Eight mistakes teaching International and Global Studies

June 24, 2017 / teaching /
Geo Globe by Christian Fischer. Taken from Wikicommons.
Geo Globe by Christian Fischer. Taken from Wikicommons.

Every year I teach the “Introduction to International Studies” course at Portland State, and refine it based on what I’ve learned from previous classes. After nearly 20 years I’ve come to believe that there are a number of possible traps to be avoided in this course:

  1. Global Problems: It is tempting to teach the course by organizing it around major global “issues.” The challenge with this is that this approach emphasizes problems, which can lead to a depressing class for students. It’s hard to inspire students to study abroad, or to learn about global affairs, if they view the world as a dangerous and problematic place. Unless you want to have a bowl of antidepressants up at the front of the class, it’s important to focus as much on solutions as on problems. If you talk about language loss, also talk about language genesis, such as the creation of Sheng, or other urban languages in Africa. If you talk about global warming and sea level rise, also talk about the falling cost of solar energy. Of course, this approach can be ridiculous if taken too far. But without some balance, the class can become too bleak. …

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Video Review: the Knot: a deliberate human act

June 24, 2017 / Latin America, mystery / , , ,
"Part Of A Globe With Map Of South America" by digidreamgrafix at freedigitalphotos.net
“Part Of A Globe With Map Of South America” by digidreamgrafix at freedigitalphotos.net

In an earlier post, I talked about what appeared to be a case of bioterrorism in Brazil, in which someone deliberately introduced a fungus, called “Witches’ Broom” into the cacao growing region of northeastern Brazil. Dilson Araujo posted a comment, in which he talked about the documentary he had made on the topic, which had kindly posted to Youtube. I’ve watched the video, which seeks to describe the immense impact that this event had, and to explore why there the Brazilian state failed to appropriately investigate the crime. More than just a documentary, this video represents an important historical document, which contains eyewitness evidence about events during that terrible period from 1989 through the early 1990s. The film is sub-titled in English, and makes for gripping viewing, in particular in the final twenty minutes.

One of the common beliefs about Witches’ Broom was that if it had been introduced deliberately, the reason likely was a political one, to undermine the power of the great landowners. This idea seems to concern the film-maker, because the documentary began with a fairy-tale history of witches’ broom, in which a female narrator described how this event freed rural workers from the oppression of the northeastern countryside; at the end of this story, the narrator was revealed to be a witch. Paired with the following scene, in which President Dilma Rousseff announced a Truth Commission in Brazil, I at first feared that the documentary might be a polemic. Instead, the director wanted to make the point that in Brazil there are many truths. Sadly, because of the inequality and rural oppression that did exist in Brazil at the time of the crime, those who were victimized seemed at times almost defensive. One of the points that an interviewee made was that the majority of cacao producers were not people of great wealth, as over 90% had fewer than a 100 hectares. …

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Book Review: Sylvia Wrigley, The Mystery of Malaysia Flight 370

October 12, 2018 / mystery / , , ,
Indian Ocean, CIA map from Wikipedia Commons
Indian Ocean, CIA map from Wikipedia Commons

The tragic loss of a Malaysian Flight 370, which was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with over 200 passengers, has obsessed people around the world. Sylvia Wrigley, who is a professional pilot, has written a careful study of the disappearance, based on what is now known. In her forward, she says that she “purposely wanted this book to be accessible to my mother and the cleaning lady at the office, to people who were extremely interested in understanding the situation but lacked the aviation background and experience to be able to make sense of all the contradictory reports, especially with the media rush to present half-truths as fact.”  What is remarkable is that a book as factual and reasoned as this work could be written in such a short period of time. This book provides a much-needed balance to some of the wilder material available in the press and other venues. …

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The Mystery of the Hessdalen Lights

October 12, 2018 / Europe, mystery / , ,
"Aurora Borealis" by Victor Habbick at Freedigitalphotos.net
“Aurora Borealis” by Victor Habbick at Freedigitalphotos.net

Some of the most interesting comments that readers place on this blog discuss global mysteries, such as the posts on Witches Broom and Bioterrorism in Brazil or the Vela Incident. One particular case is attracting new attention to central Norway, where residents of Hessdalen have described seeing lights in the sky since at least the 1940s. People began to document this phenomenon consistently beginning in the 1980s. Unlike the Phoenix lights or Shag Harbour, cases beloved by those interested in UFOs, these lights drew sustained scientific research, because they recurred and were consistently documented by different technological means, such as spectral measurements of the lights.

In 2009 a documentary, “The Portal: the Hessdalen lights phenomenon” drew media attention to this topic. This well-made and thoughtfully written documentary described scientists’ efforts to record and understand the phenomenon. The work of the initial scientists seemed so promising that the project soon became an international collaboration between Norwegian scientists and the Italian National Research Council. Although the lights have been seen less frequently since the 1980s, people continue to monitor the skies over central Norway. Indeed, there are live cam images from the valley that you can access at this website. …

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MERS continues to spread

June 3, 2015 / global health / , , ,
"Virus" by renjith krishnan at freedigitalphotos.net
“Virus” by renjith krishnan at freedigitalphotos.net

The news regarding the respiratory virus MERS-COV continues to be worrying. A second case of MERS has now been reported in the United States in Orlando, Florida. This individual is a health care worker from Saudi Arabia who traveled to the U.S., as was the previous case. This fact raises serious concerns about infection control measures in Saudi Arabia’s hospitals, as I discussed in an earlier post. Fortunately, he seems to be recovering. Equally significant, two Indonesians have recently fallen ill with the disease. The first died on April 29th, and the second is seriously sick. This man had gone to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage. Given that there is no vaccine for MERS, nor is one likely to be developed in the near future, the continued appearance of MERS amongst health care workers from Saudi Arabia, and its spread outside the Kingdom’s borders, is a worrying sign. There are also concerns in the United Kingdom, given that both of the recent cases in the United States arrived after transiting through Heathrow. …

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A book review of Robert Kaplan’s Asia’s Cauldron

May 27, 2015 / Asia, security / , , , , , , , ,

Robert D. Kaplan is a well-known journalist who has authored popular works on international issues, such as Balkan

South China Sea from Wikipedia Commons.
South China Sea by NASA from Wikipedia Commons.

Ghosts and the Coming Anarchy. Kaplan has a knack for writing books on topics about to rise to international prominence; in his most recent work, he has sought to understand the international competition in the South China Sea, which is in the global news this week because of a naval confrontation between Vietnam and China.

Kaplan’s works typically try to show the legacies of history for contemporary issues, and this book is no exception. He begins by describing the historical influence of India upon Vietnam, which he depicts as a kind of cultural shatter zone between two great Asian powers. One of the strengths of his work is that he has traveled widely in Asia while writing it, so he can draw on conversations that he has had from Vietnam to Singapore. He also has read widely in history, so the work is interspersed with allusions to Walter Benjamin, Livy, Machiavelli and Thucydides, which are are generally well-chosen and insightful. It is this ability to put contemporary issues into a broad historical and geographical context that is Kaplan’s strength. …

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Beijing to Seattle Railroad

April 17, 2015 / Asia / , ,
Berengia present day from Wikipedia Commons
Berengia present day by the U.S. Geological Survey on Wikipedia Commons

According to a recent article in the Guardian, China is planning to build a high-speed railway to the United States. The rail trip would take two days to travel through China and Russia, underneath the ocean in the Bering Strait, through Alaska and Canada, before arriving in the continental United States. As the article points out, there are many reasons to doubt the seriousness of this proposal, not the least of which neither the United States or Canada (and perhaps Russia as well) have been consulted. But what is interesting is the historical background to this story, which represents a dream that can neither achieve fruition nor die. James Oliver’s The Bering Strait Crossing, discusses the lengthy history of exactly this idea. Of course, Siberia and Alaska in ancient times were united by Beringia, a land bridge that allowed camels and horses to travel to the Old World, and people to arrive in the Americas. But the two regions have been separated since the end of the last glaciation, when rising sea levels sank Beringia. Oliver’s work discusses the early history of Russian exploration in the Americas, which represented an effort to bring these two regions back into sustained contact. Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain in the service of the czar, first reached the Western hemisphere on 15 July 1741. This launched a Russian empire in Alaska that endured until 1867, when the Czar sold Alaska to the United States. In the end, Russia’s heartland was too far, and the U.S. dream of manifest destiny was too powerful, for this empire to endure.  But the realization that only a brief stretch of ocean separated Russia from the United States led people to discuss building a railroad to connect the two nations. …

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MERS and Saudi Health Care Workers

June 3, 2015 / global health, Middle East / , ,
Historical photo of the 1918 Spanish influenza ward at Camp Funston, Kansas, showing the many patients ill with the flu- U.S. Army photographer
Historical photo of the 1918 Spanish influenza ward at Camp Funston, Kansas, showing the many patients ill with the flu- U.S. Army photographer

The CDC just reported the first case of MERS in the United States. A health care worker from Saudi Arabia recently traveled to the U.S. from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and became sick five days ago in Indiana. He has certainly been in contact with other people recently, not only on the flights, but also during a stopover in London.  He also took a bus trip from Chicago to Indiana. As usual, Ian MacKay’s blog has some of the best information on this virus, including a truly chilling chart of case counts. This makes clear the rapid growth of cases over the last month. Recent analyses have not identified any mutations in the virus that might account for this change. Another possibility for the spike in cases may be that infection control measures are breaking down in Saudi Arabia now, much as there were such initial failures with SARS in Canada in 2003. …

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The Seven Most Read Posts Last Month

April 17, 2015 / Uncategorized /

I’m always curious to see what posts people are reading on the blog, and where readers are from. Last month, the most viewed post was a book review of Eden Robinson’s novel Monkey Beach, a gothic tale set in an indigenous community in coastal BC. When I wrote that post I worried that it would be too distant from the theme of this blog to attract readers. The second most read post looked at lost nuclear weapons in Canada. Visits to this one post were up nearly 300%, which suggests that people have a sudden interest in this topic, perhaps because there was news coverage of this topic recently? Most of the blog’s readership is in the United States (78%), so it struck me as unusual for both of the top posts to focus on Canadian issues. The third most read post came as no surprise, since I would expect readers to be interested in a syllabus for the “Introduction to International Studies” class. The fourth most viewed post was a book review of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s work, Provincializing Europe; this also made sense because book reviews tend to receive more hits than other posts, and Chakrabarty’s work is a key text in postcolonial theory. The fifth most popular post was a map of U.S. security interests. I often use this map in my introductory class when I am talking about competing theories of security. It tends to foster a good class discussion, and I hope that it has been useful for other faculty. The sixth most viewed post was on the mystery of Witches’ Broom and Bioterrorism in Brazil. Finally, the seventh most read post looked at a spectacular financial fraud in 1920s Portugal. While a story of a daring crime, I wouldn’t have guessed that early twentieth century Portuguese events could attract more readers than contemporary issues. …

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MERS, the next pandemic?

June 3, 2015 / global health, Middle East / , , ,
"Camel Caravan In A Desert" by m_bartosch at freedigitalphotos.net
“Camel Caravan In A Desert” by m_bartosch at freedigitalphotos.net

MERS COV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) first appeared in Saudi Arabia in 2012. This disease is caused by a corona-virus, much like the SARS epidemic in 2003. A great deal of work was done early in the epidemic to identify the original host for this virus. Although there is a great deal of evidence associating the virus with camels, which are also infected, it now seems that the original host may be the Egyptian tomb bat, an appropriately scary name for a disease vector. Given that many other viruses seem to have bats as their original hosts, this would be unsurprising if true. The disease is a respiratory virus, which causes difficulty breathing, coughing, and fatigue. Roughly 40% of patients die. …

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