Gendercide--Extra Credit

"Never again" said the Jews (and many others) about the Holocaust. However, there have been many such tragedies in the 20th and 21st centuries, some of them going on right now. Please take a look at the "case studies" on the Gendercide site. Choose one of the studies and comment here on that article/case study. In studying for the final exam, you might find particularly useful the Armenia case study, the Bangladesh case study,  the Nanking (Nanjing) case study, and the Rwanda case study.  In what way does the information on this site help justify the 20th century's nickname "The Age of Violence" or the 21st century's nickname "The Age of Stupidity"?

Harvest of Despair (extra credit)

Communism is one of the three "flavors" of totalitarianism we will be talking about this month. It is the most widespread and, in a certain sense, most successful flavor of totalitarianism--and probably the most important for you to understand.

Normally, I show in class a video called Harvest of Despair.  With fewer teaching days than normal, I've had to leave out a few things, and I'm skipping the video this semester.  It would be great if you could watch the video online.  Unfortunately, the sound quality of the YouTube version is pretty poor.  The best YouTube version is in six parts:

Harvest of Despair, Part I
Harvest of Despair, Part II
Harvest of Despair, Part III
Harvest of Despair, Part IV
Harvest of Despair, Part V
Harvest of Despair, Part VI


There is a better quality DVD version in the NSU library.  A group of you might want to check the DVD out and watch it together.  I'll give you extra credit for your response to the prompt here:

What did the Harvest of Despair video teach you about Soviet Communism that you didn't know before? What insights did you gain on the motivations and methods of those who supported the movement? Did anything here help you understand why this particular flavor of totalitarianism survived longer (and did more damage) than other totalitarian systems?

Yad Vashem

"One death is a tragedy: a million deaths is a statistic," said Joseph Stalin. Unfortunately, this tends to be the truth. Numbers are a useful tool for measuring things that are too big for us to understand in any other way, e.g., how far it is from earth to the sun. But using numbers often blunts the reality of human tragedies.

The Yad Vashem site tries to make the victims of the Holocaust something more than just statistics. Its database is an attempt to preserve a memory of as many individual victims as possible.

Browse through the database, and look through some of the individual pages of testimony. What do you find interesting/memorable in these pages?

Get Involved--Yet More Extra Credit Opportunities

There are quite a few campus events coming up I'd like to encourage you to attend. 

1.  Poet, musician, and inspirational speaker Talon Duchenaux will be appearing in the Wolves' Den on Wednesday, November 18, at 7:30 p.m.  I've watched Talon's "Ted Talks" presentation.  Useful ideas, and quite entertaining. 

2.  Author Suki Kim will be speaking at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, at the Aberdeen Civic Theater.   While I won't be talking about North Korea specifically in class, the material you pick up from her talk will help you in preparing for exam questions 3, 4, and 5. 

3.  NSU professor Anne Holmquest will discuss the book she recently published, “Visual Talk: How to Speak Anywhere with Graphics and Rhythm” at the Noon Forum on Wednesday, November 18, in the Williams Library Rotunda.  Those of you who are going to be teachers, glorious professors, or enter any profession that require public presentations will find this a very useful session.

To get your extra credit points, just note here which presentation you want to and comment on what the presentation added to your college experience that you might not have gotten from your regular classes. 

The Eugenics Movement (extra credit)

Some of the 19th and 20th century followers of Darwin hit on a novel way to speed up the "natural selection" process.  Their ideas led to the development of what is called "eugenics." Please read through the Wikipedia summary of the eugenics movement. What do you see here that suggests that there is a dark side to the Darwinian idea of progress?

Extra Dostoyevsky Readings (extra credit)

If you enjoyed "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (and even if you didn't), you might enjoy some of the other selections in the Signet Dostoyevsky book.  If you like romances, you might find "White Nights" particularly appealing. If you want to know what it's like to be in a Siberian prison camp, you might like the selections from the "House of the Dead." 

Read either or both selections, and add your comments here. What would you say to encourage students to read the selection for themselves?

Communist Manifesto--Extra Credit

In the "Communist Manifesto," Marx and Engels suggest some "wonderful improvements" for society. Cite a line from the Manifesto highlighting one of these improvements, i.e, something Marx and Engels want to see changed. Would the change they suggest be a good one? Why, or why not? Do you get a feeling of deja vu when you read through the Manifesto? Any issues raised similar to those in contemporary American politics?

You do not need to read the whole of the Manifesto. Part II (Proletarians and Communists, pp. 135-142 in the Dover anthology) will be sufficient.