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Prepared for delivery at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, September 1-4, 2005 (September 3, 2005. 4:15 PM). Copyright by the
American Political Science Association.
Teaching North America:
Learning from an Emerging
Continental Polity
Paul Rich
University of the Americas, Puebla.
Guillermo De Los Reyes
University of Houston.
We live, as all of us here by virtue of our interest in politics know, in a time when
completely contrary movements seem to simultaneously gather strength, including
globalization and nationalism. So, to speak about North American studies is immediately to
bring to mind such disturbing and valid challenges to historical ecumenicism as the demands
for recognition of those struggling for autonomy in Quebec and Chiapas, of native peoples
throughout the continent, and of strong but still frustrated movements for the overdue
revision of the historical record to include women, gays, and ethnic groups. In meeting such
aspirations we are still, to paraphrase Winston Churchill on World War II, not at the end but