Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Call for Book Reviewers

Published on October 28, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

Common Ground Publishing is seeking distinguished peer reviewers to evaluate book manuscripts submitted to the On Diversity Book Series.

As part of our commitment to intellectual excellence and a rigorous review process, Common Ground sends book manuscripts that have received initial editorial approval to peer reviewers to further evaluate and provide constructive feedback. The comments and guidance that these reviewers supply is invaluable to our authors and an essential part of the publication process.

Common Ground recognizes the important role of referees by acknowledging book reviewers as members of the On Diversity Book Series Editorial Review Board for a period of at least one year. The list of members of the Editorial Review Board will be posted on our website. In addition, Common Ground also offers a US$200 voucher for each completed review which meets the standards set out by the Commissioning Editor at the commencement of assignment. Vouchers may be used in the Common Ground Bookstore or for registration at one of our international conferences.

If you would like to referee book manuscripts submitted to On Diversity,  please email:

  1. a brief description of your professional credentials
  2. a list of your areas of interest and expertise
  3. a copy of your CV with current contact details

If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for manuscripts within your purview, we will contact you.

College Diversity Nears Its Last Stand

Published on October 21, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Adam Liptak, The New York Times

Abigail Fisher, a white student, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race. She sued in Federal District Court in Austin, causing Judge Sam Sparks to spend time trying to make sense of a 2003 Supreme Court decision allowing racial preferences in higher education. “I’ve read it till I’m blue in the face,” Judge Sparks said in an early hearing in Ms. Fisher’s lawsuit. But the meaning of the central concept in the decision — “this esoteric critical mass of diversity of students,” he called it — kept eluding him.

The 2003 Supreme Court decision he was trying to understand, Grutter v. Bollinger, had elevated the concept of “diversity” from human-resource department jargon to constitutional stature. The pursuit of diversity, a five-justice majority said, allows admissions personnel at public universities to do what the Constitution ordinarily forbids government officials to do — to sort people by race.

Judge Sparks in the end ruled that the Grutter decision meant that Texas was allowed to take account of Ms. Fisher’s race. Now her case is hurtling toward the Supreme Court. That could provide a fresh opportunity to consider what we mean when we talk about diversity. It could also mean the end of affirmative action at public universities.

Ms. Fisher’s lawyers filed a petition seeking a Supreme Court review last month, and legal experts say the justices will probably agree to hear it, setting the stage for a decision by June. Such a decision, given changes in the membership of the court since 2003, is likely to cut back on if not eliminate the use of race in admissions decisions at public colleges and universities.

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Migrant Women Act

Published on October 20, 2011 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Migrant Women Act by Olga Bursian is available as part of the On Diversity series.

Migrant Women Act shows the creativity and ingenuity of migrant women in shaping their own destinies during resettlement. It also shows the vital role of public services in enabling these competencies to flower. Olga Bursian documents the stories of thirty migrant women from the former USSR, Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines and the Horn of Africa, by exploring their socialisation into non-Western understandings of the human being, of normal society and what is worth doing in life. The women speak about how they acted through displacement and resettlement overturning popular stereotypes about their cultures. The stories reveal their generosity, resilience and audacity in the face of multiple layers of unequal social relations and negative representations. The book includes a review of the role of public services in successful resettlement, even for the most resilient women. Open entitlement to these services for new citizens was the hallmark of multiculturalism prior to the reversals begun by the Howard Government in the mid 1990s. Olga Bursian uses wide ranging sources to back a rigorous policy and program analysis, pitched at professionals and decision makers. She has lived and worked across diverse cultures and was inspired to document the unbounded resilience of migrant women.

Intercultural Relations in a Global World

Published on October 19, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Intercultural Relations in a Global World edited by Michele Lobo, Vince Marotta and Nicole Oke is available as part of the On Diversity series.

CONTENTS

  1. Intercultural Relations in a Global and Transnational World
    Michele Lobo, Vince Marotta and Nicole Oke

    Part I : Immigration, multiculturalism and nationalism

  2. Mismanaging Multiculturalism: The Official English Movement in the United States
    Rachel Stevens
  3. Comparing perceptions of immigrants and those of the host society: Intercultural views and relations in Salzburg, Austria
    Wolfgang Aschauer
  4. Paki on-a-bike:Negotiating the racialised terrains of Britain and Australia
    Les Morgan
  5. The role of the Holocaust in the Australian-Jewish post-migration community
    Michele Langfield and Pam Maclean
  6. Stories, Silence and Strategies: (Re)Articulation of Femininities in a Chinese Indonesian Family
    Gloria ArliniPart II : Transnationalism and transnational identities
  7. Towards a common model of expatriate voting rights? The case of Italian, Greek and Irish nationals abroad
    Bruno Mascitelli and Simone Battiston
  8. Intergenerational Transnationalism in the case of Japanese Women
    Atsushi Takeda
  9. Performing foreigners: Attributed and appropriated roles and identities of Westerners teaching English in Shanghai
    Phiona Stanley
  10. Online Communities as a Medium for Social Capital and Social Integration: The Case of Malaysia
    Wan Munira Wan Jaafar and Nabila Jaber

    Part III : Interculturalism and cross-cultural contact

  11. The idea of the in-between subject in social and cultural thought
    Vince Marotta
  12. Indigenized Representations in Glocalized Spaces
    Andrzej Antoszek
  13. From Aphasia to a Celebration in Language: Diasporic writers opening up dialogue between and within cultures
    Anna Dimitriou

Cherokee Civil Wars

Published on October 2, 2011 in News, Newsletter and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From The Public Professor

These days it’s not often that American Indian affairs make for national news.  But the press is now knee deep in coverage of a political dispute in the Cherokee nation.  The issue concerns the citizenship of so-called Cherokee Freedmen, the descendants of slaves once held by Cherokee plantation owners.

The Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles were the five most powerful Indian nations in the American South during the 18th and 19th centuries.  All of them, except for the Seminoles, developed cotton plantations and U.S. style, race-based slavery.   Among these Native nations, as was the case in the United States, it was a small minority of wealthy plantation owners who owned the slaves.

During the early 19th century, the U.S. engaged in an ethnic cleansing policy euphemistically called Removal, which reached its apex during the Andrew Jackson administration of the 1820s-30s.  Under threat of military action, all five of these nations were forced to move west to what was then called Indian Territory and is now Oklahoma.  The slaveholders among them brought along most of their slaves.

When the U.S. Civil War erupted, the Cherokee government pledged its loyalty to the Union, but received no immediate support.  Bordering Texas, the Cherokee nation came under intense pressure from the Confederacy.  In 1861, Principal Chief John Ross agreed to a treaty of alliance with the Confederacy, though the agreement stipulated that Cherokees would not fight outside of Indian Territory, thereby precluding their use as an aggressive force against the Union.

To Read More…