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Metastasizing Crisis - Occurs When a Small, Isolated Incident is Not Contained and Begins to Spread

Definitions of Crisis -

• A crisis arises from a traumatic event that is unpredictable and uncontrollable.
• Crisis is a crisis because the individual knows no response to deal with a situation.
• Crisis is a personal difficulty or situation that immobilizes people and prevents them from consciously controlling their lives.
• Crisis is a state of disorganization in which people face frustration of important life goals or profound disruption of their life cycles and methods of coping with stressors. The term crisis usually refers to a person’s feelings of fear, shock, and distress about the disruption, not to the disruption itself.
• Crisis is a temporary breakdown

Beowulf: An Old English Epic Poem

Origins and Manuscript

Beowulf, the oldest surviving English epic poem, dates back to the first half of the eighth century. The sole surviving manuscript, from the late tenth century, originated in the West Saxon kingdom. Damage from a 1731 fire resulted in the loss of some text. While the poem is English, it focuses on the Germanic forebears of the English, specifically the Danes and Geats of Zealand and southern Sweden. The historical setting predates the poem by roughly two centuries, falling between the initial Germanic invasion of England in 449 and the completion of the Anglo-Saxon migration. The audience may have identified as Geats, like Beowulf himself. The poem references Hygelac's raid on the Franks... Continue reading "Beowulf: An Old English Epic Poem Analysis" »

Language Teaching Methods

The Classical Method

The Classical Method taught Latin and Greek through grammar, using authors like Donatus and Priscian. Education focused on classical languages, reading classical texts, and translating them into vernacular languages after the invention of the printing press in the 18th century. It employed a deductive methodology, aiming to improve literary skills and knowledge of the language.

Grammar-Translation Method

Originating in Prussia in the late 18th century, forerunners included Fick's English manual for Germans and the works of Ahn and Ollendorff. This method focused on teaching grammar and practicing translation of unconnected sentences using a deductive approach. The selection of phrases lacked logic,... Continue reading "A Comparison of Language Teaching Methodologies" »

Fandoms: From Passive Consumers to Active Producers

Question 4: Fandoms (Henry Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu...)

To appropriately answer this question, one must deal with the definition of 'fan'. The term is an abbreviation of 'fanatic' and comes from the Latin word 'fanaticus', which has religious connotations and refers to devotees. It has negative connotations in society. Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar and lecturer of the second half of the 20th century, deals with different phenomena related to the fan in his book Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992). He rejects fan stereotypes such as the comic, nerdy fan, the psychotic fan, and the eroticized fan. Moreover, he expresses the fan as a defensible position... Continue reading "Fan Studies: From Consumers to Active Producers" »

Richard Hoggart's Insider View

Richard Hoggart, unlike F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, was raised in a working-class family in Leeds. This background allowed him to offer an 'insider view' of communal working-class urban life, consciousness, culture, and experience.

Hoggart's Approach to Popular Culture

Just as the Leavises applied methods of close reading to mass culture, Hoggart offered close readings of popular music, newspapers, magazines, and fiction. Crucially, he did so without necessarily condemning them. In fact, he argued that working-class life could be 'a full rich life', a sentiment reflected in the title of one of his chapters.

Cultural Theory: Diverse Perspectives

The Anthropological View of Culture

When discussing T.S. Eliot, it was noted that... Continue reading "Richard Hoggart: Working-Class Culture & Media Analysis" »

Renaissance Poetry and the Revival of Learning

There was a collapse in learning and much technical capacity as a result of the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. There was a revival of material culture long before the Renaissance. Surrey was the first to use blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid. Poetry became the entertainment of the upper classes.

Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene

Spenser was a Renaissance Neoplatonist who devoted his life to writing The Faerie Queene, which served as a praise to monarchy. Chaucer was Spenser's favorite poet, and Spenser looked to his texts, among others, to write his epic poem. The Faerie Queene is concerned with patriotism and Puritanism. It has a connotative meaning, starting as a pastoral... Continue reading "Renaissance Poetry, Shakespearean Style, and English Bible History" »

Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

Short Adjectives (One Syllable)

Adjectives Ending in -y or -le

Longer Adjectives (Two or More Syllables)

Irregular Adjectives

As... As Comparisons

• My horse can run as fast as a car.
  Mi caballo puede correr tan rápido como un coche.
• He doesn't play

Constructivism in International Relations

One of the main assumptions of Western philosophy is the difference between nature and culture. The concept of nature is an important discovery of philosophy. Pre-philosophical societies did not make this distinction. Post-modernism doubts there is a radical distinction between nature and culture: they think this difference is not all that clear. International relations are accordingly not solely based on a natural reality (state of anarchy) but also on a social reality. Constructivism claims that tradition and culture result in the development of social phenomena. They believe international relations to be social and cultural. We do not obey any natural law but rather our own construction of ideas.

Main

The Theory of International Relations

Realism

Realists believe that society and politics are governed by objective laws rooted in human nature. To improve society, we must first understand these laws. They also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects these laws. They make a distinction between objective rational truth supported by reason and subjective judgment derived from prejudice and wishful thinking. For realism, theory consists in determining facts with reason. The character of a foreign policy must therefore be discovered through the examination of political acts and their foreseeable consequences.

They develop the concept of interest in power to understand international politics. This concept provides a... Continue reading "International Relations Theory: Realism and Structural Realism" »

The Coming of International Relations

The First Great Debate

The emergence of international relations as a distinct field of study is intertwined with the rise of social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science. A group of scholars, often referred to as liberals, idealists, Wilsonians, or utopians, played a pivotal role in shaping early IR thought. They championed the establishment of international institutions, the expansion of international trade, and the practice of open diplomacy guided by experts. This belief in the power of international cooperation and institutions stemmed from their conviction that war was primarily a consequence of flawed thinking by politicians and diplomats.

These early IR thinkers argued that secrecy... Continue reading "The Rise of International Relations as a Social Science" »