Civil Strife in a Complex and Changing World offers numerous perspectives of social conflict in the past and the present with a view toward academic classroom practices that may build strong connections both locally and globally between disparate social groups. Renaissance preachers, abolitionists, freethinkers, and even soldiers in Afghanistan provide thoughtful settings for the consideration of issues that at some times separate us and at other times bring us together. Participants of the 2012 Indiana College English Association conference presented their reflections to member colleagues on the conference theme of “Civil Strife.” They later submitted final papers for inclusion in this book. The papers selected here focus not only on past social conflicts, but also on recent events that have drawn us toward more global interpretations of social conflict. A third section ponders our modern reactions to social issues in the setting of the academic classroom. It also considers the origin of the academic environment itself, which provides the opportunity for the free expression of ideas that opens the door to further reflection and contemplation of the issue of civil strife. To complement the conference’s civil strife theme, graphic design students from the host institution provided a special art display. Some of the artwork displayed was then selected for incorporation into this volume, in the hope that the student work might inspire readers toward further reflection on various issues that often lead to civil strife. The cover art was provided by the Fine Arts Department at Ivy Tech Community College’s South Bend, Indiana campus. The Indiana College English Association is one of several regional affiliates of the national College English Association. ICEA has held an annual conference at an Indiana college or university since its inception in 1967. Information about ICEA may be found at www.icea.ausrc.org. The College English Association is a professional organization of scholar-teachers whose members include a broad and diverse group of professionals from around the world. More information about CEA and its affiliates may be found at www.cea-web.org.

Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations - such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups - but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits and internal group takeovers.

This completely revised and updated eighth edition serves as the definitive text for courses in which the United Nations is either the focus or a central component. Built around three critical themes in international relations (peace and security, human rights and humanitarian affairs, and sustainable human development) the eighth edition of The United Nations and Changing World Politics guides students through the seven turbulent decades of UN politics. This new edition is fully revised to incorporate recent developments on the international stage, including new peace operations in Mali and the Central African Republic; ongoing UN efforts to manage the crises in Libya, Syria, and Iraq; the Iran Nuclear Deal; and the new Sustainable Development Goals. The authors discuss how international law frames the controversies at the UN and guides how the UN responds to violence and insecurity, gross violations of human rights, poverty, underdevelopment, and environmental degradation. Students of all levels will learn that the UN is a complex organization, comprised of three interactive entities that cooperate and also compete with each other to define and advance the UN's principles and purposes.

Down the ages, war epidemics have decimated the fighting strength of armies, caused the suspension and cancellation of military operations, and have brought havoc to the civil populations of belligerent and non-belligerent states alike. This book examines the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with past wars. It addresses an intrinsically geographical question: how are the spatial dynamics of epidemics influenced by military operations and the directives of war? The term historical geography in the title indicates the authors' primary concern with qualitative analyses of archival source materials over a 150-year time period from 1850, and this is combined with quantitative analyses less frequently associated with historical studies. Written from the viewpoints of historical geography, epidemiology, and spatial analysis, this book examines in four parts the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with wars. Part I: War and Disease, surveys war-disease associations from early times to 1850. Part II: Temporal Trends studies time trends since 1850. Part III: A Regional Pattern of War Epidemics, examines grand themes in the war-disease complex. Part IV: Prospects, considers a series of war-related issues of epidemiological significance in the twenty-first century.

The Spanish Civil War was fought not only on the streets and battlefields from 1936 to 1939 but also through memory and trauma in the decades that followed. This fascinating book reassesses the eras of war, dictatorship and transition to democracy in light of the memory boom in Spain since the late 1990s. It explores how the civil war and its repressive aftermath have been remembered and represented from 1939 to the present through the interweaving of war memories, political power and changing social relations. Acknowledgement and remembrance were circumscribed during the war's immediate aftermath and only the victors were free to remember collectively during the long Franco era. Michael Richards recasts social memory as a profoundly historical product of migration, political events and evolving forms of collective identity through the 1950s, the transition to democracy in the 1970s, and in the bitterly contested politics of memory since the 1990s.