of political economy and cultural policy. One of these models involves the pursuit of socialism at any fiscal or social cost; another entails the implementation of policies conducive...