Topics for a lecture in U.S.A.

☆☆☆☆☆ most important for a lecture
☆☆☆☆ more important for a lecture
☆☆☆ important for a lecture

1. British Historical Tradition and the Origin of Slavery in North America
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In 17th-century Britain the capital principle of peaceful and free exchange evolved out of oppression, and legal “common freedom” was mixed with hierarchical “specific liberties”. In white communities the oppressive background of colonialism and hierarchical tradition of the British imperialist government did not kill the basic “common freedom”. However, in the colonies of North America, white consciousness challenged the common behavioral norm, which resulted in the enslavement of black population.
2. Demographical Factors and the Evolution of Slavery in the Chesapeake
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In colonial North America, the development of tobacco in the Chesapeake led to a continuous increase in the slave population and the expansion of slavery into other areas and in the end the slave population in this area began to show a tendency of natural increase. The changing demographical factors, in turn, gave impetus to great social changes in the efficiency of slavery, the legal systems, and the black culture in the Chesapeake.
3. On the immigrant Features of French North America
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Compared with that of British North America, the immigrant distribution in French North America had its own positive characters. Howerver, because there was a vicious circle between its small immigrant scale and self-sufficient agriculture, French North Ameirca finally failed in the competion with British North America.
4. Black Slaves’ Ethnic Roots in Western Africa: Colonial Times
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In the colonial period, black slaves in North America mainly came from the coastal areas of Western Africa, but their ethnical composition was rather complex, obviously changing with times and spaces. Among those ethnic groups, Wolof and Mandingo between Senegal and Sierra Leone, Akan in the windward Western Africa and Gold Cost, Yoruba between Nigeria and Benin, Igbo in the southern parts of Nigeria, and Kikongo and Bakongo in Congo and Angola especially deserve attention.

5. Studies of Black Slave Religions in North America: An Overview
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The studies of black slave religions in colonial North America involve two dimensions, that is to say, their driving forces and their contents. As for the former, the studies of native African conversion might be used for reference; with regard to the latter, this article puts emphasis on the debates over African cultural retainment in slave religions between Melville J. Herskovits and E. Franklin Frazier.

6. Slave Religion in Colonial North America from an Atlantic Perspective: A Cultural Syncretism
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Inspired by Mircea Eliade’s differentiation between “the sacred” and “the profane”, this article advances a religious analytic frame of “the sacred—the heavenly ladders—the profane”, which respectively refer to the other world, this world and the linking bridges between the two worlds. By using this analytic frame, this article first explores the multiple characters of the sacred entities and the plural and continuous characters of the heavenly ladders in the main Western African religions. After criticizing the academic debates around Robin Horton’s theory of the “two-tiered arrangement of the unobservable”, this article then analyzes in turn the social and economic pressures connected with the so-called “macrocosm” over the black slaves in North America, the common ground between Western African religions and Western Christianity, and the functions of the white missionaries in North America. Having viewed the academic debates centering on the continuity of African traditions made by Melville J. Herskovits and E. Franklin Frazier, this article lastly draws a conclusion that the branches of Western Christianity had been successfully grafted onto the trunk of the basic religious structure of Western Africa, and that a tree of cultural syncretism was thus growing up on the land of the North American continent in the colonial period.

7. The Establishment of American Slavery and the Evolution of Whites’ Self-Consciousness
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Just when the legalization process of American slavery initiated, the white men’s self-consciousness began to take shape in the combined composition with their desire to conquest, rule or afflict, that is to say, racism. The driving forces behind the deterioration of whites’ self-consciousness were from the power structure of slavery itself, the development of individualism, and the logic of ideology.

8. Studies of Thomas Jefferson and Slavery: An Overview
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Centering on the relationships between Thomas Jefferson’s idealist creeds and his racial beliefs, and between his human right opinions and his property right standpoints, and centering on his changing attitudes towards slavery with times and the racial relations in his private lives, the academic circles has been disputing with each other all the time, with one school being inclined to describe Jefferson as an idealist sage, a democratic warrior or an “apostle of freedom”, while the other school regarding him as a model full of contradictions, and even castigating him as a hypocrite with the deeds not matching his words or saying one thing but meaning another.

9. Thomas Jefferson’s Dilemma on Racial Slavery
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When Confronted with the racial line delimited by himself, Jefferson’s universal natural rights were challenged by blacks’identity,and they also had to be reconciled with his opinions about the property right. To eradicate the potential conflict, he advanced his delicate emigration plan. Yet when the situation changed, Jefferson was forced to retreat from his ideal aims and obey orders from his own class interests.

10. Black Issues and American Southern Reconstruction
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The main sources of American black issues were the fusion of white men’s self-identity with their desire to conquest and rule, and the main spiritual forces improving the black issues were white men’s idealism and their interests behind it. The two dimensions of white men’s thought constituted white men’s “two souls”, or “the white men’s paradox”, from which arose other minor paradoxes, such as the black’s contradiction between liberty and safety, their contradiction between self-consciousness and assimilation, the contradiction between independence and coercion, the paradox of the black power, and the paradox of legality, etc.. All the issues were complicated by American’s social and cultural backgrounds, especially at the era of Reconstruction. At the same time, the idealist attempts taken by the pioneers at the Reconstruction era not only broke one edge of the iceberg of the black issues, but also provided rich spiritual legacies for the deep reconstruction of the American civilization.

11. A Commentary on the Movement of Scientific Management in the Progressive Era of the U. S. A.
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As a result of the gradual maturity of American economic system, the movement of scientific management paid much attention to industrial efficiency, and in the later stage showed some consideration for social plans based on individuals, thus making some amazing connections with the contemporary progressivism.

12. A Tentative Study of the American Pragmatism
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Since it fit in with the needs of smashing the conservative thoughts and laying a foundation for social reforms in the reform age, and since it harmonized with the American national characters, pragmatism rose abruptly in the American academic circles, and, along with other progressive opinions, brought about a widespread revolution of social thoughts.

13. On the Economic, Systemic and Spiritual Causes of America’s Rise
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The overall national strength that includes hard, soft and adhesive powers is the fundamental base for the rise of a great power. From a historical perspective, the transition from a divided feudal polity to an absolute state was the point of departure for the rise of a capitalist country. Afterwards, the adhesive power, or systemic originality, came to the fore. The mystique for America’s rise as a great power is that, after taken a lift in the economic express of British mercantilism, it successful constructs a civil society by formulating a constitution after its independence, thus mobilizing its intellectual and physical resources of this vast and abundant country. At the mean time, America’s core values have also ensured the growth of its soft power and the relative smoothness of its rise.
14. LSD Abuse and the Spiritual Poverty in an Affluent Society
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In the 1960s, a psychedelic drug culture centered on LSD had taken shape among the leisured classes of the United States. Its abuse had close relationships with its astonishing attributes in creating hallucinations as well as with the advocacy from the celebrities. In a deep sense, the LSD abuse was also the outcome of the cultural orientation of materialism in the Western societies typified by the United States. Though the increasing realization of its side effects had led to its gradual decline, the social pathological problems revealed by the abuse itself need more profound reflections.
15．America’s East Asian Policy and Its Implications for East Asian Integration
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Aiming at the process of East Asian economic cooperation, the U. S. wields a double-track method of multilateralism and bilateralism to consolidate its economic superiority and the “fan-shaped” security structure in this area, with its support to pan-pacific regionalism and its resistance against sub-pacific regionalism being the indicator. As for East Asian integration, this policy has more disadvantages than advantages.
16. Viewpoint of Civilizations in History and the Construction of World History System
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With economic, political and cultural formation as its forms of expression, and constant changing rules and ethics as its core, one civilization is a cultural community in which some social rules have evolved into a certain degree. The construction of world history system under the direction of viewpoint of civilizations in history should discriminate the civilized units and grasp their various forms of expression in their social formations and their own laws of rise and decline, while the study on contacts, responses and clashes between different civilizations should also be in the global perspectives. Seeing that the fundamental impetus to a civilization lies in practical interests and that the social rules and ethics constitute its indicator of developing degree, the modern times can be described in two groups of antithetical words, i.e. “fairness vs efficiency” and “interests vs identity”