The late medieval French allegory, Le Roman de la rose [ The Romance of the rose ], the conjoined production of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, has long been recognized as an important literary influence on Middle English poetry. The majority of recent studies focus on Geoffrey Chaucer’s translation, citation, and adaptation of the Rose . Directions in scholarly study include increasing attention to the formal complexity and polyvalence the model of the Rose provides, on‐going interest in constructions of sexuality and gender, and a greater emphasis on the inter‐relation of Chaucer’s response to the Rose with the responses of French and Italian poets, including Guillaume de Machaut, Eustache Deschamps, Guillaume de Deguileville (or Digulleville), Christine de Pizan, and Giovanni Boccaccio. The discovery of a new manuscript fragment of the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose and the re‐assessment of earlier linguistic exchange also set forth interesting possibilities for future exploration. Beyond the field of Chaucer studies, scholars of late medieval England’s alliterative poems, notably Cleanness but also Piers Plowman , have re‐examined the ways the Rose may have shaped the construction of devotional, sexual, and social ideologies within this poetic tradition. The growing interest in Chaucer’s contemporary John Gower and in the English poetry of the fifteenth century, especially the works of Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, has brought further recognition of the Rose ’s widespread influence, as well as the continued influence of Rose‐ inspired intermediaries, including not only Guillaume de Deguileville and Christine de Pizan but also Evrart de Conty, Alain Chartier, and Charles d’Orléans. Recalling the attribution of the Rose ’s authorship to an English ‘John Moon’ in early literary histories demonstrates one curious later misreading of Hoccleve’s Middle English response to the Rose and may also provoke a deeper appreciation for the strong continuity of interest in the Rose shared by French and English readers during the turbulent era of the Hundred Years War.
This article focuses on a bookmaking project that was conducted with pre‐adolescent Serbian and Bosnian girls at a summer camp outside Sarajevo, Bosnia in 2005. During this camp, children from Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia were brought together by the Global Children's Organisation to engage in a variety of activities, including conflict resolution, art, athletics and academics. The literacy workshops that were offered gave the children the opportunity to write, illustrate and construct their own books about topics such as peace, friendship and the preservation of nature in Bosnia. The workshops were conducted in English and Serbo‐Croatian, using a variety of pedagogical strategies. Upon completion of their books, the girls hosted a ‘story hour’ for the younger children at the camp and their stories were read aloud and discussed. This article explores the story telling of children in post‐war Bosnia (through writing samples) and discusses the powerful social component of literacy events and their ability to unite and heal disparate groups. Additionally, this article explores writing as a means of imagining a more hopeful future and how as writers, children are shapers of their own cultures and of their individual and collaborative identities within those cultures.
As democratic citizenship education gains importance worldwide, one wonders whether common civic education practices in the United States, such as mock elections, are adequate models for other countries, or whether they fall short of realizing the goal of promoting democracy in different regions and cultures. Despite various controversies, one fundamental question remains: How should we teach democracy? Should we teach it as a system of government or as a way of life? Jessica Ching‐Sze Wang finds inspiration in Dewey's life and works. She draws on Dewey's experience during the First World War and his insights into the connection between democracy and education to reconstruct a culturally and morally robust form of democratic education, as opposed to the politically dominated one currently being practiced. Wang concludes that Deweyan democratic education thus reconstructed can help us better realize democracy as a way of life for our globalizing world.
In July 2008, the National War Powers Commission released a detailed report that recommended the repeal of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and its replacement with the War Powers Consultation Act. Co ‐ chaired by former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher, the commission report promised “equal respect” to the legislative and executive branches, but, in fact, it strengthened the president's capacity to initiate war and greatly weakened congressional and public control. Instead of addressing the framers' fear of placing the war power in the hands of a single executive with an appetite for military glory and fame, the report claimed that the U.S. Constitution is “ambiguous” about war powers and that federal courts “for the most part” have declined jurisdiction over war power cases. Both assertions are false.
Over the last half century, presidents have read their national security powers in sweeping terms, doing great damage to themselves, their parties, the nation, and regions around the world. The effective use of military force and foreign policy initiatives requires the building of consensus, public understanding, and acting within the law. Too often, presidents have claimed the unilateral power to commit the nation to war by making uninformed references to the commander in chief clause. They have also asserted “preeminence” in the making and conduct of foreign policy. Heavy political and constitutional costs flowed from miscalculations by Harry S. Truman in Korea, Lyndon B. Johnson in Southeast Asia, and George W. Bush in Iraq. Over the last seven years, the reputation of the United States has lost credit around the world because of indefinite detention without trial, torture memos, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, the claim of “law‐free zones,” extraordinary rendition, and other U.S. policies and practices.
The White House Office is so large and complex that a systematic process of policy evaluation is essential in order to provide the president with a range of options on all important policy decisions. Some of the most important decisions that President George W. Bush made in his first term were taken without the benefit of broad deliberation within the White House or cabinet. This article will take up four cases of policy decisions to illustrate the lack of a regular policy process and consultation that characterized many important decisions of the Bush administration. Two focus on detainee policy: the military commissions order of November 13, 2001, and the February 7, 2002, decision to suspend the Geneva Conventions. And two are about the war in Iraq: the initial decision to go to war and the decision to disband the Iraqi army. The pattern that emerges from an examination of these four decisions is one of secrecy, top‐down control, tightly held information, disregard for the judgments of career professionals, and the exclusion from deliberation of qualified executive branch experts who might have disagreed with those who initially framed the decisions.