Thursday, November 29, 2007

Help for the seminar on religion in America

Jennifer Burns' lecture on the religious right is very interesting and I am confident that it will help you understand the importance of religion in politics today.

Electoral ads from the 1950s

Dear students,

It's been a while since I last up-dated the blog. I'd like to show you a couple electoral ads of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dwight E. Eisenhower, aka Ike, was extremely popular in 1948 and 1952 : members of both parties wanted him to get their nomination.
The "Draft Eisenhower " movement was created to push him to run for the presidential election. Unbeknown to him, his supporters wrote his name on the ballot of the New Hampshire Republican primary and he came in first. He decided to answer this popular call for his candidiacy and ran in the other primaries, defeating Taft his rival for the Republican nominaton. He won the presidential election by a landslide, taking all States except 7 Southern States, Kentucky and Virginia.
This commercial clearly emphasizes the fact that Ike is cruising to the White House on a wave of popular support.





In 1964, Lyndon B Johnson was running for President against Barry Goldwater, a libertarian Republican (advocating the scaling back of the federal government, tax cuts and a tough stance against communism) who had repeatedly appeared as trigger happy and ready to resort to the nuclear arsenal. This is one of the most famous electoral ad of all times : it was only played once as a commercial before being pulled by the Johnson campaign but it bacame instantly famous and was broadcast by televison stations as a news item. It plays on the fear of the A-Bomb and remains very emblematic of the Cold War context.





Today this ad is being used against the Democrats. Watch :



For more details :
you can refer to the remarks made by Barack Obama on Pakistan.
or check out what Hillary Clinton has said about nuclear weapons.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Help for Seminar 7

Dear Students,

If you enjoy using podcasts to prepare your homework, I'd like to recommend Neil Wehneman's Life of a Law Student website and podcasts. He is an American law student and has been offering for 3 years now an amazing coverage of what he has had the opportunity to learn and study at the Ohio State University and at the Indiana University. Listening to what he offers is probably second best only to studying law in the US.

For Plessy, Schechter, Brown, and US v. Nixon turn to Constitutional Law 1 , episodes 30, 10, 31 and 25.
For Roe v Wade turn to Constitutional Law 2 , episode 7
For Miranda, refer to Intro to the Law episode 4.

Of course you can find all these episodes in the i-store under the heading : life of a law student. (or LoaLS)

A last snippet of advice : there is an good article by Gwénaël Calvès on the issue of judicial activism in Les Etats Unis. Denis Lacorne. Fayard-Ceri. 2006.

PS : COME TO THE SEMINAR WITH YOUR CONSTITUTION (and please circulate the message)

Monday, November 12, 2007

A critical assessment of George Bush's speeches

Maybe you have heard of a famous TV show hosted by Jon Stewart, it's broadcast on Comedy Central four times a week and is entitled The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart is extremely critical of all politicians and here you have an interesting analysis of the way the President expresses himself. Apart from being quite funny, the point made by Jon Stewart is fairly clever.
You probably won't find this too difficult to understand.

Feel free to share your opinion on this video : leave a comment.


Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Scorcese on the immigrant experience

Dear Students,

Try and listen to this interview with Martin Scorsese who discusses movie-making and the immigrant experience.

Reminder : Jennifer Burns' two lectures on immigration are excellent and will help you grasp the issues around this problem (Immigrant Culture & The meaning of whiteness).


I'd be happy to read your comments on the blog, so feel free to leave remarks, advice to your fellow students and questions if you have any.

Monday, November 5, 2007

The Sopranos

Dear students,

For those of you who would like to use the TV series The Sopranos to study what it means to be an immigrant : these are the episodes I recommend in particular :

Season 2 : episode 4 = Commandatori ( a trip to Italy)

Season 2 : episode 9 = From where to eternity (Tony discusses why he does this "job")

Season 4 : episode 3 = Christopher (taking place on Columbus day).

I'd like you to watch at least 2 episodes to get an idea of how the immigrant issue is dealt with.