motivations and practices of a diverse group of 16 American women adult. educators who .. and with different spiritual traditions, including Islam, Baha'i, Black Chris-. tianity the perception, when you think “spiritual academic,” is that this person is using Contesting the terrain of the ivory tower: Spiritual leadership of.
Table of contents
What this Wall Street Journal article was saying is that the economic data shows that impact will be with them their entire lives; that when they start off their career not gaining skills, not working, not climbing the economic ladder, that delay will stick with them forever. Where is the outrage?
Where are the Senators standing here saying: What a travesty that young people are being denied a fair shot at the American dream because of what we have wrought because of ObamaCare. That should unite all of us. If we were listening to the American people, that would be where our attention would lie.
Fundamentally, what this week is about is that we need to make DC listen, make them listen to the single mom working at a diner, struggling to feed her kids, who has just been told she is being reduced to 29 hours a week. Who is speaking for that single mom right now?
Who is talking about how ObamaCare is forcing more and more people into part-time employment? And, by the way, she does not get health insurance. Instead, forced into 29 hours a week, what does that single mom do? She gets a second job. So now she is working two jobs, with 29 hours a week for both of them. Now she is away from her kids even more. She does not have health insurance at either job now. But she has to travel from one to the other. She has to deal with two conflicting schedules because one job wants her to work Tuesday, and the other job wants her to work at that same time on Tuesday.
She has to go to both of her bosses. Both of them say: You need to be there Tuesday afternoon. On Friday or Saturday of this week we will vote on cloture. That is a vote that I think is a profound mistake. It is a vote that I hope all 46 Republicans will stand united against. It is a vote that, in time, I hope more than a few Democrats will stand against. To fix the problems in this country, this does not have to be a partisan issue. Because the facts show it is not working, because if you get beyond the team mentality in Washington, if you get beyond the partisan focus in Washington and you ask, is this thing good for the American people, it is very hard on the merits to make the case that it is.
It is very hard. It is quite interesting that in the course of this debate there have been more than a few newspaper articles, more than a few attacks from our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle and also from our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I told my wife that I now pick up the newspaper each day to learn just what a scoundrel I am and just what attacks have come, some on the record and some—actually the ones that are often even better are the anonymous ones.
I have to say there is no courage like the courage in Washington of the anonymous congressional staffers. I have chuckled at more than a few of them. You know, it says something when Members of this body, the congressional staffers, and members of the media want to make this about personalities.
They want to make this about a battle of this Senator versus that Senator, this person versus that person, so it is all personal. It is like reading the Hollywood gossip pages. That is how this issue is covered. It is not by accident because one of the ways Washington has discovered for not listening to the people is distraction. Distract the voters with smoke and mirrors. This fight is not about any Member of this body. This fight is not about personality. Look, most Americans could not give a flying flip about a bunch of politicians in Washington.
You know, almost all of us are in cheap suits and have bad haircuts. What the American people care about is their own lives. What the American people care about is giving their kids a better future. What the American people care about is having a job with a future, not a job where they are working 29 hours a week, where they are punching a clock, where they feel as though they are just going through the motions, but a job where they say: Hey, I have a career. I can see the next step. I can see the future for my family. That is what the American people care about. So regardless of the rocks that will be thrown — and they will continue to be thrown — I have no intention of engaging in that game, no intention of speaking ill of any Senator, Republican or Democratic, because it is not about us.
Anyone who is trying to make this a battle of personalities is trying to change the topic from the topic that should matter: If we focus on the substance, the evidence is overwhelming. This law is a train wreck. Every day the headlines come in: Yet every day the Senate goes about its business and says: We are too busy to listen to the American people. There are different games, to be sure, that go on on both sides of the aisle.
Many of our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle right now endeavor to convince the American people: Pay no attention to your lying eyes; ObamaCare really is terrific. That is not going terribly well. But on the Republican side of the aisle, there is a lot of energy and attention focused on saying: Well, yes, ObamaCare is terrible, but under no circumstances could we ever do anything about it. That is beyond us. We are destined to lose. ObamaCare is really bad. We cannot fix it.
You know, that problem — it crosses that middle line. Whether you are telling your constituents it is really working out well despite the objective facts to the contrary or whether you are telling your constituents: I agree, it is a terrible thing, but I cannot do anything to fix it, in both cases you are not listening to the people. That is something we need to correct. All of us, all of us—we need to listen to the people. Together, we need to make DC listen. If we do not, the frustration will grow. If we do not, the disillusion with Washington will grow.
If we do not, the approval rating of Congress will keep going down, keep going down, keep going down. The only way to fix this problem is to demonstrate that we understand—we understand the fact that we are not driven by partisan ideology; that we are driven by doing our jobs and listening to the American people. It is my fervent hope that over the course of this week, over the course of this debate, that all 46 Senators on the Republican side will unite and that more and more Democrats will come together and say: Listen, we have an obligation to our constituents.
That is an obligation we are going to honor. I would ask my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Texas, a series of questions with regard to this concept to make DC listen. It is interesting that we are having this discussion right now at a time in our history when never has it been easier for so many people throughout the country with so few resources to be heard by so many. In the past, you had to own a newspaper or perhaps in more recent years you had to own a radio station or a television company or something like that to be heard by a lot of people.
But these days pretty much anyone can gain access to a telephone or the Internet, they can send an e-mail, they can submit a post. It is one of the things that have made possible a groundswell of people — just a few minutes ago the Senator mentioned 1. They want government funded, just as we want government funded.
They want government to be able to continue to do the things government does. They want people to be able to rely on government to protect them, to protect our borders, to protect our sovereignty, protect our homeland against those who would harm us. They want government to be able to carry out its basic functions and its responsibility. They want their government funded. But they do not want that held hostage by something else. They do not want that funding tied to the funding of ObamaCare in the sense that they want to keep government funded but they want us to defund ObamaCare.
The House of Representatives shows that at least that side of DC, that side of the Capitol was listening. I applaud the Speaker of the House and the other leaders in the House of Representatives who did that. That suggests to me that they were listening on that side of the Capitol. They had many millions of Americans calling out on the telephone, through mail, e-mail, every conceivable medium for relief from this bill. They listened because they understand that the American people are being hurt by this.
They ask the same questions the Senator from Texas and I and others have asked: How many more Americans will have to lose their jobs because of ObamaCare before Congress acts? How many more Americans will have to see their wages or their hours cut as a result of this ill-conceived law before we do something about this?
How many more people will have to lose access to health coverage before Congress does something? How many more stories like this will we have to hear before Congress does something to protect Americans from the harmful effects of this law—a law that was passed a few years ago without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives; a law that was passed a few years ago without a single Republican vote in the Senate; a law that was passed — all 2, pages as it was then constituted — without, as far as I know, many, if any, Members of this body or the other body in the Capitol having had the opportunity fully to read it.
Since then, of course, it has expanded. We have had an additional 20, pages of regulations promulgated, increasing rather exponentially the impact of this law. So as we look at this, we think about the fact that it is important for Congress to listen to the American people. Again, today it has never been so easy for so many Americans with so few resources at their disposal to make sure that they are, in fact, heard. So we have to ask ourselves the question — I have to ask the Senator the question: How long will it be before Congress acts? I am pleased that the Senator referred to the opportunity crisis, the economic opportunity crisis in America.
He referred to the economic ladder in this country. You know, I think it is an interesting fact and we need to consider that—according to one recent study published I believe just in the last few weeks—for the first time in American history, 40 percent of those born in America, into the bottom quintile of the American economy, the bottom 20 percent of income earners in this country — 40 percent of the bottom 20 percent will remain in the bottom 20 percent throughout the duration of their lifetime.
To my knowledge, that has never happened in this country. To my knowledge, this undercuts what has long been a very distinguishing, enviable characteristic of the United States. It is what has made this the greatest civilization the world has ever known—the fact that this is a country where regardless of where you were born on the economic ladder, regardless of the circumstances in which you came into this world or came into this country, you could make it.
In fact, your chances of doing so were relatively strong. Yet 40 percent of those people, we now understand, will stay there throughout the duration of their lives. Another study came out, also a few weeks ago, indicating that in 34 States and the District of Columbia, an individual or a family is actually likely to see a dip in their well-being, a dip in their standard of living if, instead of receiving welfare benefits, they decide instead to shed those benefits and go on to an entry level job.
That is sad because that suggests that our government—as well-intentioned as many of those programs might be, they will have set in place a series of conditions that trap people, especially parents, into a vulnerable, poor condition. If there is one thing that I think parents feel somewhat universally, it is a degree of risk aversion. People do not like to take risks that could jeopardize their ability to provide for their children. If we set up a set of conditions in which people, in order to maintain their level of certainty that they might have while surviving under a system of welfare benefits provided by the Federal Government — if they become locked into that, locked into poverty in perpetuity because of that, that is disconcerting because the risk is always too high to make that jump to an entry level job.
Without the entry level job, there will never be the secondary job, there will never be the first raise or the second raise or the first, second, or third promotion. Without those things, there is no ladder. Without those things, there is an opportunity lost and people remain on the bottom rungs of that very ladder.
We see at the top rung a system of crony capitalism that sometimes has the impact of keeping some people and some big businesses artificially held in place at the top of the economic ladder at the expense of others, at the expense of would-be competitors who are driven out or held out from the beginning from the competitive marketplace through the oppressive intervention of the government, through the government's favoritism, and through the government's ability sometimes, regrettably, to choose winners and losers in the marketplace.
You see where most Americans are, right in the middle of the ladder. On the middle rungs you see people working, trying to get by from day to day. They are able to survive, able to provide for the basic needs of their families. But they would like to do better. They would like to be able to provide a more comfortable living for their families. They find very often that no sooner do they find an increase in their income than that same increase has been gobbled up by a combination of oppressive taxes, oppressive regulations, and a devastating impact of inflation.
When those things happen, we find people are unable to make their way up that economic ladder. We find ourselves at a precipice of sorts. We find ourselves about to embark on a very bold experiment in which we rather dramatically expand the role of the Federal Government, injecting it more directly, more completely, more dangerously into one of the most personal aspects of most people's lives, into the health care industry. At the same time the government is doing that, the government will be consuming an increasingly large share of the resources moving through our economy, making it even harder for people who are trying to get by to do so and to do so without undue interference from the government.
This is an issue that is important to so many people. This is an issue that reminds people of the fact that whenever government acts, it does so at the expense of our own individual liberty. It does so at the expense of our ability to live our lives as we would live them. It does so very often at the expense of the American economy. It does so very often at the expense of economic opportunity for Americans, you see, because when we expand government, we expand its cost.
We make ourselves as a country less free. We leave ourselves with fewer alternatives. Is there a role for government to play in health care? Of course there is. No one disputes that. Are there improvements that can be made to our health care system? But a 2,page law that was passed after Members of Congress were told they had to pass it in order to find out what is in it, that has expanded since then to include within its penumbra 20, pages of regulatory text, a law that has become less and less popular as time has gone on—this has become very difficult.
We find this becomes less and less something that the American people support. Specifically does the Senator feel the American people have every right to expect that those of us serving in the Senate will do everything we possibly can, even casting difficult votes, even casting procedural votes that might be difficult to cast or difficult to explain? Do they have every right to do that even if it causes great inconvenience for them and for us in the process of complying with their wishes?
I thank my friend from Utah for that very good question. The answer is absolutely yes. That is the foundation of our Nation. The history of government for most of the existence of mankind has been a story of oppression, a story of rulers imposing their will on their subjects. For millennia, we were told that rights come from government. They come from kings and queens, and they are to be given to the people by grace, to be taken away by the whim of the ruler.
That has been the state of affairs for most of the history of humanity. The first revolution was a revolution that was a bloody revolution fought with guns and bayonets. But even more important than that revolution was the revolution of ideas that occurred. The revolution of ideas that began this Nation was twofold. First, America began from the presupposition that our rights come from God. It is for that reason the Declaration Of Independence begins: That is and was a revolutionary idea, and it led to the second revolutionary aspect of the founding of our Nation which was that we inverted the concept of sovereignty.
For millennia sovereignty began at the top. It was the ruler who was called the sovereign. The word sovereignty derives from that notion. Of course, the sovereign is where sovereignty resides. The American Framers turned that notion on its head. There is no sovereign. Sovereignty resides with we the people. It was founded by we the people, the American people. That is the only place sovereignty has ever resided in the United States of America.
The Constitution, in turn, was created to lend power to government, not to give it, to lend it and to lend it, I would suggest, only in good behavior. Thomas Jefferson referred to the Constitution as chains that bind the mischief of government, that sovereignty is an idea we need to get back to. I am going to suggest that for some time now the Senate has not behaved as if we the people are sovereign.
For some time the Senate has not behaved as if each of us collectively has 3 million bosses. For a long time the Senate has behaved as if the rules that matter are the rules in Washington, DC. That is why the most important objective of this week is to make DC listen. The most important objective of this week is to reassert that sovereignty is with we the people, that calls from our constituents and townhalls are not a pesky annoyance. It is the core of our job. It is the core of our job to listen to the sovereign, which is we the people.
Right now we the people are hurting. If you get outside Washington, DC, you ask them about ObamaCare over and over, and the answer you get is: A few weeks ago I hosted a small business roundtable in Kerrville, TX. Kerrville is a delightful town in central Texas. It is in the beautiful hill country. If anyone wants to come to Texas, I would encourage you. Kerrville is a great destination in Texas.
This was a small gathering in a restaurant, about 20 small business owners. I asked each of them and I said: If each of you could introduce yourself, share a little bit about yourself, and then share a concern that is weighing on your heart. Share something you are praying about, share something you are worried about, share something you are focused on right now.
It was a totally open-ended question. They could have talked about any issue under the Sun. They could have talked about Syria, guns, they could have talked about anything. We went around the table one after the other after the other. Over half of the small business owners around that table said to me: Ted, the single biggest obstacle I face in my business is ObamaCare. Hands down, not even close, there is nothing that comes close.
Of those 20, there were probably 4 or 5 of them who relayed some version of this same story. One was the fellow who owned the restaurant we were meeting in. You know, we have a great opportunity to expand our business. I have an opportunity to make the restaurant even bigger, expand it, and from a business perspective, this opportunity looks good. You know, we have got between 20 and 30 employees. If we expand the business we will go over And if we go over 50, we are subject to ObamaCare.
If that happens, I will go out of business. So you know what. I am not pursuing the expansion. I am not going to do it. We are going to stay the size we are. One person after another around the table said the same thing. They had 30 employees, 35, 40 employees. They had great opportunities to go open another location, expand into a new aspect.
One after the other said: We will not do it, because if we get over 50 employees, ObamaCare will bankrupt us. Then I want you to multiply that by thousands or tens of thousands of small businesses all across this country that could be creating jobs. I want you to think about all the people right now who are home wanting to work. I think Americans want to work. Americans want the self-respect that comes from going to the office, from working, from providing for your family, from working to achieve the American dream.
Do some people give up? Can you give in to hopelessness? I want you to think of the millions of jobs we could have but for small businesses that are not growing, not expanding, not creating those jobs. Another small business owner around that table owned several fast food restaurants. She had a problem. She owned enough fast food restaurants that she had over 50 employees. I will mention the restaurant business and the fast food business side in particular is quite labor dependent. I doubt if there is a sector in this economy that has been hurt more than the labor in the fast food business.
She described how she has already forcibly reduced the hours of every one of her employees to 29 hours per week. I will tell you this woman almost began to tear up. She was not happy about this, to put it mildly. Listen, we have been in business a long time. Many of these employees we have known 10 or 20 years. These are single moms. These are people—look, if you are working in a fast food restaurant you are not at the pinnacle of your career. You are struggling to pay the bills. If we are subject to ObamaCare, we go out of business. Why 29 hours a week?
Well, just like the employee threshold, ObamaCare kicks in and counts an employee if he or she works 30 hours a week. I will mention another small business owner who I think will particularly hit home with the Presiding Officer because I know the issues that resonate with him. This is an individual who manufactures hunting blinds — actually very interesting.
They are hunting blinds that are camouflaged to look like trees. They are really very clever creations. He described how he has been forced to move his manufacturing overseas, to move it to China. So right now he is manufacturing in China. Listen, I want to manufacture here in the United States.
That matters to me. I care about that. He said this would be to good manufacturing jobs here in the United States. The Presiding Officer and I both come from States where there are a lot of people who are struggling and who would love to see more manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing used to be a tremendous strength of our economy, but the manufacturing sector has been hammered in recent decades. It would drive him out of business. Why is the economy gasping for breath? Why are people not able to get jobs?
Because ObamaCare is killing jobs, and the Senate should listen to the people. We need to make DC listen. I thank the Senator. Does he acknowledge that he understands, as I do, that as this monstrosity goes into effect October 1 and as it has all of these really devastating impacts on individuals and small businesses, under a special illegal rule from the Obama administration, Congress and Washington get an exemption; they get a special pass; they get a special deal no other American gets under the law?
I thank the Senator for his question, and he is absolutely right. There are many scandalous aspects of ObamaCare: If you are going to force ObamaCare on the American people, if you are going to create these health insurance exchanges and you are going to force millions of people into these exchanges, then Congress should not operate by better rules than the American people. It has been reported — I was not serving in this body at the time — that amendment was voted on and accepted because Democratic Senators believed the bill would go to conference and in the conference committee they could strip it out and it would magically disappear.
Let us out of ObamaCare. One would assume they are reading the same news reports the rest of us are reading — that ObamaCare is a train wreck, that it is not working — and the last thing Members of Congress wanted to do was to have their health care jeopardized. And the President directed his administration to exempt Members of Congress and their staff, ignoring the language of the statute, disregarding the language of the statute and saying: You guys are friends of the administration. We are taking care of you. I want to take a minute, in response to this question, to commend the Senator from Louisiana.
It was an amendment that said we as Members of Congress should be subject to the same rules as the American people. Indeed, the amendment of Senator VITTER said Members of Congress should be subject to ObamaCare, our staff should be subject to ObamaCare, and members of the administratio n— the political appointees of the Obama administration, who, by the way, are not in the exchanges — should be too. So if the President and Cabinet appointees and his political officials want to go into communities and tell everyone how wonderful ObamaCare is, then let them do so from personal experience.
Let them do so not being exempted but subject to the same exchanges and subject to the same rules the American people are. The reason I wish to commend the Senator from Louisiana is his introducing that amendment prompted a response that, I will suggest, brought disgrace and disrepute on this body. It prompted a political response that targeted the Senator from Louisiana personally. In fact, I would note that the majority leader and the junior Senator from California, as I understand from public news reports, proposed a response to the Vitter amendment that said any Senator who votes for the Vitter amendment — regardless of whether it passes but simply if you cast a vote in favor of it — he or she will lose their health insurance.
I have to admit that when I first heard of this proposed amendment, I shook my head in amazement. I had never heard of such a thing, and I suggested to a friend who is a law professor that that would make a marvelous law school final exam. Imagine this amendment being passed into law and asking your law students to catalog all of the myriad ways in which such a proposal would be unconstitutional.
In fact, I made this point to the law professor I was talking to. If you as a private citizen came to any Member of the Senate and said: Senator, if you vote the way I want you to, I am going to pay you thousands of dollars that you can deposit into your personal bank account, you, Mr. Private Citizen, would promptly and quite rightly be prosecuted for bribery.
It is a criminal offense. It is a felony. If, on the other hand, you or any other American citizen went to a U. Now, let me be clear: No Member of this body is guilty of bribery or extortion. So I am not suggesting that anyone is guilty of bribery or extortion. So I want to commend Senator VITTER for shining a light on basic fairness, for enduring the vilification that was unfairly directed his way, and for making the point that outside of Washington is simple common sense.
I would suggest that if any of us were to get a gathering of our constituents together, if we were to get a gathering of constituents from the opposing party and ask this question at any townhall gathering in our States: Do you believe that Members of Congress should be exempted from ObamaCare, that we should have a special rule, that we should disregard the language of the statute and not be subject to ObamaCare the way the American people are, the answer would be overwhelmingly no. Will the Senator also acknowledge that given that history on this issue, given that illegal rule to exempt Congress, to have a special bailout, a special subsidy for Congress that the Obama administration is putting into law without valid authority, and given that we are debating and acting on a spending bill this week, we should be voting on that?
We should get a vote on my amendment and the Cruz amendment together to block that illegal rule this week? The majority leader said he had no problem with a vote on that, in theory. He said that last week. He should allow a vote on this crucial amendment, which will be filed to the bill, which will even be a germane amendment on this spending bill this week, before this illegal congressional exemption rule goes into effect.
Would the Senator agree with me? Senator VITTER highlights one of the many reasons why every Republican in this body should vote against cloture on the bill on Friday or Saturday and why I believe a great many Democrats should vote against cloture as well. As we understand it, we are told the amendment process on this bill is going to be rigged.
The amendment process on this bill is going to be that once debate is cut off, there will be a bill simply to fund ObamaCare in its entirety, to delete the House language, and that other amendments will not be allowed. The amendment of the Senator from Louisiana will not be allowed, the amendment repealing the medical device taxes will not be allowed, and the amendment getting the IRS out of the business of ObamaCare will not be allowed. Instead, it will be a rigged playing field. The only way to prevent that rigged playing field is for Senators to stand together and vote no on cutting off debate on Friday or Saturday when we have that vote.
If we stand together and vote no, that forces this body to deal with the problem; otherwise, we know how the Kabuki dance ends. If cloture is invoked, if debate is cut off on the bill, very shortly thereafter the majority leader has publicly announced he will introduce an amendment to fully fund ObamaCare. That will require just 51 votes.
So every Republican will get to vote no and tell his or her constituents they voted no. Yet magically and wonderfully it will pass because it will be a straight party-line, partisan vote, and other Senators will be silenced. Indeed, I would like to see the Vitter amendment broadened. Another member of our conference indicated that if the Vitter amendment were brought up, he would offer an amendment to expand it to all Federal employees.
I think that is a terrific rule. Right now, Federal employees earn substantially more than the private sector does. If Members of this body are going to go on television and tell the American people: ObamaCare is great, it is good, it is terrific, it is so great, then they should be eager to live under it. Either ObamaCare is a train wreck, in which case we ought to listen to the American people and fix it, or ObamaCare is wonderful and terrific and fantastic and all of the great adjectives the proponents of the bill have used, in which case Members of Congress, staff, and Federal employees should all eagerly embrace it.
Follow Penn Press
I very much agree with Senator VITTER that it is critical we vote on the Vitter amendment, and it is critical we make clear to the American people there are not two sets of rules. There is not a ruling class in Washington that somehow gets treated differently. Let me talk for a minute about congressional staffers. Behind closed doors this issue generates a lot of passion.
There are a great many congressional staff members who are dedicated public servants, who have often taken substantial salary cuts to come to Washington to serve this country, who work brutal hours. Among congressional staff, just like among Members, the idea that they would be subject to ObamaCare deeply concerns them. It concerns them on the money side and it concerns them on the quality of care and health insurance that they will be able to get on the exchanges. If the Vitter amendment passes and Congress is subject to the same rules as the American people, there may well be quite a few congressional staff who tender their letters of resignation and leave.
I have had one staff member already indicate she would retire after many years of service, and the possibility of being put on ObamaCare was a real factor in that decision. If we lose some good talent from Congress, that will be a shame and a hardship for every office. But what does that say?
- Penn Press Log: Gender and Sexuality Studies.
- ?
- Redescubriendo el Reino (Spanish Edition).
- Beyond Millennium;
If ObamaCare is such a disaster that congressional staffers—and, mind you, a lot of these congressional staffers who may tender their letters of resignation are staffers working for Democratic Senators who drafted ObamaCare, who fight for ObamaCare every day. What does it say that staffers would be willing to quit because the quality of health care under ObamaCare would be so poor that they would rather go somewhere else than be subject to those laws?
I think that speaks volumes. If this body is content to leave the American people stuck in ObamaCare, then we ought to be subject to the same rules. The proper answer is to step in and say to the American people—in fact, let me suggest something that would have a powerful clarifying impact on this body. If only Senators would behave as if their constituents were at least as important as their congressional staff; if only Senators were to behave as if their constituents were at least as important as they are—to be honest, our constituents are more important.
Our constituents are our bosses. They are the reason we are fighting. The fact that this body is so torn apart by the notion that each of us would be subject to ObamaCare and subject to the same rules the American people are highlights how broken Washington is. Christian Slavery is a powerful new interpretation of this question that will inspire scholars to rethink the connections between religion, race, and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world. Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, then how could perpetual enslavement be justified?
Christian Slavery shows how debates about slavery transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world. Marisa Fuentes's compelling study of women's lives in and around Bridgetown leaves the reader with a clear sense of who these women were and how they navigated the terrain of a Caribbean slave society. At the same time, Fuentes's engagement with the problems of the archive testifies to the powerful entanglements that constitute the afterlife of slavery. This is an important study that fundamentally reshapes the questions we are compelled to ask about the histories of slavery in the Atlantic world.
Morgan, New York University. Vividly recounting the lives of enslaved women in eighteenth-century Bridgetown, Barbados, and their conditions of confinement through urban, legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, authorities, and the archive, Marisa J. Fuentes challenges how histories of vulnerable and invisible subjects are written.
In Susan Juster's fresh and intelligent retelling of our seventeenth-century beginnings, she uncovers what the rest of us have overlooked, themes of this kind that the colonists brought with them. A feat of research and argument. Susan Juster explores different forms of sacred violence—blood sacrifice, holy war, malediction, and iconoclasm—to uncover how European traditions of ritual violence developed during the Reformation were introduced and ultimately transformed in the New World.
Starting with the common-sense idea that we should try to understand what colonists meant when they called themselves 'frontier people,' Patrick Spero suggests how Pennsylvania, 'the Keystone State,' can indeed be a keystone for understanding not only early America but the 'frontier country' that followed after Merrell, author of Into the American Woods. Synthesizing the tensions between high and low politics and eastern and western regions in Pennsylvania before the Revolution, Patrick Spero recasts the importance of frontiers, as eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians would have understood them, to the development of colonial America and the origins of American Independence.
Featuring over illustrations, The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times is an essential reference for those interested in the religion, culture, and history of the ancient Mediterranean. And its entry is dazzling. Each of the essays in this volume takes us in directions never traversed before in any book on Kashmir. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir considers the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation of Kashmir and the ways in which Kashmiri youth are drawing on the region's history of armed rebellion to reimagine the freedom struggle in the twenty-first century.
In lucid and enthralling prose, Devaka Premawardhana takes us deep into the world of the Makhuwa, offering new ways in which global Christianity, tradition, mobility, conversion, and social change may be understood. Emotionality, Sociality, and the Ambiguity of Being. Recent reports on Pentecostalism in the global South give the impression of an inexorable trajectory of massive growth, but Faith in Flux examines the religion's ambivalent reception in northern Mozambique, locating vital insight in the overlooked places where this religion has failed to take root.
It illuminates how cultural beliefs and values about gender, sexuality, and victimization have fractured the interpretation and implementation of the law in different sites. Migrant Entertainers and the U. Military in South Korea. Responding to Human Trafficking explores how cultural and symbolic frameworks of sex, gender, and prostitution dominate the interpretation and implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and provides a detailed ethnography of its ramifications for the persons it is designed to protect.
Niles, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Daniel Donoghue shows how the earliest readers of Old English poems deployed a unique set of skills that enabled them to navigate a daunting task with apparent ease. It might be the most important analysis of popular Christianity for the city of Rome in the early Middle Ages. City of Saints explores how Byzantine Rome naturalized saints from throughout the Mediterranean world to build a new sacred topography. As a result, an exhausted city with a limited Christian presence metamorphosed into the spiritual center of Western Christianity.
Promises and Prospects Svetozar Y. Minkov and Bernhardt L. The collection amounts to a rare exchange between philosophical critics of the modern scientific project and its serious defenders. Ranging from ancient Greek thought to contemporary quantum mechanics, Mastery of Nature investigates to what extent nature can be conquered to further human ends and to what extent such mastery is compatible with human flourishing. From the first sentence to the last, Torture is filled with information and analysis you will not find elsewhere.
If you want to understand what causes torture and how to end it, this is the book to read. In Torture , former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak recounts his experience visiting countries, reviewing documents, collecting evidence, and conducting interviews with perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of torture.
His story offers vital insights for human-rights scholars and professionals. Memory, Mourning, and Accountability Antonius C. Robben is to be commended for his examination of the question of what the legacies of repression portend for Argentine democracy and the future of its political projects. This riveting analysis of the aftermath of Argentina's massive disappearances uncovers a dynamic of trust and betrayal that has driven relentless confrontations between the state, the military, former insurgents, and bereaved relatives about how to remember, mourn, and punish atrocities committed against fellow citizens.
The email subscriber discount cannot be applied to the purchase of desk or exam copies. Here at Penn Press, we've had a slew of new books publish in just the last month, spanning from the history of black nationalist women to the written record of English saints and beyond! Browse through the list below.
Set the World on Fire: Her engrossing study shows that much of this activism was led by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women. Adding essential chapters to the story of this movement, Blain expands current understanding of the central roles played by female activists at home and overseas. Set the World on Fire highlights the black nationalist women who fought for national and transnational black liberation from the early to mid-twentieth century. Christian Zionism in America Samuel Goldman. Combining original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion, Samuel Goldman provides an accessible yet provocative introduction to Americans' attachment to the State of Israel.
Undercurrents of Power opens up a new and exciting aspect of slaves' experience, providing a crucially important piece of the history of slave life and labor in the Americas. Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills—swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing—to the Americas.
Marathon speech against ObamaCare
Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Gay Health Politics in the s Katie Batza. Before AIDS chronicles the development of gay health services in the s as gay men faced public health challenges stemming from both their political marginalization and disease.
Activists using tools and tactics from across their era's political landscape built a nationwide gay medical system, changing ideas about sexuality and health. Entangled Empires emphasizes the connections between the English and Iberian imperial projects. The colonial history of the United States ought to be considered part of the history of colonial Latino-America just as Latin American history should be understood as fundamental to the constitution of the United States.
The publication of Slavery's Capitalism at the tail end of the Obama era thus provides the perfect opportunity to take stock of what was accomplished in the last round of historicization: The book both incorporates and builds on a wave of recent scholarship on slavery and capitalism in the United States. Slavery's Capitalism explores the role of slavery in the development of the U. It tells the history of slavery as a story of national, even global, economic importance and investigates the role of enslaved Americans in the building of the modern world.
Presenting a new twist on classic themes of American economic and working-class history, The Long Gilded Age considers the interlocking roles of politics, labor, and internationalism in the ideologies and institutions that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Backroads Pragmatists is an outstanding work that has broad application and relevance well beyond its Mexican-U. Backroads Pragmatists is the first examination of the influence of Mexican social reform on the United States. Flores illustrates how postrevolutionary Mexico's experiments in government and education shaped American race relations from the New Deal through the destruction of Jim Crow.
Allen, University of California, Los Angeles. In , humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Plato's Persona is the first book to undertake a synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Sari Altschuler has mastered and synthesized a large body of research, which she delivers with panache and passion.
This multidisciplinary book puts her on the front lines of current scholarly discourse, teaching us the lesson that both medical history and literary history are the poorer for ignoring each other. The Medical Imagination traces the practice of using imagination and literature to craft, test, and implement theories of health in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. This history of imaginative experimentation provides a usable past for conversations about the role of the humanities in health research and practice today.
Vila's book is a model of concise and well-articulated rigor on a fascinating topic that has been neglected and overlooked—the medical literature devoted to the sicknesses of men of letters. She shows how these texts provide an excellent vantage point from which to survey significant aspects of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature and medicine. Suffering Scholars focuses on the medical and literary dimensions of the cult of celebrity that developed around intellectuals during the French Enlightenment.
Vila shows how the "suffering scholar" syndrome deeply influenced debates about the consequences of book-learning on both the individual body and the body politic. In an age known for its shrill misogyny, how did such priests justify their service to women, and what positive roles did nuns play in male spirituality? In her urgently needed book, Nuns' Priests' Tales , Fiona Griffiths teases out some fascinating answers. Nuns' Priests Tales explores the spiritual ideas that motivated priestly service to nuns across Europe and throughout the medieval period, revealing the central role that women played in male spiritual life, and thus moving beyond the reductionist assumption that celibacy defined male spirituality in the age of reform.
Charting the development of the modern sense of addiction while at the same time attending to its early modern senses as something laudable, even heroic, Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England is an important intervention. Rebecca Lemon shows how sixteenth-century writers, such as Marlowe and Shakespeare, depict addiction in many forms, including to God, study, love, friendship, and drinking. Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England explores the fine line between devotion and pathology, revealing addiction's laudable as well as pejorative meanings.
New Legends of England: I know of no other work that thinks so hard and so productively about the capacities of the legendary or makes hagiography so much a part of the common intellectual landscape of the late Middle Ages. New Legends of England examines a previously unrecognized phenomenon of fifteenth-century English literary culture: Catherine Sanok argues these texts use literary experimentation to explore overlapping forms of secular and religious community.
Examining the writings of twentieth-century thinkers such as Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, Michael Oakeshott, and Adam Michnik, Faces of Moderation argues that moderation remains crucial for today's encounters with new forms of extremism. Counter Jihad provides a sweeping account of America's military campaigns in the Islamic world and fills a gaping void in our understanding of the War on Terror. Today's post provides an overview of the life and times of this fascinating figure.
Fifteen hundred years ago, the Gothic queen Amalasuintha struggled to develop a political model that would allow a barbarian woman to rule in her own right. Her remarkable political experiment stands out for its parallels to other women of the ancient world, in particular empresses of the Late Roman Empire such as Galla Placidia and Ariadne—who, even if they did not break conventional molds, still exerted their influence in the international sphere.
But Amalasuintha faced a considerably different world than those Late Roman and Byzantine empresses, and her political experiment also stands out for its unique cultural context. The conservative Gothic aristocracy, proud of their own military traditions and largely uninterested in embracing Roman culture, had no precedent for a ruling female at this level.
Gothic tradition assigned the wife of a king a role as advisor to her husband. Queens could also be instruments of diplomacy if their marriage were meant to reinforce alliances and to promote peace, but the Goths certainly did not recognize queens as rulers with independent political power over their kingdoms. The Romans, however, had experienced during the fifth century the influence of imperial women and mother regents. Roman history offered antecedents for female political power in situations where there was no adult king. Many Roman subjects, particularly members of the Italic aristocracy or of the Roman Senate, disdained a Gothic culture that seemed to them inferior.
Amalasuintha emerges as a remarkable figure facing impossible odds. It would have been a difficult line for anyone to walk, and Amalasuintha walked it more or less alone, reinventing her political position as she went. After her son died prematurely, Amalasuintha arrived at an unprecedented solution: Yet she did not release the reins of power, relegating him to a secondary position and presenting herself as the primary figure of the co-regency.
The sources describe this experiment with fascinating gendered language, in which they attribute male aspects to Amalasuintha and female characteristics to her cousin and co-regent Theodahad. Perhaps the experiment was too radical for her time. The co-regency was short lived and unsuccessful: Her effort to navigate treacherous waters inside her divided and threatened kingdom, and to bridge two worlds that perhaps had little interest in being unified, failed completely, and her kingdom collapsed into war. After her assassination, Roman and Gothic subjects were left to face the disastrous invasion of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, whose machinations had added to the tension of the Gothic kingdom for some time, and probably aided in the failure of its highest court.
As the first generation of the barbarian ruling house born in the Gothic kingdom of Italy, Amalasuintha was part of the long, violent process of integration and acculturation that would eventually lead to the medieval ideas of queenship. Her fascinating and tragic story reminds us that it takes time for new ideas to gain acceptance. It shows also that even when some elements of societies are strongly resistant to change, sometimes change is really part of an ongoing and unstoppable process of transformation. In the new societies that arose as the synthesis between barbarian and Roman cultures, Amalasuintha and other women of her century opened the door for the development of queenship that would shape Medieval Europe.
Taranto's award-winning book pushes back against predominant narratives of recent political history by positioning New York State as a central battleground in the popularization of conservatism over the course of the s—and by placing women at the forefront of the story. Taranto investigates the role that middle-class, mostly Catholic women on Long Island and in surrounding suburban counties played both in the development of conservatism in New York State and in the national shift toward a conservative politics of "family values.
The past year has been alternately frustrating and exhilarating—at times feeling, oddly enough, like a digital-age allegory on the left to political developments on the right in the s that I wrote about in Kitchen Table Politics: As feminists advocated for more educational and professional opportunities for women, these Catholic suburbanites saw it as a personal affront that implied that homemaking was not the coveted prize they viewed it to be. They opposed other feminist policies as well, chiefly legalized abortion, which offended them both as devout Catholics and because it seemed to devalue their maternal identities and obligations.
Throughout the s, the women created a viable grassroots politics centered on nuclear families, heterosexual marriage, and traditional gender roles—which led to a partnership with conservative Republicans. The women realized that core conservative Republican goals could stymie feminist aims. Lowering taxes, for instance, would both curb Medicaid funding for abortion and make it less likely that a second income their own would be needed as the nation plummeted into recession in those years. Conservative Republicans were equally anxious to align with the organizations the women had created in the voter-rich suburbs of New York City.
Alliances like this helped move the New York Republican Party rightward at the same time that the national party was undergoing a similar transformation. In other words, organizing at the grassroots level can compel the two major parties to shift in an effort to secure votes.
Our agenda differs greatly from that in the book. Instead of plotting to outlaw legal abortion, we strive to expand and protect it.
JSTOR: Access Check
Both efforts, however, center on how to mobilize local constituencies in ways that lead to meaningful political shifts across the country. I frequently find myself putting a modern spin on tactics described in my research. We can accomplish the same by sharing information on sites like Facebook and encouraging our online friends to do the same. Political organizing is a lot simpler in the internet age, but the more things change, the more they also stay the same.
It is still imperative to demonstrate that there is a voting constituency behind your politics. One of the best ways to exert political muscle is to earn votes in the electoral arena. The women began running candidates for local, state, and national office—not because they hoped or expected to win—but to demonstrate the existence of a viable anti-abortion swing vote, particularly in districts where contests were typically only won by a small margin.
Last January, veteran political operatives Amanda Litman and Ross Morales Rocketto, for example, used social media to launch Run for Something , an organization that gives first-time progressive political candidates the tools to compete in the often daunting and foreign world of politics. In , the group backed 72 candidates, many of whom were women and minorities. More than 30 of these candidates won elective office across 14 states. It is tantalizing to think about how similar guidance would have benefitted the political neophytes I documented in the s, when the thought of having expert advice just a few clicks away was unimaginable.
Profound political change occurs from the bottom up, when those in control are forced to bend to the will of the voting public—or be cast aside in favor of a new generation of leaders. Penn Press is thrilled to announce our Spring catalog. Blain, the first book to examine the vital role played by women in black nationalist politics both in the U. Thomas's lavishly illustrated biography Frank Furness: We also have new paperbacks available of recent books such as Marisa J.
To download a copy of the catalog PDF directly, click here. The complete season may also be browsed via Edelweiss. Need some reading material this November? Be sure to peruse the latest batch of Penn Press titles, which cover topics spanning from law and legal studies to religious studies to the history of higher education. Take a look below! AD Aaron D Ellis. DC Daina Cheyenne Harvey. AM Amelia Margo Reyes.
An Analysis of the Child Star Journey. CT Colleen T Dunagan. EA Emily Anna Frost. Agency and Multiplicity in YA Fantasy. CR Cristina Raquel Rivera. Popular Culture Myths vs. Speakers MC Michelle Carnes. Moderators MB Molly Brayman. Disability Studies Special Topics Area. The Time is Now or is it? Issues of Temporality and Disaster Time is Money: Moderators RB Robert Bell.
JT Jessica Taylor Hawkes. Disasters Apocalypses and Catastrophes. Trauma and Ethics Incest and Violence: CS Christine Susan Lahey. KE Kurt Edward Milberger. No Fatty Left Behind: Fat Bodies in the Great Outdoors. An analysis of photo usage in two newspapers over the last 60 years. Moderators DK Don Krause. TS Tara Simone Pixley. Speakers CD Christopher Dolle. Trends and the Way Forward Hamilton the Musical: This Is a Movement, Not a Moment.
Moderators SG Samuel Goldstein. LP Leesi Patricia Akubue. Moderators RV Richard Vela. Shakespeare on Film and Television. My research and teaching interests include gender and sexuality in television and film, in comedy and crime genres. Book Exhibit in Griffin Hall. Thursday March 29, 9: Journal of Popular Culture Annual Meeting. The Bachelor Phenomenon Years of Advertising: Walter Thompson Archive Prescribing Experience: The Domestication of Women Through Advertising. Speakers FB Felix Barnes. TK Tabetha Kristie Violet. Moderators PE Pamela E.
SM Sandra Marie Grayson. SA Samantha A Noel. CU Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq. Moderators SL Stephen Lind. Asian Popular Culture II: Manga Where the Wild Things Are?: KK Kay Krystal Clopton. Marketing Light Beer to Men. Speakers BA Brian Alberts. Rock Star Pacifism, Partisansip, and Patriotism: RE R Earnest Miller. Black Performing Arts I: Intermusical Reinterpretation in Coke Studio Africa.
Moderators MB Michael Borshuk. Black Performing Arts Area. Tattoos as Residual Orality. Speakers SS sidne s lyon. AG Andrew G Myles. Reflections of consumer attitudes with maternity wear Celebrity Controversy and the P. Model of Strategic Communication. KL Kendra L Lapolla. MC Megan C Hoelting. AS Alexis Shpall Wolstein. Comics and Comic Art IX: Representations of Otherness in Contemporary Bolivian comics. MM Marcela Murillo Lafuente. Parody, Boundaries, and the Limits of Camp.
Speakers ME Madison Elkins. KA Katherine Anderson Howell. The Repressed Voices of Disaster: Fashion on Film Satire and Sacha Baron Cohen in a stereotypes and assumption unit within a dress and human behavior undergraduate course The Body as Notebook: Seinfeld and Dress Nevertheless She Persisted: Moderators NR Nancy Romig. Fatness, Family, and Intimacy Big Mama: Mothering and the Fat Body Love and Research: A Crisis in Non-Representation.
Moderators BL Brittany Lockard. Moderators DS Doug Stark. David Thomas University of Colorado Denver. Speakers KE Kelsi Evans. PA Payton Alexi Moore. Gender and Media Studies VI: Moderators CF Christina Frasher. AP Allison P Palumbo. JL Janelle Leigh Vermaak. Moderators PS Phil Simpson. Revisiting Our History Huey Long: Speakers PF Pamela Fisher. JV James Von Schilling. Moderators RP Russ Pottle. EF Ehijele Femi Eromosele. MG Michael Glock Ph. Medievalism and Gender Representation Mr. Moderators MW Megan Woller. An Appreciation and Analysis of the work of Eleanor Powell. DK Darryl Kent Clark.
Mythology in Contemporary Culture I: Mythic Themes in Literature and Film Orpheus: Moderators KR Kate Rittenhouse. RM Robert Michael Sarwark. Mythology in Contemporary Culture. Moderators SF Suzi F. Improvisation in the Classroom. Moderators DF David Feldman. Moderators SM Sue Matheson. MA Malynnda Ann Johnson. Historical Memoir Suicide in high school films: Critical questions for young audiences. Moderators EG Eric Greene. Psychology and Popular Culture. Moderators AC Aubrey Crosby. TE Tulin Ece Tosun. JC Jeff Clarke Rowell. Moderators CK Cornelia Klecker.
CA Claudia Antonia Hernandez. Female Vampires in Byzantium Jeepers Creepers: Speakers CF Charity Fowler. Gender, Generation, and Contested Feminisms in Ms. Moderators VD Vivian Deno. Micky Small Femme Powered Productions. I am interested in everything female superhero and action hero and sci fi. I just finished my first all female superhero short film The Violet Blaze Chronicles. Get me to start Journal of American Culture Annual Meeting. Thursday March 29, African Culture, Community Policing and Accountability.
Moderators ES Elgie Sherrod. JS Joan S Monk. Viewer Perception of Japanese Cultural.
- Marathon speech against ObamaCare - Wikisource, the free online library;
- Navigation menu;
- Mary Stuart [with Biographical Introduction].
- U.S. Military History For Dummies;
- Access Check.
- PCA Full Schedule.
- Coping Effectively With Spinal Cord Injuries: A Group Program Therapist Guide (Treatments That Work);
Moderators RC Ruth Currey. Danmei Writings in China. The Future of British Craft Beer. Speakers CF Csaba Fazekas. SM Stephanie Marie Michalak. Black Performing Arts II: Speakers LS Lynn Sally. Re-conceptualizing the Human for Adolescence and Artificial Intelligence. Moderators AW Alaric Williams. Speakers SM Stacey Mascia. Collecting and Collectibles I: Constellations of the Human Collections and Copy Specifics: Collecting Diseases Collecting the body: Moderators KL Karen Lury.
Comics and Comic Art X: Trauma, Violence, and Gender Fight or Flight: Violence, Empowerment and the Making of the Teenage Superheroine. Snapchat and the Uncredited Makeup Artist. DF Devon Fitzgerald Ralston. Copyright and Intellectual Property. A Counter Norming Rhetoric through Supercripping. Catastrophic Landscapes Architecture and the Apocalypse: Moderators ET Erik Trump.
CP Carol P Brathwaite. AG Amanda Grace Sikarskie. Fatness in Pop Culture Junk in the Trunk: BR Brittney Rose de Alicante. SE Susan E Meindl. PT Paul Thomas Rubery. RG Ryan G Stoldt. Moderators TC Theresa Carilli. LL Lori L Montalbano. MS Melissa Starr Etzler. Global Media, Local Struggle Strongmen vs. Those Were the Days: Speakers DG Dustin Gann. Speakers DC Donna Crawford. Moderators CF Christina Francis. VK Vanessa K Iacocca. Masculinity in Appalachian Coal Mining Songs. Moderators MP Marie Plasse. Roots of the Genre Mysterious Memories: Erasing Race from The Blank Wall.
KN Kylene Noelle Cave. CR Chene Richard Heady. Mythology in Contemporary Culture II: MC Mark Cronlund Anderson. TJ Tyler Jean Dukes. CJ Christopher James Wernecke. Moderators ML Michael Levan. GC Gary Charles Wilkens. Improvisation and Mental Health. Whiteness, Tribalism and Anorexia: Re centering multiethnic and indigenous perspectives in the Western wellness movement Anorexia Nervosa in Movies: SJ Scott J Burg. I Still want to Believe: JC Jordan Christine Wilson.
EM Elaine Michelle Cannell. HH Hugh Howard Davis. CD Candice D Roberts. Architextuality and Queer Fandom Spaces. Moderators MA Maria Alberto. RA Robin Anne Reid. MJ Melissa J Sloat. Heteronormizing Dracula in Modern Graphic Novels. WA William Austin Tringali. Blogging, Digital Spaces, and Feminisms Cyberfeminism: Moderators JB Jenn Brandt. CM Cristen M Fitzpatrick. PCA Awards see special events for details.
Thursday March 29, 1: Punishment in American Vandal. Moderators SL Shara L. CF Chloe Fiona Harkins. ML Michael Lloyd Krieger. Adolescence in Film and Television. Special Screening The Archeology of Memory: The Comparative Studies on Animated Documentary. Asian Popular Culture IV: EJ Erica Joan Dymond. Beer as an Expression of Place? Speakers PB Paul Bruski. Speakers CS Carl Schottmiller. PT Patrick Thomas Ridge. Moderators MC Martha Carothers.
Collecting and Collectibles II: Moderators LM Lydia Murtezaoglu. TT Thanh Tan Huynh. Moderators IE Ibrahim Emara. AL Abbey Lynn Hull. Race, Class, and Catastrophe Octavia E. Moderators KC Kristen Chamberlain.