Chapter I Introductory Remarks, A Synthesized Experiential Historical Approach, and Statement of Purpose Spanning the years between 1346 and 1353, a dreadful disease swept over Western Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, causing cataclysmic loss of life both in the countryside and in towns and cities. So graphic and deadly was this plague that the great contemporary Florentine author Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) legitimately worried that future generations would mistake historical eyewitness accounts of the event for tall tales. In a correspondence with a friend, Petrarch wrote: “O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.” The reference here…

Acknowledgments This project is the end product of two years of intense study at the University of California, Los Angeles, an institution that has given me the freedom to engage in an incredibly rewarding and mind expanding major while allowing me to create, design and facilitate my very own political science class for spring quarter 2010. Specifically, I would like to thank my faculty mentor Russell A. Burgos for inspiring me to be independent, creative and to push myself as hard as it takes and librarian Joseph Yue for all the help in research. I would also like to thank all my friends in the Global Studies major at UCLA…

Introduction The first few decades of the 1900s were a pivotal turning point for transportation in the United States. In 1910, there were approximately 180,000 registered vehicles in the country, and by 1920 the number had grown to over 17 million (“Before 1926: The Origins of Route 66”). However, while Americans were finding it more affordable to travel by car, only 36,000 of the nation’s 2.5 million miles of road were paved and capable of withstanding automobile traffic (“Before 1926: The Origins of Route 66”). Noticing the vital need for all-weather roads, the federal government passed the Federal Highway Act of 1921, which provided states with the funds needed to…

Introduction and Significance For years, state governments have attempted to find strategies to improve the quality of education for children. Though many initiatives have been taken, few have succeeded. George W. Bush hoped to change this. Three days after taking office in January of 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush announced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), his framework for bipartisan education reform. Describing it as the cornerstone of his administration, Bush stated: “These reforms express my deep belief in our public schools and their mission to build the mind and character of every child, from every background, in every part of America.”[1] Although he…

Introduction Wartime censorship of the press was far from an unusual occurrence during the Second World War. Government efforts to control the headlines, whether through volition or compulsion, were a logical byproduct of the nescience that characterized the information flows of the early and mid-20th century. But what of censorship in occupied countries? In France, the Third Republic censored the media prior to its surrender in 1940, and censorship continued in earnest with the introduction of Vichy and the commencement of the German occupation. These were, of course, two entirely separate experiences. I shall examine the latter of these experiences—state-sanctioned journalism under Vichy. Vichy journalism had many clashing agents and…

Taken from her home in South Africa and displayed across Europe for her “exotic” body, Sarah Baartman (1789-1815) was transformed from an individual to a symbol of Otherness. Since the 1980s, Baartman has re-emerged as part of a discourse on post-colonialism, gender, sexuality and race theory. The scientific “facts” of Baartman have been refuted by Stephen Jay Gould[1], explored and examined in scholarly discourse by Sander Gilman[2] and Sadiah Qureshi[3], and reflected upon by countless individuals who have looked both at her history and their own lives. This paper attempts to examine how the contemporary artists Renée Green, Penny Siopis, Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Tracey Rose have used Sarah Baartman to…

Introduction Climate change and global warming have put markets, governments, and society in a unique yet pressing situation; standing idly by as carbon emissions and pollution externalities exacerbate current climate conditions is not a viable solution to economic prosperity. However, there does not need to be a negative correlation between environmental degradation and GDP growth. In order to meet the needs of rising populations, markets must rethink their energy dependence and move towards achieving low-carbon growth. If one looks at the major source of energy in today’s world, it took an enormous amount of time, policy implementation, and infrastructure development for coal and oil to receive significant slices of America’s…