Search results for ""Equinox Publishing Ltd""

This book aims to shed light on the ways in which Reflective Practice (RP) is exploited in the Turkish context, by introducing the research and practical applications in different language education settings. It is important to note that in Turkey there is a great amount of knowledge and research in ELT in general, and RP in particular. Extensive publications and national and international conference presentations on reflection related topics are increasingly common in Turkey. The book includes examples of this scholarly work, so that ELT professionals in different parts of the globe may benefit from the advances made in context-dependent RP applications in Turkey. This book, overall, is a call to action for all ELT professionals, whether experienced, novice or student teachers, leaders, managers or teacher educators, who wish to invest in their own professional development by engaging in Reflective Practice. It is hoped that the book contributes to the diversity of understanding and interpretations of this practice, by sharing a variety of perspectives from scholars in Turkey.

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The U.S. Constitution was written more than 230 years ago for a new country on the periphery of the world. Two centuries later, it governs the most powerful nation on earth, and its meaning is constantly debated. The U.S. Constitution in Five Minutes presents fifty-nine essays on subjects central to the meaning and application of the U.S. Constitution. Written by scholars, these essays cover origins; institutions, processes, and structural features; civil rights and liberties; and modes of interpretation and address common questions and misunderstandings about the Constitution, such as: • Can the president start a war? • Does the Constitution protect hate speech? • Does the Second Amendment give everyone the right to have a gun? • Does the Constitution protect noncitizens? • How can we tell what the Constitution means? Intended for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the underlying principles of the U.S. political system, the book will also be a valuable supplement to political science courses. As with all the “Five Minutes” books, the essays are written in lively and accessible prose and are brief enough to be read in five minutes.

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Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam (Second Edition) presents a fully updated introduction to the religion of Islam and the various social groups who define themselves as Muslim. Unlike other such works, it presents both insider and outsider accounts with the aim of striking a unique balance between overly apologetical and overly Orientalist perspectives. With the first edition described as a “truly outstanding book”, and “the very best introduction currently available in English for non-Muslims seeking a sound approach to Islam” (Journal of Islamic Studies), this new edition offers both students and general readers a comprehensive and balanced introduction to the world’s second-largest religion.

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Twenty years ago some biblical scholars at the University of Copenhagen were denounced as being nihilists and a threat to western civilization. What was their crime? They had exposed the fallacies of traditional historical-critical biblical scholarship, which was neither historical nor critical. Although the historical-critical interpretation of the Bible had developed over a period of more than a hundred years, it had ended up, with the help of a rationalistic paraphrase of the stories of the Old Testament, creating a society out of this world called biblical Israel. Israel was like no other society in the ancient world, and scarcely a real historic society at all. It was structured like a house of cards. Therefore, when some scholars began to question the historical content of the construction of ancient Israel, as it was usually called, the edifice broke down, first in bits and then totally. This study addresses the development of 'Minimalism' from its roots in the historical-critical paradigm and outlines an alternative theory which exposes and explains the intention behind the fallacy of using a story found in the Old Testament to simply invent the biblical concept of Israel.

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The cognitive science of religion does not have its own methodology, and yet from the very beginnings of the discipline, methodology has defined it not only in relation to the general study of religion in the humanities but also to the sciences interested in the mind. Scholars of the cognitive science of religion are using a range of methodologies, borrowing mostly from the cognitive sciences and experimental psychology, but also from biology, archaeology, history, philosophy, linguistics, the social and statistical sciences, neurosciences, and anthropology. In fact, this multi-disciplinarity defines the cognitive science of religion. Such multi-disciplinarity requires hard work and truly interdisciplinary teams, but also continual reflections on and debates about the methodologies being used. In fact, no study of the cognitive science of religion worth its name can rely on only one methodology. Triangulation is standard, but often even more approaches are used. This book consists of selected papers from the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion and the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Each chapter demonstrates a particular method or group of methods and how those methods advance our knowledge of the religious mind from the ancient past up to today.

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This volume highlights and advances new developments in the study of Edom and Idumea in eighteen essays written by researchers from different disciplines (History, Archaeology, Assyriology, Epigraphy, Memory Studies, and Hebrew Bible studies). The topics examined include the emergence of Idumea, the evolution of Edomite/Idumean identity, the impact of the Arabian trade on the region, comparative and regional studies of Idumea and Judah, studies of specific sites, artifacts, epigraphic and literary sources, and a section on literary and ideological constructions and memories of Edom reflected in the Hebrew Bible. This volume is a go-to place for all who are interested in the current state of research about these matters.

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Among the many challenges of translating the Qur’ān are its unpredictable complexity, evocative associativity, and polysemy. For these reasons, as well as more demanding theological ones, most translations cut, compress, paraphrase, and invent freely. In this meticulously crafted translation of the Qur'an, A.J. Droge takes a different approach by revealing the Qur'an's distinctive idiom in a rendition that strives to remain as close as possible to the way it was expressed in Arabic. His goal has been to make the translation literal to the point of transparency, as well as to maintain consistency in the rendering of words and phrases, and even to mimic word order wherever possible. Originally published in 2013 in an edition with annotations, commentary and other scholarly apparatus, Droge's widely praised translation is presented here as a stand-alone text, with a new introduction, ideal for students and general readers alike.

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Archaeology at Home takes a deep dive into the entanglements between humans and their things. It explores the notion that things themselves “remember” when left by “their” people and illustrates how the integration of humans and things involves connections running all the way from the present into deep time. Combining methods from contemporary and deep-time archaeology and balancing scholarly archaeology with personal narrative, Hein Bjerck presents three case studies of homes all intimately known to him — the home of his father after his abrupt passing, the home of his uncle that was lost in a fire, and a Stone Age home he excavated many years ago. This evocative approach to archaeologies of memory will be appreciated by professional archaeologists, and by general readers who are drawn to the study of the past and the things that connect us with it.

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The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.

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This volume celebrates the contribution of Diana V. Edelman to the field and celebrates her personally as researcher, teacher, mentor, colleague, and mastermind of new research paths and groups. It salutes her unconventional, constantly thinking and rethinking outside the box and her challenging of established consensuses. It includes essays addressing biblical themes and texts, archaeological fieldwork, historical method, social memory and reception history. Contributors include Yairah Amit, James Anderson, Bob Becking, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kare Berge, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, Lester L. Grabbe, Philippe Guillaume, David Hamidovic, Lowell K. Handy, Maria Hausl, Kristin Joachimsen, Christoph Levin, Aren M. Maeir, Lynette Mitchell, Reinhard Muller, Jorunn Okland, Daniel Pioske, Thomas Romer, Benedetta Rossi, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Jason Silverman, Steinar Skarpnes, Pauline A. Viviano, Anne-Mareike Wetter.

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The Religious Body Imaginedexamines the ways in which the human body has been imagined, imaged, and discursively produced in particular places, times, and religious traditions.

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Shinto permeates the religious landscape of Japan and is a major key to the understanding of Japanese culture and society. But what is it? If ideological shortcuts are avoided there is no simple answer. Yet this book will guide students and general readers through many aspects of Shinto both today and in its history. It contains much information about sacred Shinto shrines and the divinities (the kami) which are the focus of devotion there. These numerous divinities have been viewed in different ways in the course of time, and contributions by specialists shed much light on the role played by Buddhism in this regard. Moreover, several fascinating religious movements or “sects” which share in the wider pattern of Shinto are also introduced and discussed. Oversimplified views may be challenged here, but the result is a volume in which “Shinto” is explored in a wide and illuminating perspective by an international team of scholars. It provides a refreshing and much-needed resource for all who are interested in the subject.

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Key Categories in the Study of Religion builds upon the groundwork laid by previous NAASR Working Papers titles in order to bring us full circle to the symbiotic relationship between context and critique. This volume assembles diverse sets of data to consider pertinent categories in which critique occurs. By looking at intentionally disparate case studies, the volume centers on four key contextual categories which stand at the heart of the academic study of religion: Citizenship and Politics, Class and Economy, Gender and Sexuality, and Race and Ethnicity. The contributors to this volume explore questions concerning how scholars construct such categories and/or critique scholars who do? Who decides how to approach the critical study of these topics? What impact does the context of a scholar's research have on the means and method of a given critique? Using these enquiries as a starting point, Key Categories in the Study of Religion investigates the ways that method, theory, and data are mobilized via context as the primary impetus for critical analysis. Each section begins with an orienting essay that explores its category. These introductory chapters include: i) an analysis of the construction of categories in academic literature; ii) an argument either advocating or critiquing scholarship carried out in that vein; and iii) an exploration of its implications for the study of religion. Each chapter is followed by four responses authored by scholars intentionally selected to highlight diverse contexts: subjects, fields, and methods. They extend the orienting essay's conclusions by offering novel analysis vis-a-vis their own scholarly expertise and subject matter. These chapters underscore instances of both congruence and difference to further refine our understanding of possible forms of critique relevant to each category.

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Komeda: A Private Life in Jazz is the biography of Krzysztof (Trzcinski) Komeda (1931-1969), composer of no fewer than 40 soundtracks, including film scores to all of Roman Polanski's early films such as Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby; and revered figure in the world of jazz, which regards his album, Astigmatic (released in 1966), as a key album in the history of European jazz. This biography of Komeda, originally published in Polish by Znak in 2018, the first to be published in the English language, not only traces Komeda's life, but also the development of Polish jazz during this period, showing how this arose in large part out of a need for self-expression and personal freedom during a repressive period of Soviet communist dominance. The book is full of interviews between the biographer and people who worked with and knew Krzysztof Komeda personally, and, while thoroughly-grounded in primary sources, it is written in a playful, questioning, engaging style.

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Animals pervade our lives, both today and in the past. From the smallest bug through pets and agricultural animals to elephants and blue whales, the animals themselves, animal-derived products and representations of animals can be found everywhere in our daily lives. This book focuses on the representations of animals in the past: How were animals represented in iconography, and how is the craftsperson interpreting animals within his or her own cultural context? What do the representations tell us about the role and function of both animals and the representations themselves? A series of papers explore these questions through images of animals. This is, for example, done by using technologies like 3D models to emphasize the dimensionality of objects, or through theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches that examine the intersection of the human and the animal. The papers challenge the notion of animals purely as objects, instead focusing on the many ways in which humans and animals interact. The importance of animals in all aspects of our lives means that the study of human-animal relations is an extremely relevant one both in the past and today. The papers take us on a journey through time and space, demonstrating exactly this relevance. Starting in the Neolithic and ending in the Medieval period, from the Mediterranean and Northern Europe through Siberia and the Baltic to the other side of the world in Australia, we have the privilege of encountering lions, horses, dogs, monkeys, birds, kangaroos and octopuses, among many other wonderful creatures. The book is an important and exciting contribution to the study of human-animal relations. It should be of interest to anyone working on this topic and the interpretation of images - both modern and ancient.

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Global Phenomenologies of Religion offers a new way of looking at the past, current and future trajectory of the study of religion. The phenomenology of religion was once widely acknowledged to be the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This book adds to our global understanding of the history of the study of religion. Interviews with scholars from ten different countries offer a lived history, covering more than half a century. The resulting picture is diverse and nuanced, revealing important national and regional differences, and challenging long-held views about the rise and decline of this venerable approach to the study of religion.

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Systemic Functional Linguistics is unique among linguistic theories in treating the concept of system as the central organising principle of language (and also of other semiotic systems, including context), most theories being focussed on syntagmatic structure. This book introduces the notion of system as the foundation of the systemic functional architecture of language, relating the general notion of system in systems thinking (holistic approaches) to the principle that language is organised as a system of systems (the polysystemic principle) and, by another step, to the technical sense of system in SFL as the basic category of paradigmatic patterning – i.e. the organisation of language as a resource for making meaning. The concept of system is then used to explore the emergence of complexity in language (within different semogenetic timeframes), to show how it is manifested in the organisation of all subsystems of language (the fractal principle), to illustrate the system at work in the development of language descriptions and in the process of text analysis, to reveal the power of the system in different areas of application, e.g. in computational modelling, in educational analysis and curriculum development, in multilingual and multimodal studies. Finally, challenges are identified e.g. in the relationship between the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic one, in the representation of logical iteration and interpersonal continua; and current and new opportunities are suggested.

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This book studies four self-initiated same-turn repair strategies in talk-in-interaction relative to each other, namely, recycling, replacement, insertion, and aborting. Based on a thorough analysis of a Hungarian corpus, as well as the previous results on another nine languages, a preference hierarchy model of repair operations is proposed that is able to interpret same-turn repair operations relative to each other. It reinterprets the relationship between the principle of intersubjectivity and the principle of progressivity in talk-in-interaction. Saying that the principle of maintaining progressivity also has an impact on the principle of maintaining intersubjectivity (not only vice versa), it supposes a two-way relationship between intersubjectivity and progressivity. It is found that the speakers' possible choices of repair operations relating to self-repair depend on at least three factors: the function of repair operations, the number of respects in which they override the preference for progressivity, and the morphosyntactic structure of the language used. This also highlights the interaction between grammar and pragmatics. Although the object theoretical background of the book is conversation analysis, the author attempts to show how the methodological apparatus of conversation analysis can be supplied by other methods in order to enhance the reliability of her results.

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Writing Better Essays, now in its second edition, is an authoritative but accessible guide to writing successful argumentative essays that combines classical approaches with practical advice tailored to contemporary students. Designed to be effective either in the classroom or for independent learning, the book will appeal students at all levels, ranging from advanced placement to post-graduate, its detailed explanations of key steps of the writing and editing process from conception through planning and execution ensuring that students will be able to create a coherent argumentative essay that features the classical circular and reiterative structure. The conversational style and tone of the book serves to give students much-needed confidence as they approach their writing, as does its extended explanation of the key skill of paragraphing and its commonsense advice on punctuation. Students should find that its extensive use of exercises, its well-chosen examples of good practice, and its emphasis on imitation makes it an ideal primary or secondary textbook for courses. Teachers of writing should appreciate the instructor’s guide at the beginning of the book as well as the consistent emphasis throughout on the need for students to commit themselves to practice and revision if they want to write effective argumentative essays.

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This book offers a comprehensive account of Systemic Functional Translation Studies (SFTS) - a research area that applies Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to study translation, and to relate researches by scholars in the community of both SFL and translation studies. The important trends as well as contributions in SFTS will be summarised. Various topics in SFTS will be covered in the six chapters of this book, including the basic issues and concepts in SFTS; the relationship between SFTS, the cognate functional approaches, translation studies and translation practice; SFTS and different modes of meaning; registerial variation and SFTS; technologies and SFTS as well as a future outlook on SFTS. The objectives of this book include to provide a comprehensive introduction to SFTS; to relate SFTS to translation studies; to summarise the important contributions and limitations of SFTS; and to offer directions for future researches in SFTS, reflecting on what is currently missing from the SFL theory.

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The Middle Way was first taught explicitly by the Buddha. It is the first teaching offered by the Buddha in his first address, and the basis of his practical method in meditation, ethics, and wisdom. It is often mentioned in connection with Buddhist teachings, yet the full case for its importance has not yet been made. This book aims to make that case. The Middle Way can be understood from the Buddha's life as well as his teachings. His early life follows a symbolic quest through the extremes of the Palace and the Forest, followed by the discovery of the Middle Way. His similes, such as the raft, the lute-strings, the arrow, and the blind people with the elephant are not just allegories of Buddhist teachings, but relate closely to the universal human experience of balanced judgement. This book also has a critical case. Although it has transmitted the Middle Way, the Buddhist tradition has also often ignored or distorted it. The Middle Way is experiential, authentic and creative, and thus threatening to the power of a tradition that has instead emphasised the Buddha's authority as a source of abstract, absolute revelation. The Buddha's Middle Waya aims to differentiate the universal Middle Way from Buddhist tradition.

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Data and Argumentation in Historical Pragmatics has two interrelated aims, one empirical and one theoretical. Its object-scientific aim is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the beginnings of a semantic change process in the grammaticalization of the medieval Catalan "anar 'go' + infinitive" construction, investigating it from a historical pragmatic perspective. Catalan is unique among Romance languages in that a purposive construction involving this motion verb achieves a perfective past meaning. This evolution is in contrast with the universal pathway of verbs meaning 'go' to grammaticalize into future markers in similar constructions, detected in several languages of the world. Although this volume discusses a micro-level study on a grammaticalization process which, according to the previous literature, does not fit any universal tendency hitherto revealed, it will hopefully also provide new information about the macro-level process of semantic change of motion verbs in general. The theoretical aim of the volume is to examine some methodological questions in historical pragmatics and contribute in this way to recent metalinguistic discussions on data, methods and argumentation in linguistics. Methodological issues have not only been present in historical pragmatics since the beginnings - their resolution is seen as a crucial factor which will determine the future of this linguistic sub-discipline.

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'Cultural mapping' has become a central keyword in the UNESCO strategy to protect natural and world cultural heritage, including music traditions. As a tool to increase the awareness of cultural diversity it transforms the concept of intangible cultural heritage to visible items by establishing multi-dimensional profiles of cultures and communities. Cultural mapping has been used as a resource for a variety of purposes as broad as the analysis of conflict points and peace building, adaptation to climate change, sustainability management, as well as heritage debates and management. Music has been playing a significant role in each of these aspects. As this theme has rarely been explored within ethnomusicology, this collection approaches the topic of cultural mapping from four different thematic perspectives: The book starts out with historical and methodological reflections on cultural mapping in ethnomusicology, followed by an exploration on possible relation between nature/ landscape (and definition of such) and music/ sound. How exactly is landscape interrelated with music - and identified (and vice versa)? The second half focuses more specifically on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. The articles not only address the broader political framework, but also thematic and geographic case studies of Intangible Cultural Heritage and music, as well as the pro of UNESCO's endeavours.

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This book is for anyone curious about the Bible: what it is, and what modern research reveals about it. Unlike most textbooks, it has no footnotes, avoids technical discussion as much as possible, and makes no assumptions about religious belief. Its aim is to introduce the contents a way that engages readers critically, and to persuade them that in a modern secular society this collection of ancient writings can still contribute to the way we think about history, philosophy and politics. It is a challenge to both those who regard it as `word of God' and those who dismiss it as obsolete or myth or irrelevant.

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Traditional concerns with classroom communication have centered on questions such as who talks more, whether the interaction is teacher-centered or student-centered, whether participation is restricted to a few or available to all, what kinds of questions teachers ask (display or referential), and what kinds of feedback they give. These indicators provide a simple and useful way of capturing classroom communication in distributional and categorical terms. Less attention has been devoted to observing and understanding the quality of this communication—whether it facilitates learning regardless of, for example, who talks more. Based on over a decade of fine-grained analysis of video-recorded ESL classroom interaction, this book offers one way of seeing and gauging the quality of classroom communication beyond distributions and categories. In particular, by parsing detailed transcripts of actual classroom interaction, it invites reflective conversations on how three principles of skillful classroom communication may be practiced in the micro-moments of classroom interaction: (1) fostering an inviting classroom environment, (2) attending to student voices, and (3) balancing competing demands (FAB). Attention to the moment-by-moment complexity of the classroom also allows teachers to learn and practice the skill of noticing, the first step in an iterative cycle of noticing, reflecting, and practicing. That is, along with reflecting on what happened in a classroom, teachers must also learn to notice what is happening in the moment. The goal is to cultivate a mentality of micro-reflection—one that sensitizes teachers to the consequentiality of every move they make as they make them in the simultaneity and sequentiality of second-by-second classroom interaction.

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The Collected Works of Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen covers more than 35 years of work by one of the world's leading scholars in the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) school. It examines the nature, functions and structure of human language from a number of points of view within the framework of contemporary scientific thought. The series is organized into a number of distinct topics that reinforce each other, and together constitute a coherent, cutting-edge body of theoretical and descriptive work. VOLUME 1 provides the foundation for the whole series of collected works, and includes chapters that serve as introduction of and summaries of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is concerned with the nature of systemic functional linguistics as theory, as framework and as a school of linguistics. It includes an overview of the organization or the architecture of language according to SFL and of the lexicogrammatical subsystem of language, and of Halliday's conception of language as a resource for making meaning. It is also concerned with the history and development of SFL. A new chapter written for this volume addresses the theme underpinning all chapters in the volume: the challenge of theorizing language. It introduces the metaphor of cartography, used by Matthiessen in his work on language, as a way of mapping linguistic theory, showing how all areas relate to one another.

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This volume brings together contributions to a key area of interest within the framework of systemic functional linguistics: the role of meaning in the lexicogrammar. A key figure in the debate on this role is Robin Fawcett who has long argued for a fully semantic lexicogrammar where the relevant systems are seen as representing `choices between meanings'. This volume, a festschrift in honour of Fawcett's long-standing contribution to the field, raises important questions related to lexicogrammatical meaning within systemic functional linguistics by examining the meaning-form interface, lexicogrammatical meaning in theme and transitivity, as well as lexis, intonation and its role in computational models. Importantly, discussions in the volume also explore the relationship between alternative approaches to systemic functional lexicogrammar, notably between the Hallidayan model and the Cardiff Grammar model developed primarily by Robin Fawcett.

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This book traces the trajectories of modern globalization since the late nineteenth century, and considers hegemonic cultural beliefs and practices during the various phases of the history of capitalism. It offers a way to study world popular music from the perspective of critical social theory. Moving chronologically, the book adopts the three phases in the history of capitalist hegemony since the nineteenth century-liberal, organized, and neoliberal capitalism-to consider world popular music in each of these cultural contexts. While capitalism is now everywhere, its history has been one borne out of racism and masculine hegemony. Early Europeanization and globalization have had a major impact upon western race/gender/sexuality/capitalist hegemony, while nascent technologies of capital have led to a renewed reification and exploitation of racialized, sexualized, and classed populations. This book offers a critique of the relationship between emergent capitalist formations and culture over the past hundred years. It explores the way that world popular music mediates economic, cultural, and ideological conditions, through which capitalism has been created in multiple and heterogeneous ways, understanding world popular music as the production of meaning through language and representation. The various dimensions considered in the book are the work of critical social science-a critique of capitalism's impact upon popular music in historical and world perspective. This book provides a powerful contemporary framework for contemporary popular music studies with a distinctive global and interdisciplinary awareness, covering empirical research from across the world in addition to well-established and newer theory from the music disciplines, social sciences, and humanities. It offers fresh conceptualizations about world popular music seen within the context of globalization, capitalism, and identity.

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When it became evident that the People's Republic of China (PRC) was on the verge of banning the Falun Gong movement, Li Hongzhi, the movement's founder, and his family escaped China, relocating permanently in the United States. Subsequently, the dramatic crackdown on Falun Gong in 1999 made international headlines. From the safety of his new home, Master Li encouraged his followers left behind in the PRC to vigorously demonstrate against the Chinese government, even if it meant imprisonment or even death. Further, Master Li actively discourages his followers from telling outsiders about his esoteric teachings; rather, he explicitly directs them to say that Falun Gong is just a peaceful spiritual exercise group being persecuted by the PRC. Not only has Falun Gong succeeded in propagating their side of the story in the media but the group will vigorously protest any news story that disagrees with their point of view. In more recent years, Falun Gong has attempted to silence critical scholars, including two of the contributors to the present volume. Enlightened Martyrdom: The Hidden Side of Falun Gong provides a comprehensive overview of Falun Gong: the movement's background, history, beliefs and practices. But whereas prior treatments have generally tended to downplay Falun Gong's 'dark side, ' in Enlightened Martyrdom, we have made an effort to include treatments of the less palatable aspects of this movement.

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Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) is widely recognized as one of the most important contributors to the study of religions at the beginning of the 20th century. His book, The Idea of the Holy, became something of a sensation in its time, and his account of numinous experience as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans had an effect that few other ideas in the study of religions have had. His vocabulary broke through narrow disciplinary bounds and was taken up by people in a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. However, since the 1960s, Otto has been increasingly overlooked and neglected. As thinkers and scholars have turned in many other intellectual directions, they have tended to see Otto as representative of a past to be rejected. This volume gathers together essays by scholars from a variety of perspectives - theology, religious studies, intellectual history, and various cultural studies - to address the question of what Otto's legacy for the 21st century might be. The first section of the volume addresses Otto's ideas and their contexts. Part Two turns to the area that Otto, more than any other German theologian or philosopher of religion, opened up: an engagement with the world of religions. Otto's influence, however, has never been confined to systematic religious thought and the study of religions. His ideas have resonated much more widely. Although it is impossible to treat this range of application completely, the essays in Part Three aim to provide a hint of this wider impact, in architecture (Britton), poetry (Furey), politics (Jerryson), and the contemporary world more generally (Lauster). This volume is not an attempt to revivify Otto, nor is it intended as a magisterial statement about Otto's significance today. Rather, it issues an invitation to those with an interest not just in religions but also in cultural phenomena more broadly to take another look at Rudolf Otto and his ideas. Perhaps they will find more than they expect, and something that they can use.

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The fabrication of groups as different, as other, often has significant consequences, including violence and discrimination. This volume focuses on the discourses that construct Islam in the aftermath of traumatic events and thus illustrates how academic analysis of the fabrication of difference can contribute significantly to public discourse. It centers on two critical analyses by accomplished scholars who have written publicly on the constructions of Islam and Muslims as others. Mayanthi Fernando analyzes the rhetoric surrounding French laicite (often translated as secularism) in the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, highlighting the ways the majority uses the language of laicite to diminish the presence of minorities. Aaron Hughes analyzes how scholars and others construct Islam in response to acts of violence attributed to people who identify with Islam, thus illustrating how critical academic analysis can contribute to the understanding of both the contestation and ideology behind groups such as ISIS. Ten early career scholars apply and extend the questions and approaches of these central essays in short reflections that apply these issues in new ways to other contexts (e.g., India, the United States, early Christianity) and topics (e.g., social issues in politics, religion vs. non-religion, nationalism, scholars in public discourse). The volume concludes with a substantive Afterword that broadens from these specific current events to present an extended analysis of the fabrication of difference and the ways recognizing these processes should influence our scholarship and our engagement with public discourse. In addressing the ways people construct difference and the Other, this volume, therefore, provides one answer to the question of the relevance of these fields in a period of both political challenge and internal critique of the assumption of the universality of academic research.

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Nonviolence is emerging as a topic of great interest in activist, academic and community settings. In particular, nonviolence is being recognized as a necessary component of constructive and sustainable social change. This book considers nonviolence in relationship to specific social, political, ecological and spiritual issues. Through case studies and examinations of social resistance, gender, the arts, and education, it provides specialists and non-specialists with a solid introduction to the importance and relevance of nonviolence in various contexts.Advancing Nonviolence and Social Transformation is organized into five sections. The first section is a set of essays on various historical and contemporary perspectives on nonviolence. The second section consists of essays on philosophical and theoretical explorations of the topic. The third and fourth sections expand the scope of nonviolence into the areas of thought and action, including Indigenous resistance, student protests, human trafficking, intimate partner violence and ecological issues. The final section takes nonviolence into the study of wonder, music, education and hope.The book will be useful to anyone working in the theories and practices of social change.

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This volume revisits the concepts of enchantment and sacralization in light of perspectives which challenge the modern notion that man (alone) is the measure of all things. As Bruno Latour has argued, the battle against superstition entailed shifting power away from God/the gods to humans, thereby disqualifying the agency of all the other objects in the world. Might enchantment and sacralization be understood in other ways than through this battle between almighty gods and almighty humans? Might enchantment be understood to involve processes where power and control are not distributed so clearly and definitely?Like social constructionists, Latour emphasizes that things are constructed; yet, like many other new materialists, such as Jane Bennett, Manuel De Landa and Karen Barad, he emphasizes that this construction is not the result of projecting meaning onto a passive and meaningless world, but a matter of compositional achievements, whereby assemblages of actants co-compose each other and frame, enable and delimit one another's agency.This move recognizes the active and entangled participation of players beyond the humans versus God(s) framework that informed the modernist project. Understanding enchantment and sacralisation as compositionally and relationally constructed does not mean the same as understanding them as constructed by humans alone. What it means is one of the main questions posed in this book. In other words, if enchantment and sacralization are not understood (solely) in terms of projecting anthropocentric meaning onto mute objects, what are some promising alternative approaches - old and new - and what are their implications for how we understand modernity and for method and theory in the study of religion?

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This volume builds on scholarship by scholars of African American religion that emphasizes the centrality of the body in religion and religious experience. The argument is grounded in Anthony Pinn's understanding of religion as an embodied quest for complex subjectivity, or push for more life meaning. But if Pinn's theory gets at what religion is, this volume picks up where he left off by giving careful consideration to religion's forms. It interrogates the embodied nature of the quest for complex subjectivity. Through placing different theories of the body in conversation with specific case studies that reflect the variety of ways in which bodies are entangled and engaged in struggles for life meaning, the authors argue that African American religion takes on various forms, including modes of cultural production as well as mundane, everyday rituals and practices. The volume expands current scholarship on African American religion and embodiment by going beyond an understanding of black religion as the "Black Church" and underscoring the variety of religious experiences, in both marginal religious traditions and in non-traditional forms of religion. The sustained and rigorous attention to theories of the body in this volume allows for a more robust understanding of what the body is and takes scholarship beyond the implicit understandings of the body as solely discursive. Finally, the approach is interdisciplinary. While grounded in Religious Studies, this book puts various theories and methodologies-from the social sciences to philosophy, and from visual studies to literary studies-in conversation with the religious experiences of African Americans.

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Human Communication across Cultures is a highly interactive textbook and workbook on how human communication takes place. Unlike other textbooks which focus only on sociolinguistics this book employs both sociolinguistics and pragmatics. Sociolinguistics explores how language is used in social interactions. There are differences in the way we speak due to where we live, gender, age, race/ethnicity, religious background and our social class and level of education. Pragmatics shows how we speak differently and understand one another in each situation we encounter. Each section of the book includes a brief introduction, a discussion of the topic, references for further research and an extensive collection of activities designed for both in-class usage and homework assignments. The book features numerous examples from a variety of current world cultures.

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Stag and Stone is a timely and innovative evaluation of the interdisciplinary dialogue between religious studies and archaeology. Investigating the core concepts of materiality, perception, ritual and agency, this volume redefines conceptual categories and argues for the need of ‘critical bewilderment’ as a unique scholarly practice. This study brings together recent developments in religious aesthetics, theoretical archaeology and cultural studies. Taking as its focus ‘troublesome’ objects and places—those deemed ambiguous in purpose and meaning—the case studies presented here contribute new knowledge to a range of areas, including the ontology of matter, agency of images, animal–human studies, and early medieval norse and insular material culture. Stag and Stone offers useful insights to upper level undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in the areas of heritage and cultural studies, theoretical archaeology, animal studies, religious studies and art history.

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Telepathy, thought transference, unconscious communication. While some important early psychological theorists such as William James, Frederic W. H. Myers and Sigmund Freud all agreed that the phenomenon exists, their theoretical approaches to it were very different. James's and Myers's interpretations of and experimental investigations into telepathy or thought transference were an inextricable part of their psychical researches. Freud's insistence on the reality of thought transference had nothing to do with psychical research or paranormal phenomena, which he largely repudiated. Thought transference for Freud was located in a theory of the unconscious that was radically different from the subliminal mind embraced by James and Myers. Today thought transference is most commonly described as unconscious communication but was largely ignored by subsequent generations of psychoanalysts until most recently. Nonetheless, the recognition of unconscious communication has persisted as a subterranean, quasi-spiritual presence in psychoanalysis to this day. As psychoanalysis becomes more interested in unconscious communication and develops theories of loosely boundaried subjectivities that open up to transcendent dimensions of reality, it begins to assume the features of a religious psychology. Thus, a fuller understanding of how unconscious communication resonates with mystical overtones may be more deeply clarified, articulated and elaborated in contemporary psychoanalysis in an explicit dialogue with psychoanalytically literate scholars of religion. In Legacies of the Occult Marsha Aileen Hewitt argues that some of the leading theorists of unconscious communication represent a 'mystical turn' that is infused with both a spirituality and a revitalized interest in paranormal experience that is far closer to James and Myers than to Freud.

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Semantics: A Cognitive Account of Linguistic Meaning is a comprehensive introduction to the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions in English: words and sentences. In conducting the analysis, it draws on two sources. First, it relies on the assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics, which describes language as being non-modular, symbolic, usage-based, meaningful and creative. Second, it hinges on the assumptions of Cognitive Semantics, which describes meaning as being embodied, motivated, dynamic, encyclopaedic and conceptualised. It explicates these assumptions clearly and applies them to diverse areas of language. Ultimately, it enables students to recognise the complexity of the English linguistic system, and trains them to solve the intricate puzzles characterising its nature.

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This volume provides a composite of contemporary Sufi involvement in politics using a range of approaches and disciplines. It explores the role of Sufi-related parties where they exist or are emerging. It also examines how parties that condemn Sufism have adopted aspects of Sufi organization and practice. Changes in views within the academy on politics and Sufism are discussed. Perspectives on Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia are included as are overviews of Sufism's political dimension across various regions.Contributions in the volume seek answer questions such as: Where Sufi related parties exist, what policies do they propose, and how do they differ from those of Islamist parties? How would "law" be understood? What is the relationship between secular and Sufi ideas about the role of religion in society? How do Sufi views about how to structure the state in Muslim majority space differ from alternatives? Are Sufis more likely to support democracy?

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Whether as a historian finding solutions to unresolved problems or as a scientist finding the causes for events and actions, Luther Martin's primary focus has been to get to the roots of the religious impulse in human existence. This collection of essays from scholars of his own generation and from his best students cover the three major strands of his work: the Greco-Roman world, cognitive science approaches to explaining religious phenomena and methodological issues in the academic study of religions. The contributions build on the work of Luther Martin and further the ongoing discussion and debate within these areas of religious studies.

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Divine Covenant explores the Qur’anic concept of divine knowledge through scientific, theoretical paradigms – in particular natural law theory – and their relationship with seven Islamic scholarly disciplines: linguistics, hadith, politics, history, exegesis, jurisprudence, theology. By comparing scholarship within these disciplines with current state-of-the-art, the study shows how the Qur’anic concept of divine Covenant reflects natural law theory, relates to a range of other legal, political, and linguistic Qur’anic concepts, informs the canon’s entire literary structure, and has implications for a new, legal theory of ‘Islamic origins’. The book makes the case that the Islamic disciplines share political economy, institutional framework, and decisive theoretical topics with the Qur’an. The latter include the natural law-related issues of human rights, constitutional separation of powers, and social contract. The book surveys the scholarly deliberations of these topics within the parameters of each discipline and in changing contexts. In addition, consequences of the modern nation-state institutional order for early modern and contemporary Qur’anic studies are mapped. It is argued that the early and medieval Islamic disciplines offer scientifically valuable knowledge because they refer to the same institutional framework as the Qur’an. The disciplines are also important parts of European political history, where they have inspired social contract theory inclusive of diverse religious identities.

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The sky forms fifty percent of our visual world and has a voice across cultures. This complex sky-voice contains great diversity and is informed by human images, dreams, and aspirations. The inherent nature of this sky-voice is transmitted from one generation to another through text, image, oral tradition, physical mapping, and painted description. This volume is written by some of the most noted scholars in their fields of British history, history of art, social anthropology, Greek horoscopes and narratology, globe cartography, comets and Irish mythology, western astronomy, Australian aboriginal sky astronomy and mythology, and cultural astronomy and astrology. These scholars acknowledge the presence of such a voice, in the sky's movement mirrored in the archoeastronomy of British prehistory, the apocalyptic myths of comets and meteors, the sky cartography reflected in European globes and frescoes, the Australian aboriginal sky myths, the issue of disappearing dark skies, and in contemporary reflections on the sky. It recognises that sky imagery has persisted in similar forms since its potential roots in the Palaeolithic period.These eleven essays offer critical engagement in understanding the sky in human imagination and culture and contribute to the new fields of cultural astronomy and skyscapes, the role and importance of the sky in the interpretation of cultures, emerging within the academy.

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The sky forms fifty percent of our visual world and has a voice across cultures. This complex sky-voice contains great diversity and is informed by human images, dreams, and aspirations. The inherent nature of this sky-voice is transmitted from one generation to another through text, image, oral tradition, physical mapping, and painted description. This volume is written by some of the most noted scholars in their fields of British history, history of art, social anthropology, Greek horoscopes and narratology, globe cartography, comets and Irish mythology, western astronomy, Australian aboriginal sky astronomy and mythology, and cultural astronomy and astrology. These scholars acknowledge the presence of such a voice, in the sky's movement mirrored in the archoeastronomy of British prehistory, the apocalyptic myths of comets and meteors, the sky cartography reflected in European globes and frescoes, the Australian aboriginal sky myths, the issue of disappearing dark skies, and in contemporary reflections on the sky. It recognises that sky imagery has persisted in similar forms since its potential roots in the Palaeolithic period.These eleven essays offer critical engagement in understanding the sky in human imagination and culture and contribute to the new fields of cultural astronomy and skyscapes, the role and importance of the sky in the interpretation of cultures, emerging within the academy.

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Creativity and Writing Pedagogy offers a unique view of creative practices and pedagogy in writing from the perspective of writing teachers, creativity researchers and scholars, and writers themselves. The volume, collected and edited by a poet and a scholar who are both involved in the teaching of writing, seeks to bridge between the creative writing and the academic writing communities in building a case for creativity as central to all writing programs and showcasing creative practices in writing. With this goal in mind, the book combines a practical emphasis on creativity in writing pedagogy and curriculum with research and reflections on writing practices. The collection should be of interest to all writers and teachers of writing who want to expand their knowledge of creativity and creative practices in writing and the teaching of writing.

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The second edition of this highly regarded textbook is designed to introduce students at the tertiary level to both Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. It develops critical analytical skills by rooting analysis in SFL methodology so that students can learn to analyze a range of discourse types. Each chapter builds a methodological foundation for the development of critical discourse analytical skills. SFL provides novice analysts with a rich set of resources for CDA and equips them to better reflect on what language is doing and why. The Power of Language offers explanations along with a range of sample analyses to illustrate theory and provide applications of the methodologies introduced in each chapter. Students not only learn by studying a number of analyses but carry out their own analytical work on other samples, thus gaining experience. Each chapter also includes examples of analyses by well know researchers so that novice analysts become familiar with various approaches to analysis.This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout and features an expanded first chapter on language and international conflict, a new second chapter focusing on language and political fear, an expanded chapter on multimodal communication and an entirely new chapter on language and social media. Other chapters have been updated with new sample analyses and activities.

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The world of religious experience is changing much faster than the discipline which claims to study it. Religious studies still uses Christianity as its measure, still frames the world through the model of five world religions, still largely avoids analysis of key issues around power, poverty, violence, pollution, science, and social conflict, and still looks to highlight differences rather than commonalities. Methods for the Study of Religious Change aims to redefine the study of religion as the study of worldviews, of ideas which are active in shaping the world. It argues that the study of religion should focus on people's worldview-making capacities and should contribute to the critical analysis of global problems and the promotion of cultural and spiritual respect across religions. Survey chapters on theory and method outline this new approach while case-study chapters illustrate these ideas with innovative ethnographies of ritual, experience, language, morals and identity.

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Keith Jarrett is one of the great pianists of our times. Before achieving worldwide fame for his solo improvisations, he had already collaborated with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. His ‘Köln Concert’ album (1975) has now sold around four million copies and become the most successful solo recording in jazz history. His interpretations of the music of Bach, Händel, Bartók or Shostakovich, have also received much attention in later years. Jarrett is considered difficult and inaccessible, and has often abandoned the stage during his concerts due to restless audiences or disturbing photographers. Few writers have come as close to Keith Jarrett as Wolfgang Sandner, who has not only closely followed Jarrett’s remarkable career from the 1960s, but has also had the opportunity to visit him in his home in the United States. For this biography, which is full of detailed musical analysis and cross-references to other artistic genres, Sandner has collected new information about Jarrett’s family background, much of which is thanks to the translator, Keith Jarrett’s youngest brother Chris. The book explores Jarrett’s work with other musicians, in particular the members of his American and European Quartets and his Standards Trio, it charts the development of his solo concerts, and it also investigates his work in the classical sphere, as well as the highly original music he has created in his own home studio. It also covers his associations with his various record labels and producers, notably his unparalleled relationship with ECM and its founder Manfred Eicher. This English edition is a significantly extended and updated version of the German original.

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