Asian Americans are among the fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. In recent years, their impact on politics has been the focus of a growing number of scholars in the social sciences, which raises the definitional question: Who are Asian Americans? The working definition deployed here is that an Asian American is a person who “resides in the United States on a permanent or long-term basis, regardless of citizenship or other legal status” (Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004). However, the definition of who an Asian is has undergone significant expansion over the last 150 years because of “shifts in the racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population and changes in social attitudes and political concerns regarding racial and ethnic minorities” (Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004). These concerns expressed themselves in various modes of political participation; referred to in the literature as the “Asian American movement” (Wei 1993), these have ranged from litigation to the boycott activities of Asian Americans on a variety of issues.I would like to extend my gratitude to Jane Junn of Rutgers University as well as to members of the APSA Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession for encouragement and valuable feedback on this article.

Writing assignments are common in most political science courses. If nothing else, they serve the purpose of allowing instructors to exercise their evaluative power in assigning grades. All too often, however, they fail to transcend this purpose. As a result, both students and instructors often view each student paper as a private communication between the two parties—a work with no future and an audience of one (Zeiser 1999; Fulwiler 1982).

This is the 34th year that I have been monitoring participation by women at our Annual Meeting. These PS reports have documented the ascent of women in our profession. Considerable changes in the status of women in the profession have occurred since 1972 when I first did my tally of participation at our Annual Meeting. (Ex., the three most recent APSA presidents have all been women; a long way up from marginalization.)

Many instructors face challenges in engaging students in lecture courses. In the fall of 2004, we incorporated innovative, real-time polling technology into an upper-division political science course on Public Opinion. The polling technology channeled students' technological savvy in the service of several pedagogical goals. The technology increased student engagement and reinforced the substance of the course material. It also provided students with topically relevant experiences in answering survey questions and allowed students to feel more comfortable in expressing their opinions during discussions.We thank Victoria Cross, James Fowler, Ethan Scheiner, Walter Stone, and Elizabeth Zechmeister for helpful suggestions. Funding for the technology was generously provided by the Undergraduate Instructional Improvement Program, supported by the vice provost–undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis.

I show herein how to write a publishable paper by beginning with the replication of a published article. This strategy seems to work well for class projects in producing papers that ultimately get published, helping to professionalize students into the discipline, and teaching the scientific norms of the free exchange of academic information. I begin by briefly revisiting the prominent debate on replication our discipline had a decade ago and some of the progress made in data sharing since.My deepest appreciation goes, in addition to my students, to the numerous scholars who have cheerfully, and in some cases repeatedly, responded to my students' queries over many years. Thanks also to the National Institutes of Aging (P01 AG17625-01) and the National Science Foundation (SES-0318275, IIS-9874747) for research support.

Students entering a graduate program often encounter a new type of assignment that differs from the papers they had to write in high school or as college undergraduates: the literature review (also known as a critical review essay). Put briefly, a literature review summarizes and evaluates a body of writings about a specific topic. The need to conduct such reviews is by no means limited to graduate students; scholarly researchers generally carry out literature reviews throughout their research careers. In a world where the Internet has broadened the range of potentially relevant sources, however, doing a literature review can pose challenges even to an experienced researcher.In drafting this overview, I have incorporated some points made by Paul Pitman in a lecture delivered to students at the Naval Postgraduate School. I have also incorporated some suggestions contained in a handout prepared by John Odell for students in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.

Examiners of dissertations regularly have to endure “literature reviews” that consist of extended lists of mini-summaries of books. Indeed, quite often “dissertations” amount to little more than a list of book-summaries masquerading as an argument. While there are excellent courses on qualitative and quantitative methods, most students have learnt how to conduct literature reviews exclusively through the method of learning by doing. Ultimately, there is no alternative to this age-old method. However, this essay is premised on the belief that a brief attempt to understand the general function of a literature review in political science should make learning by doing easier and more productive.

This article describes an uncommon approach to service learning. To demonstrate points of access to the political system, I place students in my class with experts of the political advocacy process, not with charitable nonprofits. And to reach a wide spectrum of students, I integrate the service-learning component in one section of the basic American and state government course, which is a general education requirement for all college graduates in the state of California. This report explains the approach, evaluates the course based on student responses, identifies reasons for its success, and points out some of the limits encountered. The article follows the tradition of Battistoni (2000), Battistoni and Hudson (1997, 1), Zlotkowski (1998), and others by sharing insights into the theory and practice of service learning in political science, in the hopes of making transparent the advantages and limits of this form of experiential learning.I am grateful to the department of political science, the college of natural and social sciences, and the dean of undergraduate studies at the California State University, Los Angeles, for supporting my modification of one section of the POLS 150 course to include a service-learning component. I also wish to thank Ted Anagnoson and Jan Mackay for their constructive comments as I developed my service-learning course. The researchers at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching deserve a word of appreciation for including my course in the Political Engagement Project, and finally a thank you should go to the anonymous reviewer of the original manuscript.

Role-playing games and simulations emerged as a classroom technique to provide students an experiential or hands-on approach to learning. Early use of simulations in the political science classroom primarily focused on teaching American politics (Kaarbo and Lantis 1997). However, the contemporary use of simulations now extends into comparative politics (Shellman 2001) and international relations (Jefferson 1999; Thomas 2002).

Saturday night, downtown Baltimore, Maryland. A sold-out concert performance at the Joseph B. Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Unknowingly, the 2,400 members of the audience become victims of a bioterrorist attack when an aerosol of plague (Y. pestis) is silently released. Over the course of the next 36 hours increasing numbers of residents seek medical attention at area hospitals for cough and fever. By mid-morning on Monday some 300 persons with these symptoms have received medical care; 17 of which have died. The State Health Department notifies the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and by mid-afternoon plague is confirmed first by the state laboratory and subsequently by the CDC's Washington, D.C. lab.I would like to thank Carrie Vivian for her contributions to the development of this exercise and Dena Owens and PS's anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on this manuscript. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the former mayor of Westminster, Maryland, Kevin Dayhoff, and the emergency responders for their contributions to and participation in this exercise.

Activities, administrative appointments, new appointments, visiting and temporary positions, promotions, awards, retirements, For the Record, National Academy of Public Administration announces 2005 fellows, 2005 international dissertation field research fellowships, and In the News.

“Did anybody ever have a superficial conversation with Jim Button?” The pastor's question, posed to a crowded memorial service at the United Church of Gainesville, elicited smiles and vigorous head shaking. At the reception following the service, several graduate students, junior faculty, and staff members volunteered that they attended the service simply because Jim Button had repeatedly gone out of his way to show them friendship and respect. Both the question and the comments caught the essence of Jim Button. To professional colleagues, he was a path-breaking scholar of minority and urban politics, a pioneer in the academic study of gay rights, school-based health clinics, and the political mobilization of senior citizens. But Jim Button was loved and treasured because of his deep passion for his students, family, colleagues, friends, and for those Americans who had been treated unjustly by history and politics.

Virginia May Currey, former Southern Methodist University political science professor, charter member of the Women's Studies Program, and political activist, died of pneumonia on September 22 at the age of 78.

George Adams Graham, political scientist and emeritus educator, passed away on February 25, 2005, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 100. Among Dr. Graham's most lasting achievements will be his work professionalizing and improving governance of the public sector.

Marjorie Mowlam, who received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Iowa in 1977, died at Pilgrim's Hospice in the United Kingdom on August 19th at age 55 from the recurrence of a brain tumor that had been first diagnosed nine years earlier. In the interval between that diagnosis and her death, she rose to become Britain's most popular politician on the strength of her accomplishment as secretary of state for Northern Ireland in negotiating the Good Friday Accords in 1998. When she subsequently fell from Tony Blair's good graces and was sidelined to the Cabinet Office, her personal popularity only rose further. To Blair's embarrassment, she received a standing ovation at the Labour Party Conference in 1998 in the middle of the prime minister's report to the delegates.

John N. Plank, professor emeritus of political science, died suddenly at his home in Storrs, Connecticut on April 30, 2005, at the age of 81.

Once in a long while some of us are blessed to encounter a person whose character is so special that it deeply affects us for the rest of our lives. Such is the case for me—and for many alumni of the Brown University international relations program—with regard to Whitney T. Perkins, the faculty member who guided the program for decades and who died earlier this year. In an academic world filled with pomposity and pretense, he stood out as a beacon of humility. In an academic world filled with ideological polemics, he stood out as a beacon of balance. In an academic world filled with politically motivated jostling for power and control, he stood out as a beacon of integrity. In an academic world filled with self-promotion and hyperbole, he stood out as a beacon of restraint and understatement.

APSA is excited to invite its members to Philadelphia, PA, named the “Next Great City” by National Geographic Traveler. What better place to discuss “Power Reconsidered” than the birthplace of the American Republic? Hosted at the Philadelphia Marriott, the Loews Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the 2006 APSA Annual Meeting will be held from August 31 through September 3. Located in the heart of Philadelphia's Center City, both the Loews and the Marriott are within a short distance of the Convention Center, world-class dining, and major attractions.

This completes my fourth year as editor of the APSR. The main theme of last year's annual report was continuity from the previous year in the flow, processing, and variety of the papers that we received and the articles that we published. That theme dominates this year's report as well, for only a glance at the tabular data reported below will be needed to establish the incremental character of the year-to-year changes that we experienced in the number and diversity of the papers that we received, the time it took to process them, and the outcomes of our review process. Having said that, I hasten to add that this year we have devoted extensive time and energy to an exciting new project, which I will discuss at the end of this report.

As of December 2005, Perspectives on Politics will have published three complete volumes of four issues each. As former editor of the journal (until June, 2005), I have published two previous reports (see PS, January 2004, 143–149; PS, January 2005, 141–144) this one covers the period from August 1, 2004 through July 31, 2005.