In the fall 2005 semester, the author designed a course in the history of America's modern wars hoping to encourage students to criticize and oppose the country's current aggressions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Surveys of student attitude change suggest that the course did promote criticism but did far less to facilitate student activism. The author…

The dramatic increase in college course offerings about the decade of the 1960s is a result of both to student curiosity with its protest movements and of faculty composition. Some feel the courses are essential to student understanding of modern life, whereas others feel more research is needed. (MSE)

Vietnam War literature offers students a unique mix of themes which in many ways speak directly to them as, perhaps, no other literature is able to. This literature can help them better understand literature, history, the world they live in, and themselves, as well as the Vietnam War. A sequence of classroom activities (beginning with an…

To recount the development of the propaganda analysis movement before and since World War I, this paper reviews the precursors of the movement, traces the propaganda conciousness produced by wartime campaigns and subsequent domestic campaigns, and looks at major obstacles to propaganda analysis produced by social and academic conditions after…

Much of the content of college courses on the Vietnam War is superficial and biased toward the American point of view. The greatest problem is ignorance about the Vietnamese perspective, both Communist and non-Communist. (MSE)

The major policy debate touched off by President Reagan's March 1983 speech announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was the reopening of one that had begun 35 years before. Then and now the ultimate question is what kind of strategic posture is most likely to contribute to mutual strategic stability? The answer is central to national…

Describes a political science course that attempts to place the complex contemporary politics of Southeastern Europe in a wider conceptual and comparative context. Discusses the unique background of the region. Briefly reviews the best literature on the subject, and provides a series of discussion questions and activities. (MJP)