How does the poem September 1913, relate to the context of Irish nationalism during the years of the Irish Literary Revival?

According to the source below, Yeats expressed his ambivalence towards Irish nationalism in the poem "September 1913." While he tried to restore Irish culture and literary traditions as an exercise in nationalism, he did not endorse violence as a way to achieve political freedoms for Ireland. Instead, he sought, through the Irish Literary Revival, to revive the sense of Irish culture as a route to nationalism. His conception of Irish nationalism was that it was a intellectual and cultural movement fought with the pen rather than an overtly political movement fought at times with guns.
In the poem "September 1913," Yeats derides the middle-class nationalist Irish movement, which he describes in the following way: "And add the halfpence to the pence / And prayer to shivering prayer, until / You have dried the marrow from the bone." He feels that the middle class is mainly concerned with earning money and with saying prayers until they have sucked all of the life out of Ireland. He says that have made Ireland into something dead, similar to a bone that has had all the marrow removed from it.
The vitality of Ireland, in Yeats's eyes, lies in the past, not in the future. He writes, "Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave." John O'Leary was an Irish nationalist who had already died by 1913. Yeats wanted to revive the Gaelic history of Ireland, what he referred as "Romantic Ireland," but he was not committed to a political revolution to gain Irish freedom from Great Britain.
Source:
Hale Kiyci. "Yeats’ ambivalence towards Irish nationalism in 'September 1913' and 'Easter 1916.'" Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 158 (2014), 119 – 123. 14th International Language, Literature and Stylistics Symposium.

What were the challenges facing the country during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and how are they similar to problems facing the nation today?

There were a number of problems in the late 19th Century in the United States that still exist today.  There were racial tensions during this period that were very defined.  African-Americans suffered through black codes, Jim Crow Laws, and even lynchings.  There was very little economic or political opportunity for African-Americans during this time.  While African-Americans fought for civil rights for the better part of the Twentieth Century, a disconnect between the races still exists today.  Black Americans suffer from housing discrimination, unequal treatment before the law, and are behind in terms of educational and employment opportunities.  
A number of other problems that existed during the Gilded and Progressive Eras are still issues today.  Urban decay, environmental protection, corporate greed and abuses, and the rights of women come to mind as obvious examples.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=11&smtid=1

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=9&smtid=1

https://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/nation/article/Americans-rank-the-nation-s-12-biggest-problems-5318832.php

Identify five elements of American political culture. Where do these values come from? What differences do you see in the cultures of the United States and other industrialized democracies like Japan and Sweden?

I will construct each of these as a compare/contrast between the principle in question as it is put into practice in the United States vs. Japan and Sweden. Also, while obviously I have my own political and philosophical views, I'll do my best to keep each entry as neutral and fact-based as possible.
1) Legal freedom of expression. American legal protections for freedom of expression are among the strongest in the world. The First Amendment of the Constitution, the country's literal first rule, protects freedom of assembly, petition, press, religion, and speech, all ways of expressing and sharing ideas. As with all countries and all high principles, we have not always lived up to them, but, by law, our protections are unusually broad by the standards of our socioeconomic peers. For example, there is no legal category of "hate speech" in the United States. Both Japan and Sweden have legally defined categories of hate speech (see reference) that are denied protection of law. The US does not have any such exemptions.
2) Christianity. Despite being legally nonreligious—"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"—Protestant Christianity in particular exercises enormous political and cultural power in the United States. As a simple example, there has never been a non-Christian American President. Additionally, just one, John F. Kennedy, was Roman Catholic. All 44 of the others have been Protestant, at least publicly. A deep dive into the role of religion in American life can be found at the Pew Forum reference below, but the key difference here is numeric. Per Pew Forum, 70% of Americans identify as Christians. By comparison, less than 40% of Japanese citizens identify with a formal religion of any kind. Less than 3% of Japanese citizens are Christian. Perhaps most strikingly, Pew presents numbers for Sweden that seem in keeping with American findings at first: roughly 66% of Swedes identify as Christian. The key difference is that Sweden had an official, legally recognized national church until 2000. America, legally irreligious, has a higher proportion of Christians than a country where, until 17 years ago, everyone was Christian by default. Christianity is plainly a powerful force in American politics. White, evangelical Christians in particular tend to vote as a bloc, having shown loyalty to the Republican Party for decades.
3) Violence. We do not usually phrase it this baldly, but America is an extraordinarily violent place. The numbers are inescapable. The Global Peace Index ranks Japan as the 10th and Sweden the 18th safest countries on Earth. The United States is 114th. By the standard measurement of crimes per 100,000 people, America's murder rate is 26 times that of Japan and 143 times higher than that of Sweden. The United States is simply a great deal more violent, by most measurements, than the rest of the industrialized world. The significance of that fact and what can be done about it are defining components of the American political conversation.
4) Youth. The United States is a comparatively young country. 1777, a year after the country's official founding, is four sixty-year lifetimes from 2017. In some ways, America is still embroiled in the postcolonial age, coming to terms with the complex historical legacy of European imperialism and its continuing fallout in modern life. Some of the most extreme political conflicts in the United States right now are between people deeply invested in the European colonial tradition and people calling for a reassessment of that tradition. We have had riots over that. The wounds of our history are still very fresh. By contrast, Sweden has a constitutional monarchy that traces its origins back to before the year 1000 CE, and Japan's imperial family considers themselves the direct descendants of Emperor Jimmu, who founded the Empire of Japan in 660 BCE. Both are of more symbolic significance than political significance now, but each represents a unifying national tradition that simply is not present in a country that did not exist 250 years ago.
5) Militarism. In a certain sense, the United States has never known an age in which it has not been potentially threatened by conflict. In fact, being at war predates the United States itself: before the country was a cohesive whole, the colonies were often at war with one another and were constantly engaged in conflicts with the American Indians. According to the CIA Factbook, the United States ranks ninth in military spending as a percentage of GDP, as compared to Sweden's 84th and Japan's 102nd. Per the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the United States also has a standing military and paramilitary strength of 2,227,200, 7th largest in the world. This is to be compared to Japan's 315,800 and Sweden's 51,700. More than that, the military plays a vital political and cultural role in American culture. "Support our troops" remains an automatic catchphrase, and Americans of every political stripe are expected to show respect for those in uniformed service.  
http://visionofhumanity.org/indexes/global-peace-index/

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Japan/United-States/Crime

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

Five elements of American political culture are liberty, civic duty, equality, democracy, and individual responsibility. Of course, there are a few more, but these are some of the most important ones. 
Basically, Americans tend to emphasize individual rights over collective rights. Equality is an important concept in American culture, whether it pertains to gender, sex, or nationality. You may value the concept of tolerance, which is an element of equality. Americans of all political persuasions have the right to their individual beliefs. Perhaps you also value your First Amendment right to free speech, and you appreciate the freedom to be religious (or not), the right to petition the government, and the freedom to assemble peacefully. These First Amendment rights promote your right to liberty, one of the key elements of American political culture. Many of the rights or values described here are derived from the Magna Carta. 
The original Magna Carta was written in 1215, and it contained arguments rejecting King John's tyrannical rule. One of the most important clauses in the Magna Carta was Clause 39, which stated that "No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned... or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."
This clause is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment, which states that "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Essentially, the elements of American political culture are predicated on the idea of freedom against monarchical tyranny.
In contrast to the decided emphasis on individualism in American political culture, Japanese culture stresses cooperation and mutual harmony. Agitating against the status quo is a practice that is largely frowned upon in Japanese society. The Japanese place a high value on seniority in the political realm, and there is a tendency to defer to voices of authority in matters of social and economic importance. 
The Swedish believe in equality, but they tend to favor equality over liberty. Again, as with the Japanese, there is less of an emphasis on the individual. Instead, the Swedish stress the collective decision-making process as a fundamental element of civilized society. In matters of national importance, the Swedish are inclined to defer to government officials and national experts. These are just some of the differences between the culture of the United States and that of other industrialized democracies; you may be able to add more of your own.

Define ethics and discuss what ethical communication encompasses.

Ethics is a complex topic; it encompasses "doing the right thing" even if one doesn't want to at the moment. There are certain standards for fair treatment that stand beyond law, religious practices, or social acceptance. The US Declaration of Independence sums these up for the edification of King George III and states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The ethical treatment of others involves recognizing their human rights which extend far beyond the US Bill of Rights and into quality of life issues such as the pursuit of happiness. 
Ethical communication applies ethics to the process of communications, which in a global economy can be challenging. Ethical communication involves recognizing others' rights but also involves empathy, which is the ability to see life from another person's perspective. If a person offends another through an oversight in communication, which is entirely possible given the complexities of human culture, then that could be impinging on that other person's sense of well-being. Ethical communication requires people to become aware not just of the content of their messages but also how those messages might be received by their audience. 
A lot of lip service is paid to the concept of ethics; a person is ethical when that person's actions reflect a sense of ethics and when it is clear that the person will take ethical action even if that action requires some kind of personal sacrifice.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/ethical-standards-workplace-11576.html

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/what-is-ethics/

The declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen includes several Enlightenment ideas. Which ideas were included?

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was written in 1789 by the National Assembly in France during the French Revolution. This document was intended to give the people of France certain unalienable and natural rights. These individual liberties were intended to give all people power in the political system, which was previously dominated by a corrupt system of Estates. To explain the reason why the people of France believed that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was needed, let me provide some information about the political landscape prior to the French Revolution.
France was divided into three major classes called the Estates. The First Estate consisted of the clergy (the Church). The First Estate made up only .5% of the population, yet it had a huge amount of power! The Second Estate consisted of the nobles. Only about 1.5% of the population were nobles, and most of these people had well-respected jobs and did not have to pay taxes. The Third Estate consisted of everyone else in France. 98% of the population in France belonged to the Third Estate, so there were many different types of people in this class. The top part of the Third Estate was the bourgeoisie (middle class). People in the bourgeoise typically had well-paying jobs such as doctor, lawyer, merchant, and so on. The poorer people in the Third Estate were either peasants or city workers, were not well respected, were underpaid, and had poor living conditions. The Third Estate had the burden of paying all of the taxes in France, while the First and Second Estates enjoyed life tax-free. The majority of the people, who belonged to the Third Estate, found this extremely unfair! They also did not have any political power. When it came to voting, each Estate got one vote each; 98% of the population only had one vote to represent them! More often than not, the First and Second Estate would vote together and would win the vote in a two-to-one majority over the Third Estate. This is, in a nutshell, why the people demanded individual rights and freedoms through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
The Enlightenment was a period of time where people began questioning authority and ideas that they had previously known to be true. Enlightenment thinkers used logic and reason to challenge the status quo. These thinkers created many works of literature that spread throughout Europe and therefore spread their ideas. John Locke's major Enlightenment ideals were that the people in society must consent to authority (government), the government should protect citizens' natural rights, and individuals should be treated equally under the law. All three of these ideals were included in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Article 1 of the Declaration reads, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good." This article definitely reflects the ideals of John Locke. Locke's ideas can also be seen in Article 2 of the Declaration, which states, "The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression."
Another Enlightenment Thinker, Montesquieu, spread ideas about the separation of powers in government so that one group could not be more powerful than another and so that all people were represented equally. This idea is a focal point in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as seen in Article 6, which states, "Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents."
One more Enlightenment ideal that is seen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is Voltaire's idea of free speech. This is seen in Article 11 of the document, which states, "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Every citizen, may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

What does the environment look like in "The Most Dangerous Game"?

The natural setting of Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" is certainly forbidding.
When Sanger Rainsford falls off the yacht, he swims toward a screaming sound that he has heard in the darkness. For "an endless time he fought the sea," but he finally hears the water hitting a rocky shore. Rainsford pulls himself up the jagged rocks, and then he reaches a "flat place at the top." Touching the edge of the cliffs, he sees a dense jungle filled with a tangle of trees and underbrush.
Rainsford walks along the shoreline rather than struggle through the "web of weeds and trees." He follows this shore around a cliff until he sees lights on a high bluff where a palatial château rests. Around it on three sides are sheer cliffs that extend to the sea. Later, Rainsford learns that he is on Ship-Trap Island.

What is the central idea of The Babysitter?

Robert Coover's story "The Babysitter" is broken into more than one hundred paragraphs, each of which describes a certain scene. The scenes are roughly chronological to start, but the timeline becomes more and more confused as the story advances. The figure of the babysitter (who has no name) is present in all of them, either as an active character, a passive audience to the action, the subject of fantasy, or the source of subconscious unease.
The story largely centers around sexual desire, with the babysitter as the object of that desire. Mr. Tucker, his pre-pubescent son Jimmy, and the babysitter's own boyfriend Jack are the three characters whose desire drives the narrative. Jack also has a friend, Mark. All of these men express their desire in different ways. Jimmy tickles the babysitter, and fantasizes about her bathing him and staring at his naked body. Touching her and thinking about her makes him feel excited, but also scared; he's not entirely sure what he wants. Mr. Tucker's fantasies are much more explicit, and range from a desire to simply watch the babysitter bathe, to a desire to watch her have sex with her boyfriend, to a desire to have sex with her himself. Jack's fantasies are, at first, rather limited—he enjoys kissing the babysitter and touching her breasts, but he is unsure how to move to the next stage of a sexual encounter. His friend, Mark, fires his imagination by suggesting they simply rape the babysitter, taking what they want from her.The desire these men feel is variously deferred, frustrated, and gratified in the story's fragmentary narrative. In some fragments of the story, the babysitter willingly consents to sex; in others, the men rape her; in a few, the men kill her. She or the desire she awakens in others are the common threads that run through each fragment.
The babysitter herself does not seem to feel any desire. She is young and beautiful, and to a certain extent is aware of herself as a sexual being—she has a boyfriend, after all, and she admires her body in the bathroom mirror. Her sexuality is much more innocent than the men's, however, and is limited to a sense of vague curiosity and amusement regarding men's bodies. When she takes a bath, it is just a bath, a way of relaxing, a way to smell nice. To the men, it's a teasing ritual she enacts specifically to arouse them, but the babysitter is not thinking about them at all, except perhaps in the context of how annoying it is to be interrupted by them (Jimmy knocking on the bathroom door, Mr. Tucker or Jack calling the house phone). Her interactions with the men are innocuous, and she is blissfully unaware of their predatory urges towards her. She is not interested in sex, and her feelings toward the baby may be construed as a kind of horror of sex and its consequences. To her the baby is annoying, dirty, even repulsive. At best it is dormant; at worst, it makes her furiously angry. Depending on the fragment of the story in question, the babysitter ignores the baby, takes care of it in a perfunctory manner, or kills it to silence it.
The language of the story is thick with sexual imagery, "pushing," "thrusting," "balls," "plunge," "slick," "slippery," "holes," and so forth. Sex is almost a living presence in the story, and the narrative shatters along the lines of each character's desire. Jimmy wants to see the babysitter naked, to touch her in a way that is not quite innocent, but not yet fully sexual. His narrative involves voyeurism, tickle fights, and fondling; alternatively it involves sexual aggression on the babysitter's part, and fear and shame on his own. Mr. Tucker wants to have sex with the babysitter, or at least to watch her having sex. His narrative is variously one of watching her, seducing her, and extorting sex from her. She is always a willing participant, even in the extortion, because in Mr. Tucker's narrative, the babysitter wants sex, and wants him. However, Mr. Tucker's narrative collides with that of Jack and Mark, whose desire for sex with the babysitter leads alternately to a soft-focus erotic threesome and a brutal, ugly rape. Mr. Tucker and the boys imagine encountering each other and fighting over the babysitter, exchanging blows, even drawing blood.
The babysitter, who has no desire, has a much simpler narrative—she wants to put the kids to bed and take a bath. She is interrupted by the children and the telephone. If Jack and Mark do come over, she and they simply watch TV together. The Tuckers return from their dinner party to a clean house and sleeping children. The dark side of the babysitter's narrative involves no sex; instead, she murders the baby, because she can't stand its screaming, endless need for her. The men's screaming, endless lust for her drives their narratives toward any number of possible outcomes; the babysitter's revulsion for that kind of all-consuming need limits her outcomes to ones in which the need does not exist (the baby is asleep, her boyfriend does not come over, her boyfriend comes over but does not try anything) or in which she can effectively end it (by killing the baby, telling her boyfriend to go away). She is aware of being pinned by the male gaze, when Jimmy pulls her towel off and when she sees faces at the windows, but she manages to protect herself from fully encountering that gaze. The men, by contrast, are all about making physical contact, and the consequences of that contact may be temporarily gratifying but are often disastrous.
One theme of the work might be that sex is a powerful, dangerous thing, and engaging in it invites myriad possible consequences for those involved. The safest course of action is to stay away.