This chapter begins by helping the reader to grasp the comprehensive nature of Nathaniel Berman's work, and the subtle perspective that he brings to the legal world when it is confronted by the passions to which nationalism and colonialism give rise. In his work, cultural Modernism interacts with the international law of Danzig; the fantasies surrounding Jerusalem with the concrete political and legal projects for that city; internationalist dreams with the institutional programs for Bosnia and Palestine; and the most industrious international bureaucracy with the most creative and audacious legal imagination. Berman makes use of all of the notions in the course of his work on "imperial ambivalences". His goal is to show that we cannot interpret the international law of the interwar period without understanding it as a site of Modernist cultural construction and contestation - rather than as a mere adjunct to, or reflection of, cultural developments external to it. Keywords:colonialism; cultural Modernism; imperial ambivalences; international law; Nathaniel Berman; nationalism

A Critical Introduction

Sub-Saharan Africa's turnaround over the past couple of decades has been dramatic. After many years in decline, the continent's economy picked up in the mid-1990s. Along with this macroeconomic growth, people became healthier, many more youngsters attended schools, and the rate of extreme poverty declined from 54 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2015. Political and social freedoms expanded, and gender equality advanced. Conflict in the region also subsided, although it still claims thousands of civilian lives in some countries and still drives pressing numbers of displaced persons. Despite Africa’s widespread economic and social welfare accomplishments, the region’s challenges remain daunting: economic growth has slowed in recent years. Poverty rates in many countries are the highest in the world. And notably, the number of poor in Africa is rising because of population growth. From a global perspective, the biggest concentration of poverty has shifted from South Asia to Africa. Accelerating poverty reduction in Africa explores critical policy entry points to address the demographic, societal, and political drivers of poverty; improve income-earning opportunities both on and off the farm; and better mobilize resources for the poor. It looks beyond macroeconomic stability and growth - critical yet insufficient components of these objectives - to ask what more can be done and where policy makers should focus their attention to speed up poverty reduction. The pro-poor policy agenda advanced in this volume requires not only economic growth where the poor work and live, but also mitigation of the many risks to which African households are exposed. As such, this report takes a jobs lens to its task. It focuses squarely on the productivity and livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable - that is, what it will take to increase their earnings. Finally, it presents a road map for financing the poverty and development agenda.

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Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa

(1996). The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction: Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 12-37.

The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace

The Modern Satiric Grotesque and Its Traditions

Critical Survey of Poetry

Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Contemporary American Fiction

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the few American writers since Mark Twain to have won and sustained a great popular acceptance while boldly introducing new themes and forms on the literary cutting edge. This is the "Vonnegut effect" that Jerome Klinkowitz finds unique among postmodern authors. In this definitive study of the author's fiction, Klinkowitz examines the forces in American life that have made Vonnegut's works possible - some would say necessary. Born in 1922 and still writing trenchantly more than 80 years later, Vonnegut shares with readers a world that includes the Great Depression, during which his family lost their economic support; the Second World War, in which he was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and experienced the firebombing of Dresden; the corporate surge of postwar America, which he abetted as a publicist for General Electric's Research Laboratory, where "Progress Is Our Most Important Product"; the entrepreneurship of the 1950s, which he participated in when he ran a Saab automobile dealership and operated a short-story business, selling to the era's family magazines; and the counter-cultural revolt of the 1960s, during which his fiction first gained prominence. Vonnegut also takes us through the growth in recent decades of America's sway in art, which his fiction celebrates, and geopolitics, which his novels question. A pioneer in Vonnegut studies, publishing in the field since 1969, Jerome Klinkowitz offers "The Vonnegut Effect" as a thorough treatment of the author's fiction - a canon covering more than a half century and compromising 20 books. Considering both Vonnegut's methods and the cultural needs they have served, Klinkowitz explains how those works came to be written and concludes with an assessment of the author's place in the tradition of American fiction.

Jerome Klinkowitz

Papers

Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Contemporary American Fiction

The Vonnegut Effect

The Vonnegut Statement

The life of fiction

Rosenberg/Barthes/Hassan: The Postmodern Habit of Thought