Search results for ""AU Press""
AU Press Speaking Power to Truth: Digital Discourse and the Public Intellectual
Online discourse has created a new media environment forcontributions to public life, one that challenges the socialsignificance of the role of public intellectuals—intellectualswho, whether by choice or by circumstance, offer commentary on issuesof the day. The value of such commentary is rooted in the assumptionthat, by virtue of their training and experience, intellectuals possessknowledge—that they understand what constitutes knowledge withrespect to a particular topic, are able to distinguish it from mereopinion, and are in a position to define its relevance in differentcontexts. When intellectuals comment on matters of public concern, theyare accordingly presumed to speak truth, whether they are writing booksor op-ed columns or appearing as guests on radio and television newsprograms. At the same time, with increasing frequency, discourse onpublic life is taking place online—l an environment that ischaracterized by an abundance of speakers, discussion, and access. Buthas this democratization of knowledge, as some describe it brought withit a corresponding increase in truth? Casting doubt on the assertion that online discourse, with itsproliferation of voices, will somehow yield collective wisdom, SpeakingPower to Truth raises concerns that this wealth of digitally enabledcommentary is, in fact, too often bereft of the hallmarks ofintellectual discourse: an epistemological framework and the provisionof evidence to substantiate claims. Instead, the pursuit of truth findsitself in competition with the quest for public reputation, access toinfluence, and enhanced visibility. In exploring the implications ofthe digital transition, the contributors to Speaking Power to Truthprovide both empirical evidence of, and philosophical reflection on,the current and future role of the public intellectual in atechnologically mediated public sphere.
£23.99
AU Press Dustship Glory
In this new edition of a prairie classic, Andreas Schroederfictionalizes the true story of Tom Sukanen’s wild scheme tobuild an ocean-going ship in the middle of a wheat field inSaskatchewan. Set during the hardships of the “DirtyThirties,” Dustship Glory presents us withSukanen’s mythic effort to escape both the drought and pestilenceof his time, as well as his own personal struggle to be free. Featuring an illuminating foreword by beloved Saskatoon writer DonKerr, Dustship Glory will provide Canadian and internationalaudiences alike with the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with thedramatic tale of a ship that still stands in the fields south of MooseJaw in Saskatchewan.
£18.99
AU Press Indigiqueerness: A Conversation about Storytelling
Evolving from a conversation between Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This volume is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres.
£18.99
AU Press Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media
Within the rapidly expanding field of educational technology,learners and educators must confront a seemingly overwhelming selectionof tools designed to deliver and facilitate both online and blendedlearning. Many of these tools assume that learning is configured anddelivered in closed contexts, through learning management systems(LMS). However, while traditional "classroom" learning is byno means obsolete, networked learning is in the ascendant. Afoundational method in online and blended education, as well as themost common means of informal and self-directed learning, networkedlearning is rapidly becoming the dominant mode of teaching as well aslearning. In Teaching Crowds, Dron and Anderson introduce a new model forunderstanding and exploiting the pedagogical potential of Web-basedtechnologies, one that rests on connections — on networks andcollectives — rather than on separations. Recognizing that onlinelearning both demands and affords new models of teaching and learning,the authors show how learners can engage with social media platforms tocreate an unbounded field of emergent connections. These connectionsempower learners, allowing them to draw from one another’sexpertise to formulate and fulfill their own educational goals. In anincreasingly networked world, developing such skills will, they argue,better prepare students to become self-directed, lifelong learners.
£35.10
AU Press Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda
Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda offersa systematic overview of the major issues, trends, and areas ofpriority in online distance education research. In each chapter, aninternational expert or team of experts provides an overview of onetimely issue in online distance education, summarizing major researchon the topic, discussing theoretical insights that guide the research,posing questions and directions for future research, and discussing theimplications for distance education practice as a whole. Intended as aprimary reference and guide for distance educators, researchers, andpolicymakers, Online Distance Education addresses aspects ofdistance education practice that have often been marginalized,including issues of cost and economics, concerns surrounding socialjustice, cultural bias, the need for faculty professional development,and the management and growth of learner communities. At once soundlyempirical and thoughtfully reflective, yet also forward-looking andopen to new approaches to online and distance teaching, this text is asolid resource for researchers in a rapidly expanding discipline.
£35.10
AU Press Open Data Structures: An Introduction
Offered as an introduction to the field of data structures andalgorithms, Open Data Structures covers the implementation andanalysis of data structures for sequences (lists), queues, priorityqueues, unordered dictionaries, ordered dictionaries, and graphs.Focusing on a mathematically rigorous approach that is fast, practical,and efficient, Morin clearly and briskly presents instruction alongwith source code. Analyzed and implemented in Java, the data structures presented inthe book include stacks, queues, deques, and lists implemented asarrays and linked-lists; space-efficient implementations of lists; skiplists; hash tables and hash codes; binary search trees includingtreaps, scapegoat trees, and red-black trees; integer searchingstructures including binary tries, x-fast tries, and y-fast tries;heaps, including implicit binary heaps and randomized meldable heaps;and graphs, including adjacency matrix and adjacency listrepresentations; and B-trees. A modern treatment of an essential computer science topic, OpenData Structures is a measured balance between classical topics andstate-of-the art structures that will serve the needs of allundergraduate students or self-directed learners.
£25.19
AU Press Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry
Teaching in Blended Leaning Environments provides acoherent framework in which to explore the transformative concept ofblended learning. Blended learning can be defined as the organicintegration of thoughtfully selected and complementary face-to-face andonline approaches and technologies. A direct result of thetransformative innovation of virtual communication and online learningcommunities, blended learning environments have created new ways forteachers and students to engage, interact, and collaborate. The authorsargue that this new learning environment necessitates significant roleadjustments for instructors and generates a need to understand theaspects of teaching presence required of deep and meaningful learningoutcomes. Built upon the theoretical framework of the Community of Inquiry– the premise that higher education is both a collaborative andindividually constructivist learning experience – the authorspresent seven principles that provide a valuable set of tools forharnessing the opportunities for teaching and learning availablethrough technology. Focusing on teaching practices related to thedesign, facilitation, direction and assessment of blended learningexperiences, Teaching in Blended Learning Environmentsaddresses the growing demand for improved teaching in highereducation.
£22.99
AU Press Development Derailed: Calgary and the CPR, 1962-64
In June of 1962, the Canadian Pacific Railway announced a proposalto redevelop part of its reserved land in the heart of downtownCalgary. In an effort to bolster its waning revenues and to redefineits urban presence, the CPR proposed a multimillion dollar developmentproject that included retail, office, and convention facilities, alongwith a major transportation centre. With visions of enhanced taxrevenues, increased land values, and new investment opportunities,Calgary’s political and business leaders greeted the proposalwith excitement. Over the following year, the scope of the projectexpanded, growing to a scale never before seen in Canada. The plan tookofficial form through an agreement between the City of Calgary and therailway company to develop a much larger area of land and to reroute orremove the railway tracks from the downtown area—a grand designfor reshaping Calgary’s urban core. In 1964, amid bickering and afailed negotiating process, the project came to an abrupt end. Whatcaused this promising partnership between the nation’s leadingcorporation and the burgeoning city of Calgary to collapse? What, in economic terms, was perceived to be a win-win situation forboth parties fell prey to a conflict between corporate rigidity and anunorganized, ill-informed, and over-enthusiastic civic administrationand city council. Drawing on the private records of Rod Sykes, theCPR’s onsite negotiator and later Calgary’s mayor, Foranunravels the fascinating story of how politics ultimately underminedpromise.
£24.29
AU Press Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on Canadian Women’s History
Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisiveand insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadianhistorian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has addedextensive introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in thecontext of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied anintroduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes andtheoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women'shistory over the past thirty years. Approaching her subject matter froman array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender,class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the livedexperience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In sodoing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debateamong feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of theevolution of women's history in Canada.
£30.60
AU Press Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training
This collection is for anyone interested in the use of mobiletechnology for various distance learning applications. Readers willdiscover how to design learning materials for delivery on mobiletechnology and become familiar with the best practices of othereducators, trainers, and researchers in the field, as well as the mostrecent initiatives in mobile learning research. Businesses andgovernments can learn how to deliver timely information to staff usingmobile devices. Professors can use this book as a textbook for courseson distance education, mobile learning, and educational technology.
£35.10
AU Press Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927
Canada is regularly presented as a country where liberalism has ensuredfreedom and equality for all. Yet with the expansion of settlers intothe First Nations territories that became southern Alberta and BC,liberalism proved to be an exclusionary rather than inclusionary force.Between 1877 and 1927, government officials, police officers, churchrepresentatives, ordinary settlers, and many others operated to excludeand reform Indigenous people. Presenting Anglo-Canadian liberalcapitalist values and structures and interests as normal, natural, andbeyond reproach devalued virtually every aspect of Indigenous cultures.This book explores the means used to facilitate and justifycolonization, their effects on Indigenous economic, political, social,and spiritual lives, and how they were resisted.
£30.60
AU Press On Othering
In every sphere of life, division and intolerance has polarized communities and entire nations. The learned construction of the Otheran evil enemy against whom both physical and discursive violence is deemed acceptablehas fractured humanity, creating divisions that seemingly defy reconciliation. How do we restore the bonds of connection among human beings? How do we shift from polarization to peace? On Othering: Processes and Politics of Unpeace examines the process of othering from an international perspective and considers how it undermines peacemaking and is perpetuated by colonialism and globalization. Taking a humanistic approach, contributors argue that celebrating difference can have a transformative change in seeking peaceful solutions to problems created by people, institutions, ideas, conditions, and circumstances. Touching on race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and our relationship with the natural world, this volume attends to the deep injustices brought about by othering
£35.00
AU Press Not Hockey: Critical Essays on Canada’s Other Sport Literature
In this carefully curated collection of essays, editors Jamie Dopp and Angie Abdou go beyond their first collection, Writing the Body in Motion, to engage with the meaning of sport found in Canadian sport literature. How does “sport” differ from physically risky recreational activities that require strength and skill? Does sport demand that someone win? At what point does a sport become an art? With the aim of prompting reflections on and discussions of the boundaries of sport, contributors explore how literature engages with sport as a metaphor, as a language, and as bodily expression. Instead of a focus on what is often described as Canada’s national pastime, contributors examine sports in Canadian literature that are decidedly not hockey. From skateboarding and parkour to fly fishing and curling, these essays engage with Canadian histories and broader societal understandings through sports on the margin. Interspersed with original reflections by iconic Canadian literary figures such as Steven Heighton, Aritha Van Herk, Thomas Wharton, and Timothy Taylor, this volume is fresh and intriguing and offers new ways of reading the body.
£34.20
AU Press Dissenting Traditions: Essays on Bryan D. Palmer, Marxism, and History
The work of Bryan D. Palmer, one of North America’s leading historians, has influenced the fields of labour history, social history, discourse analysis, communist history, and Canadian history, as well as the theoretical frameworks surrounding them. Palmer’s work reveals a life dedicated to dissent and the difficult task of imagining alternatives by understanding the past in all of its contradictions, victories, and failures. Dissenting Traditions gathers Palmer’s contemporaries, students, and sometimes critics to examine and expand on the topics and themes that have defined Palmer’s career, from labour history to Marxism and communist politics. Paying attention to Palmer’s participation in key debates, contributors demonstrate that class analysis, labour history, building institutions, and engaging the public are vital for social change. In this moment of increasing precarity and growing class inequality, Palmer’s politically engaged scholarship offers a useful roadmap for scholars and activists alike and underlines the importance of working-class history.
£34.20
AU Press The Art of Communication in a Polarized World
In North America and elsewhere, communities are fractured along ideological lines as social media and algorithms encourage individuals to seek out others who think like they do and to condemn those that don't. An essential guide for surviving in our polarized society, this book offers concrete strategies for refining how values and ideas are communicated.
£20.99
AU Press Psychiatry and the Legacies of Eugenics: Historical Studies of Alberta and Beyond
From 1928 to 1972, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act, Canada’s lengthiest eugenic policy, shaped social discourses and medical practice in the province. Sterilization programs – particularly involuntary sterilization programs – were responding both nationally and internationally to social anxieties produced by the perceived connection between mental degeneration and heredity. Psychiatry and the Legacy of Eugenics illustrates how the emerging field of psychiatry and its concerns about inheritable conditions was heavily influenced by eugenic thought and contributed to the longevity of sterilization practices in Western Canada. Using institutional case studies, biographical accounts, and media developments from Western Canada and Europe, contributors trace the impact of eugenics on nursing practices, politics, and social attitudes, while investigating the ways in which eugenics discourses persisted unexpectedly and remained mostly unexamined in psychiatric practice. This volume further extends historical analysis into considerations of contemporary policy and human rights issues through a discussion of disability studies as well as compensation claims for victims of sterilization. In impressive detail, contributors shed new light on the medical and political influences of eugenics on psychiatry at a key moment in the field’s developmentWith contributions by Ashley Barlow, W. Mikkel Dack, Aleksandra Loewenau, Diana Mansell, Guel A. Russell, Celeste Tuong Vy Sharpe, Henderikus J. Stam, Douglas Wahlsten, Paul J. Weindling, Robert A. Wilson, Gregor Wolbring, and Marc Workman.
£34.20
AU Press Assessment Strategies for Online Learning: Engagement and Authenticity
Assessment has provided educational institutions with information about student learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades. But has it informed practice and been fully incorporated into the learning cycle? Conrad and Openo argue that the potential inherent in many of the new learning environments being explored by educators and students has not been fully realized. In this investigation of a variety of assessment methods and learning approaches, the authors aim to discover the tools that engage learners and authentically evaluate education. They insist that moving to new learning environments, specifically those online and at a distance, afford opportunities for educators to adopt only the best practices of traditional face-to-face assessment while exploring evaluation tools made available by a digital learning environment in the hopes of arriving at methods that capture the widest set of learner skills and attributes.
£30.60
AU Press Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place
An extensive body of literature on Indigenous knowledge and ways ofknowing has been written since the 1980s. This research has for themost part been conducted by scholars operating within Westernepistemological frameworks that tend not only to deny the subjectivityof knowledge but also to privilege masculine authority. As a result,the information gathered predominantly reflects the types of knowledgetraditionally held by men, yielding a perspective that is at oncegendered and incomplete. Even those academics, communities, andgovernments interested in consulting with Indigenous peoples for thepurposes of planning, monitoring, and managing land use have largelyignored the knowledge traditionally produced, preserved, andtransmitted by Indigenous women. While this omission reflectspatriarchal assumptions, it may also be the result of the reductionisttendencies of researchers, who have attempted to organize Indigenousknowledge so as to align it with Western scientific categories, and ofpolicy makers, who have sought to deploy such knowledge in the serviceof external priorities. Such efforts to apply Indigenous knowledge havehad the effect of abstracting this knowledge from place as well as fromthe world view and community—and by extension the gender—towhich it is inextricably connected. Living on the Land examines how patriarchy, gender, andcolonialism have shaped the experiences of Indigenous women as bothknowers and producers of knowledge. From a variety of methodologicalperspectives, contributors to the volume explore the nature and scopeof Indigenous women’s knowledge, its rootedness in relationshipsboth human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land andlandscape. From the reconstruction of cultural and ecological heritageby Naskapi women in Québec to the medical expertise of Métis women inwestern Canada to the mapping and securing of land rights in Nicaragua,Living on the Land focuses on the integral role of women as stewards ofthe land and governors of the community. Together, these contributionspoint to a distinctive set of challenges and possibilities forIndigenous women and their communities.
£23.39
AU Press Mission Life in Cree-Ojibwe Country: Memories of a Mother and Son
In May of 1868, Elizabeth Bingham Young and her husband of only fivemonths, Egerton Ryerson Young, began a long journey from Hamilton,Ontario, to the Methodist mission of Rossville, at Norway House. Overthe next eight years, Elizabeth supported her husband’s work atRossville and then at the newly founded mission of Berens River, on theeast shore of Lake Winnipeg. In these remote outposts, she gave birthto four children, one of whom died in infancy, acted as a nurse anddoctor, and applied both perseverance and determination to learningCree, while also coping with poverty and a chronic shortage ofsupplies, both in the mission and in the community it served. WhenElizabeth died, in 1935, she left behind various reminiscences, notablyan extended account of her experiences at Norway House and BerensRiver, evidently written in 1927. Her memoirs offer an exceedingly rareportrait of mission life as seen through the eyes of a woman. Elizabeth’s first child and only surviving son, also namedEgerton Ryerson Young but known in his youth as “Eddie,”was born at Norway House in 1869. Cared for by a Cree woman almost frominfancy, Eddie spent his early childhood immersed in local Cree andOjibwe life, culture, and language, in many ways exemplifying theprocess of reverse acculturation often in evidence among the childrenof missionaries. He, too, left behind hitherto unpublishedreminiscences, one composed around 1935 and a second dictated shortlybefore his death. Like those of his mother, Eddie’s memoriescapture the sensory and emotional texture of mission life, a life inwhich the Christian faith is implicit rather than prominently ondisplay, while also providing an intriguing counterpoint to hismother’s recollections. Like all memoirs, these are refractedthrough the prism of time, and yet they remain startling in theirimmediacy. Together, the writings of mother and son—conjoinedhere with a selection of archival documents that supplement the mainnarratives, with the whole meticulously edited by Jennifer S. H.Brown—afford an all too uncommon opportunity to contemplatemission life from the ground up.
£25.19
AU Press Film and the City: The Urban Imaginary in Canadian Cinema
For many years, Canadian cinema was dominated by the documentarytradition of the National Film Board, which tended to promote what filmscholar Jim Leach has called the “nationalist-realistproject”—films that privileged Canada’s naturallandscape and sought to conjure a unified sense of Canadian identityfrom images of empty, untrammelled wilderness and bucolic farmlands.Over the past several decades, however, the hegemony of thisfundamentally colonial, Anglo-centric vision has been challenged byfrancophone and First Nations perspectives and by the growth of cities,where most Canadians now reside, as economic and technological centres.In opposition to the mythic “Canada” shaped through thelens of rural nostalgia, Canadian urban identity asserts itself aspolyphonic, diverse, constructed through multiple discourses andmediums, as an ongoing negotiation rather than a monolithicorientation. Taking the urban as setting and subject, filmmakers areideally poised to capture this multiplicity, creating their own,idiosyncratic portraits of the Canadian urban landscape and of thepeople who inhabit it. Examining fourteen Canadian films produced from the late 1980sonward, including Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal(1989), Mina Shum’s Double Happiness (1994), and GuyMaddin’s My Winnipeg (2007), Film and the Cityis the first comprehensive study of Canadian film and“urbanity”—the totality of urban culture and life asrefracted through the filmmaker’s prism. Drawing on insights fromboth film and urban studies and building upon issues of identityformation long debated in Canadian studies, Melnyk considers howfilmmakers interpret and employ the spatiality, visuality, and oralityof urban space and how audiences read the films that result. In thisway, Film and the City argues that Canadian narrative film ofthe postmodern period has contributed to the articulation of a new,multifaceted understanding of national identity.
£25.19
AU Press Provincial Solidarities: A History of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour
A pioneering study, written in clear and forceful prose, this is theuntold story of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour and theprovincial labour solidarities that succeeded in overcoming divisionsand defeats to raise the status of working men and women within NewBrunswick society. Drawing on archives, newspapers, and workers’own descriptions of their experiences, Frank makes an originalcontribution to our understanding of the political, economic, andsocial development of the province. In so doing, he helps meet the needfor an informed public awareness of the history of workers and unionsin all parts of Canada.
£24.29
AU Press Controlling Knowledge: Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection in a Networked World
Digital communications technology has immeasurably enhanced ourcapacity to store, retrieve, and exchange information. But who controlsour access to information, and who decides what others have a right toknow about us? In Controlling Knowledge, author LornaStefanick offers a thought-provoking and user-friendly overview of theregulatory regime that currently governs freedom of information and theprotection of privacy. Aiming to clarify rather than mystify, Stefanick outlines thehistory and application of FOIP legislation, with special focus on howthese laws affect the individual. To illustrate the impact of FOIP, sheexamines the notion of informed consent, looks at concerns aboutsurveillance in the digital age, and explores the sometimes insidiousinfluence of Facebook. Specialists in public policy and publicadministration, information technology, communications, law, criminaljustice, sociology, and health care will find much here that bearsdirectly on their work, while students and general readers will welcomethe book’s down-to-earth language and accessible style. Intended to serve as a “citizen’s guide,”Controlling Knowledge is a vital resource for anyone seekingto understand how freedom of information and privacy protection arelegally defined and how this legislation is shaping our individualrights as citizens of the information age.
£22.99
AU Press Goodlands: A Meditation and History on the Great Plains
Amer-European settlement of the Great Plains transformed bountifulNative soil into pasture and cropland, distorting the prairie ecosystemthat the peoples who originally populated the land had long understoodand were able to use wisely. Settlers justified this transformationwith the unexamined premise of deficiency, according to which the vastarea of the Great Plains was inadequate in flora and fauna and lackingin the advances of modern civilization. Drawing on history, literature, art, and economic theory, Frances W.Kaye counters the argument of deficiency, pointing out that, in itsoriginal ecological state, no region can possibly be incomplete.Goodlands examines the settlers’ misguided theory,discussing the ideas that shaped its implementation, the forces thatresisted it, and Indigenous ideologies about what it meant to make gooduse of the land. By suggesting methods for redeveloping the GreatPlains that are based on native cultural values, Kaye points the way toa balanced and sustainable future for the region in the context of achanging globe.
£30.60
AU Press Musing
Musing is a book of sonnets. Working within the frameworkof a classic poetic form, Jonathan Locke Hart embarks on an extendedmeditation on our rootedness in landscape and in the past. As sonnets,some of the poems are traditional, some innovative. Throughout, Hartdeftly imparts a European poetic flavour to a fundamentally NorthAmerican experience. The collection opens with a foreword by noted literary scholarGordon Teskey, who reflects on the themes that have marked theevolution of Hart’s poetry. Of Musings, Teskey writes:"These deeply thoughtful poems bring layered historicalconsciousness into the sonnet. They also touch and stir the heartthrough all its levels."
£15.99
AU Press The Anatomy of Ethical Leadership: To Lead Our Organizations in a Conscientious and Authentic Manner
Performance at all costs, productivity without regard to consequences,and a competitive work environment: these are the ethical factorsdiscussed in The Anatomy of Ethical Leadership, whichhighlights issues in workplace culture while looking into a brighterfuture for labour ethics. Dr. Lyse Langlois maintains that an awarenessof ethical decision-making in difficult situations will lead to theestablishment of practices that encourage productive relationshipsbetween co-workers. Will the twenty-first century be marked as an eraleading to a healthier work environment?
£22.99
AU Press A Woman of Valour: The Biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle
The biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle tells of a youngCanadian woman of humble background who, at the turn of the 20thcentury, discovers love with the priest of her village, a man 33 yearsolder. After three children and 15 years of happy life together, herspouse returns to the priesthood, just before the Great Depression.Trépanier narrates this brave woman's struggle to raise theirchildren alone. Her story raises questions on the mandatory celibacy ofCatholic priests and the status of women in the eyes of the CatholicChurch.
£21.99
AU Press From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots
From Bricks to Brains introduces embodied cognitive scienceand illustrates its foundational ideas through the construction andobservation of LEGO Mindstorms robots. Discussing the characteristics that distinguish embodied cognitivescience from classical cognitive science, From Bricks toBrains places a renewed emphasis on sensing and acting, theimportance of embodiment, the exploration of distributed notions ofcontrol, and the development of theories by synthesizing simple systemsand exploring their behaviour. Numerous examples are used to illustratea key theme: the importance of an agent’s environment. Evensimple agents, such as LEGO robots, are capable of exhibiting complexbehaviour when they can sense and affect the world around them.
£39.60
AU Press A Very Capable Life: The Autobiography of Zarah Petri
Zarah Petri was just a little girl when her family left Hungary to finda new life in Canada in the 1920s. She showed spunk and a greatimagination that would serve her well as a new immigrant and youngmarried woman. Zarah and her family lived through the Depression, andshe learned to make ends meet in any way she could, even bending thelaw if necessary. Her son John writes this touching memoir, told in thefirst person, in Zarah’s own unique voice. Her remembrances aresometimes funny, sometimes sad but always entertaining.
£22.99
AU Press Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature
Edward Taylor Fletcher was a nineteenth-century literary figure almost completely forgotten by history. Poet, travel writer, essayist, surveyor, philologist, and translator, Fletcher shared many characteristics with the great literary figures of the time. Yet his writing represents a significant departure from his contemporaries and a close reading of his work reshapes our understanding of the Canadian long poem and the cultural values of Canadian poetry. Fletcher spoke English, French, German, Italian, and other modern languages fluently and he studied or translated literary works in Icelandic, Finnish, Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit (among several others). His poetry interweaves Canadian landscapes with modern and ancient traditions of the East and West and integrates allusions and innovations from several different literary traditions including the Kalavela, the Mahabharata, and the Poetic Edda. By recuperating Fletcher’s nineteenth century works, James Gifford uncovers a unique Canadian literary voice who explored content, style, and concerns unlike the popular colonial narratives of his time.
£30.60
AU Press A Sales Tax for Alberta: Why and How
The days of buoyant capital investment, jobs, and wealth are passing Alberta by as the boom-and-bust cycle runs its course and the global climate crisis becomes more acute. As the province scrambles to boost the dying oil economy and curb spending, one solution is all but ignored – a sales tax. In this collection, Alberta scholars and policy experts map out why and how a provincial sales tax should and can be implemented.Drawing on policy analysis, recent history, personal experiences, and conversations with Albertans, former politicians, and senior public servants, contributors build a decisive case for why a sales tax is a more efficient tax than corporate or personal income taxes. They examine energy revenues, household incomes, and political support as well as opportunities for improving democracy and reducing the volatility of government revenues. Finally, this volume offers recommendations on structuring a consultative review process to improve Alberta’s long-term fiscal sustainability.
£24.29
AU Press Shape Your Eyes by Shutting Them
In this inventive collection of poems, McCutcheon engages in sophisticated literary play and deploys the Surrealist practices of juxtaposition. Moving from eroticism to the macabre and from transformative quotation to the individual idiom, Shape Your Eyes by Shutting Them explores intertextuality in poetry by challenging the cultural tradition of seeing quotation as derivative.
£18.99
AU Press What We Are, When We Are: Kaj smo, ko smo
Working within a postmodern style, this rhythmic and melodious collection of poems originally written in Slovenian by Cvetka Lipuš and translated here by Tom Priestly, blends the real with the surreal, dull urban lives with dreams. Lipuš, known for the lexical beauty of her work, dwells on topics of time and space which she handles in an almost revolving, irreverent manner. Priestly captures the maze-like characteristic of her verse and carefully reconstructs the sonoric beauty of the work in its original language.
£18.99
AU Press Connectionist Representations of Tonal Music: Discovering Musical Patterns by Interpreting Artifical Neural Networks
Previously, artificial neural networks have been used to capture only the informal properties of music. However, cognitive scientist Michael Dawson found that by training artificial neural networks to make basic judgments concerning tonal music, such as identifying the tonic of a scale or the quality of a musical chord, the networks revealed formal musical properties that differ dramatically from those typically presented in music theory. For example, where Western music theory identifies twelve distinct notes or pitch-classes, trained artificial neural networks treat notes as if they belong to only three of four different pitch-classes, a wildly different interpretation of the components of tonal music.Intended to introduce readers to the use of artificial neural networks in the study of music, this volume contains numerous case studies and research findings that address problems related to identifying scales, keys, classifying musical chords, and learning jazz chord progressions. A detailed analysis of networks is provided for each case study which together demonstrate that focusing on the internal structure of trained networks could yield important contributions to the field of music cognition.
£36.90
AU Press Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization
The field of embodiment theorizes bodies as knowledgeable in ways that include but are not solely cognitive. The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences such as yoga, mindfulness, illness, and trauma. Although the contributors challenge Western educational frameworks from within and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.
£36.90
AU Press My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell
In a series of chronological vignettes, Arthur Bear Chief depicts the punishment, cruelty, abuse, and injustice that he endured at Old Sun Residential School and then later relived in the traumatic process of retelling his story at an examination for discovery in connection with a lawsuit brought against the federal government. Late in life, he returned to Gleichen, Alberta on the Siksika nation—to the home left to him by his mother—and it was there that he began to reconnect with Blackfoot language and culture. Although the terrific adversity Bear Chief faced in his childhood made an indelible mark on his life, his unyielding spirit is evident throughout his story.
£16.99
AU Press Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada
Until the late 1960s, the authorities on abortion were for the mostpart men—politicians, clergy, lawyers, physicians, all of whomhad an interest in regulating women’s bodies. Even today, when wehear women speak publicly about abortion, the voices are usually thoseof the leaders of women’s and abortion rights organizations,women who hold political office, and, on occasion, female physicians.We also hear quite frequently from spokeswomen for anti-abortiongroups. Rarely, however, do we hear the voices of ordinarywomen—women whose lives have been in some way touched byabortion. Their thoughts typically owe more to human circumstance thanto ideology, and without them, we run the risk of thinking and talkingabout the issue of abortion only in the abstract. Without Apology seeks to address this issue by gatheringthe voices of activists, feminists, and scholars as well as abortionproviders and clinic support staff alongside the stories of women whoseexperience with abortion is more personal. With the particular aim ofmoving beyond the polarizing rhetoric that has characterized the issueof abortion and reproductive justice for so long, WithoutApology is an engrossing and arresting account that will promoteboth reflection and discussion.
£35.10
AU Press The Wolves at My Shadow: The Story of Ingelore Rothschild
Ingelore Rothschild was twelve years old when she was whisked out of her home in 1936. It was her first step on a cross-continent journey to Japan, where she and her parents sought refuge from rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Each leg of the journey presents its own nightmare: passports are stolen, identities are uncovered, a mudslide tears through the Rothschild’s home, and the atomic bombs are dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Ingelore’s bright, observant nature and remarkable capacity for befriending those along her way fills her narrative with unique details about the people she meets and the places she travels to. The story of Ingelore and her prominent German Jewish family’s escape is an invaluable account that contributes to Holocaust witness and memoir literature. Ingelore’s survival story is a painful reminder that only European Jews with significant financial means were able to carefully orchestrate an escape from Nazi Germany.
£21.99
AU Press Visiting with the Ancestors: Blackfoot Shirts in Museum Spaces
In the pages of this beautifully illustrated volume is the story of aneffort to build a bridge between museums and source communities inhopes of establishing stronger, more sustaining relationships betweenthe two and spurring change in prevailing museum policies. Theexperience of negotiating the tension between a museum’sinstitutional protocol described by both the authors and by Blackfootcontributors to the volume was transformative. Museums seek to preserveobjects for posterity. However, the emotional and spiritual power ofobjects does not vanish with the death of those who created them. ForBlackfoot people today, these shirts are a living presence, one thatevokes a sense of continuity and inspires pride in Blackfoot culturalheritage.
£35.10
AU Press Political Activist Ethnography
As activists strategize, build resistance, and foster solidarity, they also call for better dialogue between researchers and movements and for research that can aid their causes. In this volume, contributors examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a unique social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so activists and social movements can fight them. Featuring research from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Bangladesh, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and the United States on matters as diverse as anti-poverty organizing, prisoners'' re-entry, anti-fracking campaigns, left-inspired think-tank development, non-governmental partnerships, involuntary psychiatric admission, and perils of immigration medical examination, contributors to this volume adopt a bottom-up approach to inquiry to produce knowledge
£33.00
AU Press World Bolshevism
Beginning in 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was divided into opposing sections, one led by Vladimir Lenin, the other by Iulii Martov. Until 1917, Lenin and Martov, an anti-war socialist intellectual from a Jewish background, were equally prominent figures in Russian politics. Both wrote prolifically, and although the books, articles, and pamphlets written by Lenin remain readily available today, those by Martov continue to be difficult to locate in their original Russian or, for that matter, in translation.A Russian-language edition of World Bolshevism was published following Martov’s untimely death in 1923, but it was not until 2000, after decades of censorship, that parts of the book were legally published in Russia. This edition, which includes an introduction by Paul Kellogg, makes Martov’s work available in its complete form to English-speaking audiences for the first time in a hundred years and reintroduces this important thinker to a twenty-first century readership.
£24.29