Search results for ""Author Kind"

In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.

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The Life and Poetry of Manoah Bodman reconstructs the poetry of Manoah Bodman, an important early American poet whose poems have not appeared in over a century and a half. Bodman, considered "a man of great eccentricity," regularly delivered orations in New England towns during the Second Great Awakening of the late nineteenth century. He published two broadsides, two booklets, and one book, all filled with depictions of verbal communication with visions of various kinds possibly brought about by epileptic seizures. Despite his long-winded, turgid prose, Bodman's poems are curiously modern in their diction. He wrote in an ejaculatory manner not seen in America until Emily Dickinson's work was published seventy-five years later, and more idiomatic than anyone else's in America until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. Bodman's inspiration was far less literary than experiential, providing a link between the work of Edward Taylor and Walt Whitman in the chain of the Transcendentalists. Lewis Turco brings together Bodman's curiously modern poems here for the first time, while providing an understanding of his life and family.

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Perfect for fans of Pixar's The Incredibles, Almost Super is a fresh, funny middle grade adventure about two brothers in a family of superheroes who must find a way to be heroic despite receiving powers that are total duds. Filled with humor, heart, and just the right kind of heroics, Almost Super is a winning story that will satisfy would-be heroes and regular kids alike. Everyone over the age of twelve in the Bailey family gets a superpower. No one knows why, and no one questions it. All the Baileys know is that it's their duty to protect the world from the evil, supervillainous Johnson family. *shake fists* But when Rafter Bailey and his brother Benny get their superpowers, they're, well ...super-lame. Rafter can strike matches on polyester, and Benny can turn his innie belly button into an outie. Along with Rafter's algebra class nemesis, Juanita Johnson, Rafter and Benny realize that what they thought they knew about superheroes and supervillains may be all wrong. And it's up to the three of them to put asides their differences and make things right. They may not have great powers, but together, they're almost super.

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First modern text and English translation of an important Anglo-Saxon poem dealing with the liturgical year. WINNER of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists 2017 Publication Prize: Best Edition The late tenth-century Old English Metrical Calendar (traditionally known as Menologium) summarises, in the characteristicheroic diction and traditional metre of Old English poetry, the major course of the Anglo-Saxon liturgical year. It sets out, in a methodical structure based on the basic temporal framework of the solar/natural year, the locations of the major feasts widely observed in late Anglo-Saxon England. Such a work could have been a practical timepiece for reading the dates of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for which it serves as a kind of prologue in the manuscript.The clearly domestic perspective of the poem, which fits in the manuscript context, is also noteworthy, while the poem also reveals various interesting characteristics in its grammar, vocabulary and prosody. This is the firstfull modern edition of the poem, and is accompanied by a facing translation. The introduction provides an extensive discussion of matter, content, style, and context, while the commentary offers further information. The volume also includes the texts and translations of a number of analogous works.

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A step-by-step guide to creating a successful marketing plan: from carrying out a marketing audit, setting objectives and devising budgets to writing, presenting and implementing the plan. How to Write a Marketing Plan includes advice on producing mini-plans and the most current information on email marketing, web usage, mobile commerce and social media. This 7th edition now features even more practical exercises, useful templates, and top tips to help you develop this all-important business skill. Including helpful chapter summaries and a detailed sample marketing plan, it is essential reading for anyone who wants to boost their product or business. The Creating Success series of books... Unlock vital skills, power up your performance and get ahead with the bestselling Creating Success series. Written by experts for new and aspiring managers and leaders, this million-selling collection of accessible and empowering guides will get you up to speed in no time. Packed with clever thinking, smart advice and the kind of winning techniques that really get results, you'll make fast progress, quickly reach your goals and create lasting success in your career.

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Digital objects, in their simplest form, are data. They are also a new kind of industrial object that pervades every aspect of our life today—as online videos, images, text files, e-mails, blog posts, Facebook events.Yet, despite their ubiquity, the nature of digital objects remains unclear.On the Existence of Digital Objects conducts a philosophical examination of digital objects and their organizing schema by creating a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, which Yuk Hui contextualizes within the history of computing. How can digital objects be understood according to individualization and individuation? Hui pursues this question through the history of ontology and the study of markup languages and Web ontologies; he investigates the existential structure of digital objects within their systems and milieux. With this relational approach toward digital objects and technical systems, the book addresses alienation, described by Simondon as the consequence of mistakenly viewing technics in opposition to culture.Interdisciplinary in philosophical and technical insights, with close readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Simondon as well as the history of computing and the Web, Hui’s work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data and metadata that increasingly define our world.

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Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, Jeff Menne argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, Menne reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1970) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, Menne illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family--and how his studio American Zoetrope came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.

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We often say that music is ineffable, that it does not refer to anything outside of itself. But if music, in all its sensuous flux, does not mean anything in particular, might it still have a special kind of philosophical significance? In Deep Refrains, Michael Gallope draws together the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Vladimir Jankelevitch, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari in order to revisit the age-old question of music's ineffability from a modern perspective. For these nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophers, music's ineffability is a complex phenomenon that engenders an intellectually productive sense of perplexity. Through careful examination of their historical contexts and philosophical orientations, close attention to their use of language, and new interpretations of musical compositions that proved influential for their work, Deep Refrains forges the first panoptic view of their writings on music. Gallope concludes that music's ineffability is neither a conservative phenomenon nor a pious call to silence. Instead, these philosophers ask us to think through the ways in which music's stunning force might address, in an ethical fashion, intricate philosophical questions specific to the modern world.

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What kind of literature is the Talmud? To answer this question, Daniel Boyarin looks to an unlikely source: the dialogues of Plato. In these ancient texts he finds similarities, both in their combination of various genres and topics and in their dialogic structure. But Boyarin goes beyond these structural similarities, arguing also for a cultural relationship. In "Socrates and the Fat Rabbis", Boyarin suggests that both the Platonic and the Talmudic dialogues are not dialogic at all. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of represented dialogue and real dialogism, Boyarin demonstrates, through multiple close readings, that the give-and-take in these texts is actually much closer to a monologue in spirit. At the same time, he shows that there is a dialogism in both texts on a deeper structural level between a voice of philosophical or religious dead seriousness and a voice from within that mocks that very high solemnity. Boyarin ultimately singles out Menippean satire as the most important genre through which to understand both the Talmud and Plato, emphasizing their seriocomic peculiarity. An innovative advancement in rabbinic studies, as well as a bold and controversial new way of reading Plato, "Socrates and the Fat Rabbis" makes a major contribution to scholarship on thought and culture of the ancient Mediterranean.

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In the social sciences today, students are taught theory by reading and analyzing the works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and other foundational figures of the discipline. What they rarely learn, however, is how to actually theorize. The Art of Social Theory is a practical guide to doing just that. In this one-of-a-kind user's manual for social theorists, Richard Swedberg explains how theorizing occurs in what he calls the context of discovery, a process in which the researcher gathers preliminary data and thinks creatively about it using tools such as metaphor, analogy, and typology. He guides readers through each step of the theorist's art, from observation and naming to concept formation and explanation. To theorize well, you also need a sound knowledge of existing social theory. Swedberg introduces readers to the most important theories and concepts, and discusses how to go about mastering them. If you can think, you can also learn to theorize. This book shows you how. Concise and accessible, The Art of Social Theory features helpful examples throughout, and also provides practical exercises that enable readers to learn through doing.

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There are few areas of London that have changed in recent decades as much as the dockside areas of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. As the importance of London as a shipping port declined in the post-war years many of the city's docklands began to see changes. In Bermondsey and Rotherhithe almost the whole of the riverside was once devoted to the unloading and loading of goods of all kinds from ships that arrived from all over the world.The goods were stored in the gigantic warehouses that lined the rover and factories, with famous names, grew up to process them close to where they were unshipped and stored. To service and maintain the port industries a multitude of workers and their families lived and worked in the often cramped and narrow streets that ran around and between the port buildings.This book recalls the days when these communities were at the heart of British commerce and industry, and covers particularly the years from between the wars to a decade of two after the Second World War. Drawing on the excellent collection of photographs and memorabilia held in Southwark Local Studies Library, Stephen Humphrey reveals the sights and sounds of an industrial heritage that is now all but gone and an area that is now the scene of major redevelopment.

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This book introduces the reader to the C++ programming language and how to use it to write applications in quantitative finance (QF) and related areas. No previous knowledge of C or C++ is required -- experience with VBA, Matlab or other programming language is sufficient. The book adopts an incremental approach; starting from basic principles then moving on to advanced complex techniques and then to real-life applications in financial engineering. There are five major parts in the book: C++ fundamentals and object-oriented thinking in QF Advanced object-oriented features such as inheritance and polymorphism Template programming and the Standard Template Library (STL) An introduction to GOF design patterns and their applications in QF Applications The kinds of applications include binomial and trinomial methods, Monte Carlo simulation, advanced trees, partial differential equations and finite difference methods. This book includes a companion website with all source code and many useful C++ classes that you can use in your own applications. Examples, test cases and applications are directly relevant to QF. This book is the perfect companion to Daniel J. Duffy’s book Financial Instrument Pricing using C++ (Wiley 2004, 0470855096 / 9780470021620)

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How does a so-called bad neighborhood go about changing its reputation? Is it simply a matter of improving material conditions or picking the savviest marketing strategy? What kind of role can or should the arts play in that process? Does gentrification always entail a betrayal of a neighborhood's roots? Tackling these questions and offering a fresh take on the dynamics of urban revitalization, "The Philadelphia Barrio" examines one neighborhood's fight to erase the stigma of devastation. Frederick F. Wherry shows how, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Centro de Oro, entrepreneurs and community leaders forged connections between local businesses and cultural institutions to rebrand a place once nicknamed the Badlands. Artists and performers negotiated with government organizations and national foundations, Wherry reveals, and took to local galleries, stages, storefronts, and street parades in a concerted, canny effort to reanimate the spirit of their neighborhood. Complicating our notions of neighborhood change by exploring the ways the process is driven by local residents, "The Philadelphia Barrio" presents a nuanced look at how city dwellers can make commercial interests serve the local culture, rather than exploit it.

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Step-by-step guidance for board members and executives on preventing and detecting accounting fraud In the wake of highly publicized allegations of accounting irregularities and fraudulent financial reporting that are shaking up today's corporate community, Financial Fraud Prevention and Detection provides a step-by-step guide to how these crises can envelop a company and how to prevent them from happening in the first place. It is written for almost everyone involved: outside directors, audit committee members, senior executives, CFOs, CPAs, in-house lawyers, and outside law firms. Provides a blueprint for Fraud Prevention and Detection for corporate executives Presents step-by-step guidance to corporate boards and C-suite executives on managing the threat of accounting fraud Prepares directors and executives for the possibility of accounting irregularities Answers the question of how accounting fraud starts—and grows With solid strategies for prevention of accounting fraud as well as a process to follow when fraud has been discovered, Financial Fraud Prevention and Detection vividly explores the corporate environment that causes fraud, how it spreads, the kind of crises it can create for a company, and the best ways to deal with it.

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Gilmore Girls meets vibrant New Delhi in this thoughtful and hilarious new novel about a teen facing family expectations, relationship complications, and hidden secrets in a new country—sprinkled with Sheba Karim’s signature wit and steamy romance, and perfect for readers who loved Mary H. K. Choi’s Emergency Contact and Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay. To cure her post-senior year slump, made worse by the loss of her aunt Sonia, Noreen decides to follow her mom on a gap year trip to New Delhi, hoping India can lessen her grief and bring her voice back.In the world’s most polluted city, Noreen soon meets kind, handsome Kabir, who introduces her to the wonders of this magical, complicated place. With the help of Kabir—plus Bollywood celebrities, fourteenth-century ruins, karaoke parties, and Sufi saints—Noreen discovers new meanings for home. But when a family scandal erupts, Noreen and Kabir must face complex questions in their own relationship: What does it mean to truly stand by someone—and what are the boundaries of love?

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Information overload, the shallows, weapons of mass distraction, the googlization of minds: countless commentators condemn the flood of images and information that dooms us to a pathological attention deficit. In this new book, cultural theorist Yves Citton goes against the tide of these standard laments to offer a new perspective on the problem of attention in the digital age. Phrases like �paying attention� and �investing one�s attention� attest to our mistaken belief that attention can be conceptualized in narrow economic terms. We are constantly drawn towards attempts to quantify and commodify attention, even down to counting the number of 'likes' a picture receives on Facebook or a video on YouTube. By contrast, Citton argues that we should conceptualize attention as a kind of ecology and examine how the many different environments to which we are exposed – from advertising to literature, search engines to performance art – condition our attention in different ways. In a world where the demands on our attention are ever-increasing, this timely and original book will be of great interest to students and scholars in media and communications and in literary and cultural studies, and to anyone concerned about the long-term consequences of the profusion of images as well as digital content in the age of the internet.

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Find—and land—your first job! Finding a job can seem daunting, especially when it's a brand new experience. There's a lot to know, and often a lot of pressure. Written by the founder of AfterCollege.com, Getting Your First Job For Dummies is designed to take the stress out of the job search process and help you get an offer. In this book, you'll discover how to identify your talents and strengths, use your network to your advantage, interview with confidence, and evaluate an offer. Written in plain English and packed with step-by-step instructions, it'll have you writing customized resumes, conducting company research, and utilizing online job search sites, faster than you can say 'I got the job!' Determine what kind of job suits your interests and skills Write a compelling cover letter Know what to expect in an interview Effectively negotiate an offer Whether you're still in school or navigating the world as a recent graduate, Getting Your First Job For Dummies arms you with the skills and confidence to make getting your first job an exciting and enjoyable process.

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Finalist for 2010 LGBT Anthology Award from the Lambda Literary Awards Unwed teen mothers, abortion, masturbation, pornography, gay marriage, sex trafficking, homosexuality, and HIV are just a few in a long line of issues that have erupted into panics. These sexual panics spark moral crusades and campaigns, defining and shaping how we think about sexual and reproductive rights. The essays in Moral Panics, Sex Panics focus on case studies ranging from sex education to AIDS to race and the "down low," to illustrate how sexuality is at the heart of many political controversies. The contributors also reveal how moral and sexual panics have become a mainstay of certain kinds of conservative efforts to win elections and gain power in moral, social, and political arenas. Moral Panics, Sex Panics provides new and important insights into the role that key moral panics have played in social processes, arguing forcefully against the political abuse of sex panics and for the need to defend full sexual and reproductive rights. Contributors: Cathy J. Cohen, Diane DiMauro, Gary W. Dowsett, Janice M. Irvine, Carole Joffe, and Saskia Eleonora Wieringa.

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In the mid-1800s a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums - many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. "Theaters of Madness" explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum's place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity.Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture - from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare - into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement. Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, "Theaters of Madness" prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.

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What do we mean when call something a lyric poem? How many kinds of lyric are there? Are there fewer now than there were in 1920 or 1820 or 1620? The purpose of Forms of Late Modernist Lyric is to show that our oldest styles of poetic articulation – the elegy, the ode, the hymn – have figured all too briefly in modern genealogies of lyric, and that they have proved especially seductive, curiously enough, to avant-garde practitioners in the Anglophone tradition. The poets in question – Jorie Graham, Frank O’Hara, Michael Haslam, J. H. Prynne, Claudia Rankine, and others – have thickened the texture of lyric practice at a time when the growing tendency in critical circles has been to dissolve points of difference within the genre itself. The broader aim of this volume is to demonstrate that experimental poets since 1945 have not always been rebarbative and anti-traditional, but rather that their recourse to familiar forms and shapes of thought should prompt us to reconsider late modernism as a crucial phase in the evolving history of lyric.CONTRIBUTORS: Ruth Abbott, Edward Allen, Gareth Farmer, Fiona Green, Drew Milne, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Sophie Read, Matthew Sperling, Esther Osorio Whewell, John Wilkinson

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The goal of this book is to describe new concepts for Internet next generation. This architecture is based on virtual networking using Cloud and datacenters facilities. Main problems concern 1) the placement of virtual resources for opening a new network on the fly, and 2) the urbanisation of virtual resource implemented on physical network equipment. This architecture deals with mechanisms capable of controlling automatically the placement of all virtual resources within the physical network. In this book, we describe how to create and delete virtual networks on the fly. Indeed, the system is able to create any new network with any kind of resource (e.g., virtual switch, virtual routers, virtual LSRs, virtual optical path, virtual firewall, virtual SIP-based servers, virtual devices, virtual servers, virtual access points, and so on). We will show how this architecture is compatible with new advances in SDN (Software Defined Networking), new high-speed transport protocol like TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) and LISP (Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol), NGN, IMS, Wi-Fi new generation, and 4G/5G networks. Finally, we introduce the Cloud of security and the virtualisation of secure elements (smartcard) that should definitely transform how to secure the Internet.

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From Langston Hughes's lynch poems to Sylvia Plath's father elegies, modern poetry has tried to find a language of mourning in an age of mass death, religious doubt and forgotten ritual. For this reason, Jahan Ramazani argues, the elegy, one of the most ancient of poetic genres, has remained one of the most vital to modern poets. Through readings of elegies, self-elegies, war poems and the blues, Ramazani aims to enrich our critical understanding of a wide range of poets, including Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney. He also interprets the signal contributions to the American family elegy of Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Adrienne Rich, Michael Harper and Amy Clampitt. Finally, he suggests analogies between the elegy and other kinds of contemporary mourning art - in particular, the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Grounded in genre theory and in the psychoanalysis of mourning, Ramazani's readings also draw on various historical, formal and feminist critical approaches. This book is intended for anyone concerned with the psychology of mourning or the history of modern poetry.

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This spiritual manifesto by one of the world’s most popular Christian writers provides a guide to living and praying the Psalms that will encourage you commune with God as Jesus did. Tom Wright makes a passionate case for putting the Psalms back at the centre of Christian prayer and worship. From the Introduction: 'I have decided, as a kind of thought-experiment, to order the material in three sections. The Psalms invite their singers, as they always have, to live at the crossroads of time, space and matter. This book explores what happens at this crossing-point.' 'Tom Wright is one of the great biblical commentators of our day, whose writing on the Bible will stand the test of time.' Amy Boucher Pye in Woman Alive 'In this incisive and fresh look at the book of Psalms, Wright invites us to enter an alternative world-view that the Psalms embody. Let this book lead you to the Psalms - but beware, it's the wardrobe door into a new world order.' Scot McKnight 'A characteristic blend of learning, personal insight and spiritual perception. This book will be of enormous help to Christians who want to know how to make fuller use of one of the greatest scriptural resources for prayer.' Rowan Williams 'Truly masterful.' The Furrow

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Little fascinates New Yorkers more than doormen, who know far more about tenants than tenants know about them. Doormen know what their tenants eat, what kind of movies they watch, whom they spend time with, whether they drink too much, and whether they have kinky sex. But if doormen are unusually familiar with their tenants, they are also socially very distant. In "Doormen," Peter Bearman untangles this unusual dynamic to reveal the many ways that tenants and doormen negotiate their complex relationship. Combining observation, interviews, and survey information, "Doormen" provides a deep and enduring ethnography of the occupational role of doormen, the dynamics of the residential lobby, and the mundane features of highly consequential social exchanges between doormen and tenants. Here, Bearman explains why doormen find their jobs both boring and stressful, why tenants feel anxious about how much of a Christmas bonus their neighbors give, and how everyday transactions small and large affect tenants' professional and informal relationships with doormen. In the daily life of the doorman resides the profound, and this book provides a brilliant account of how tenants and doormen interact within the complex world of the lobby.

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Since the 1930s, the Walt Disney Company has produced characters, images, and stories that have captivated audiences around the world. How can we understand the appeal of Disney products? What is it about the Disney phenomenon that attracts so many children, as well as adults? In this updated second edition, with new examples provided throughout, Janet Wasko examines the processes by which the Disney company – one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world – continues to manufacture the fantasies that enthrall millions. She analyses the historical expansion of the Disney empire into the twenty-first century, examines the content of Disney’s classic and more recent films, cartoons and TV programs and discusses how they are produced, considering how some of the same techniques have been applied to the Disney theme parks. She also discusses the reception (and sometimes, reinterpretation) of Disney products by different kinds of audiences. By looking at the Disney phenomenon from a variety of perspectives, she provides an updated and comprehensive overview of one of the most significant media and cultural institutions of our time. This important book by a leading scholar of the entertainment industries will be of great interest to students in media and cultural studies, as well as a broader readership of Disney fans.

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Adaptive filtering is a branch of digital signal processing which enables the selective enhancement of desired elements of a signal and the reduction of undesired elements. Change detection is another kind of adaptive filtering for non-stationary signals, and is the basic tool in fault detection and diagnosis. This text takes the unique approach that change detection is a natural extension of adaptive filtering, and the broad coverage encompasses both the mathematical tools needed for adaptive filtering and change detection and the applications of the technology. Real engineering applications covered include aircraft, automotive, communication systems, signal processing and automatic control problems. The unique integration of both theory and practical applications makes this book a valuable resource combining information otherwise only available in separate sources Comprehensive coverage includes many examples and case studies to illustrate the ideas and show what can be achieved Uniquely integrates applications to airborne, automotive and communications systems with the essential mathematical tools Accompanying Matlab toolbox available on the web illustrating the main ideas and enabling the reader to do simulations using all the figures and numerical examples featured This text would prove to be an essential reference for postgraduates and researchers studying digital signal processing as well as practising digital signal processing engineers.

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Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning for Decision Making There are always difficulties in making machines that learn from experience. Complete information is not always available—or it becomes available in bits and pieces over a period of time. With respect to systemic learning, there is a need to understand the impact of decisions and actions on a system over that period of time. This book takes a holistic approach to addressing that need and presents a new paradigm—creating new learning applications and, ultimately, more intelligent machines. The first book of its kind in this new and growing field, Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning for Decision Making focuses on the specialized research area of machine learning and systemic machine learning. It addresses reinforcement learning and its applications, incremental machine learning, repetitive failure-correction mechanisms, and multiperspective decision making. Chapters include: Introduction to Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning Fundamentals of Whole-System, Systemic, and Multiperspective Machine Learning Systemic Machine Learning and Model Inference and Information Integration Adaptive Learning Incremental Learning and Knowledge Representation Knowledge Augmentation: A Machine Learning Perspective Building a Learning System With the potential of this paradigm to become one of the more utilized in its field, professionals in the area of machine and systemic learning will find this book to be a valuable resource.

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Between 1815 and the Duke of Wellington's death in 1852, the Battle of Waterloo became much more than simply a military victory. While other countries marked the battle and its anniversary, only Britain actively incorporated the victory into their national identity, guaranteeing that it would become a ubiquitous and multi-layered presence in British culture. By examining various forms of commemoration, celebration, and recreation, Who Owned Waterloo? demonstrates that Waterloo's significance to Britain's national psyche resulted in a different kind of war altogether: one in which civilian and military groups fought over and established their own claims on different aspects of the battle and its remembrance. By weaponizing everything from memoirs, monuments, rituals, and relics to hippodramas, panoramas, and even shades of blue, veterans pushed back against civilian claims of ownership; English, Scottish, and Irish interests staked their claims; and conservatives and radicals duelled over the direction of the country. Even as ownership was contested among certain groups, large portions of the British population purchased souvenirs, flocked to spectacles and exhibitions, visited the battlefield itself, and engaged in a startling variety of forms of performative patriotism, guaranteeing not only the further nationalization of Waterloo, but its permanent place in nineteenth century British popular and consumer culture.

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For the past fifty years anxiety over the problem of naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side pursues the idea of social science as another kind of natural science, while the other radically rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. All of the various developments in social scientific theory since then have reflected this dichotomy between naturalism and post-modernism. "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" suggests a third way, reframing this debate and offering a synthetic vision that sets out a new understanding of sociological interpretation. Analyzing the work of writers such as Theda Skocpol, Clifford Geertz, Leela Gandhi, Roy Bhaskar, Foucault, and Habermas, Isaac Ariail Reed delineates three epistemic modes of social research: realism, normativism, and interpretivism. Reed argues that the last mode provides a way forward for an anti-naturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena. Both an examination of and a theoretical meditation on how social investigators do their work, "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" is an ingenious and fruitful exploration of what makes the human sciences uniquely capable of revealing and explaining our world.

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Ecologists, although they acknowledge the problems involved, generally conduct their research on too few species, in too small an area, over too short a period of time. In The Balance of Nature?, a work sure to stir controversy, the distinguished theoretical ecologist Stuart L. Pimm argues that ecology therefore fails in many ways to address the enormous ecological problems now facing our planet. Ecologists describing phenomena on larger scales often use terms like "stability," "balance of nature," and "fragility," and Pimm begins by considering the various specific meanings of these terms. He addresses five kinds of ecological stability--stability in the strict sense, resilience, variability, persistence, and resistance--and shows how they provide ways of comparing natural populations and communities as well as theories about them. Each type of stability depends on characteristics of the species studied and also on the structure of the food web in which the species is embedded and the physical features of the environment. The Balance of Nature? provides theoretical ecology with a rich array of questions--questions that also underpin pressing problems in practical conservation biology. Pimm calls for nothing less than new approaches to ecology and a new alliance between theoretical and empirical studies.

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The wholesome summer fun continues in the third book of the Summer Lifeguards series! Selena knows she'll be an actress one day, and she's pretty sure her showbiz enthusiasm will help her tackle all her problems…or will it?Junior Lifeguards basic training isn't for wimps. Thirteen-year-old aspiring actress Selena Diaz learns this the hard way during her first week of training. Along with best pals Jenna, Piper, and Ziggy, Selena is just getting her feet wet as a lifeguard trainee and the going is tough.What's worse, she's also dealing with a new job, swim lessons, a show-tunes singing math tutor, and a haughty neighbor who's also kind of her boss. Meanwhile, they soon discover that a real Hollywood star is shining brightly in their midst—right here on the Cape!It's going take all of Selena's showbiz enthusiasm to tackle her busiest summer ever.The third book in the Summer Lifeguard series featuring:Strong female friendshipThe challenges middle schoolers face and overcome!Wholesome beach fun to add to the summer reading listThe perfect series for grades three and up!

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John McDowell has set the philosophical world alight with a revolutionary approach to the subject, illuminating old problems with dazzling particularity. In this welcome introduction to his work, Maximilian de Gaynesford puts writing within comfortable reach of non-specialists. The guiding argument of the book is that the variety of McDowell’s interests disguises a core concern with a single basic goal: ‘giving philosophy peace’. Since the dawn of the subject, philosophy has struggled with the question: can our experience of the world give rational support to what we think and say; and if so, how? McDowell claims that philosophy has itself to blame if these questions seem problematic, and this book’s animating purpose is to see what sense can be made of this notorious claim. In McDowell’s view, the illusion that our fundamental relations with the world are truly problematic is traceable to false views about nature. We should give proper weight to a natural fact about the world: that human beings are of a kind that is naturally placed within the natural order. De Gaynesford analyses McDowell’s densely argued and meticulous work in a lucid, balanced and engaging way, that will prove invaluable for all students and scholars of McDowell and philosophy.

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This open access book demonstrates all the steps required to design heuristic algorithms for difficult optimization. The classic problem of the travelling salesman is used as a common thread to illustrate all the techniques discussed. This problem is ideal for introducing readers to the subject because it is very intuitive and its solutions can be graphically represented. The book features a wealth of illustrations that allow the concepts to be understood at a glance. The book approaches the main metaheuristics from a new angle, deconstructing them into a few key concepts presented in separate chapters: construction, improvement, decomposition, randomization and learning methods. Each metaheuristic can then be presented in simplified form as a combination of these concepts. This approach avoids giving the impression that metaheuristics is a non-formal discipline, a kind of cloud sculpture. Moreover, it provides concrete applications of the travelling salesman problem, which illustrate in just a few lines of code how to design a new heuristic and remove all ambiguities left by a general framework. Two chapters reviewing the basics of combinatorial optimization and complexity theory make the book self-contained. As such, even readers with a very limited background in the field will be able to follow all the content.

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What is God? Does he exist? Can we know? The God Confusion offers a down-to-earth beginner's guide for anyone interested in these questions. It does not evangelize for God and religion or, indeed, for atheism, secularism and science. Instead, it explores in a witty yet objective and balanced way the idea of God and the strengths and weaknesses of the standard arguments for his existence. Gary Cox shows that the philosophical reasoning at the heart of these arguments is logically incapable of moving beyond speculation to any kind of proof. The only credible philosophical position is therefore agnosticism. The God Confusion defends science generally and the theory of evolution in particular. It argues that if religion is not to appear increasingly outdated and ridiculous in the eyes of free-thinking, educated people, it must accommodate science and accept that science has replaced the old God of the gaps as an explanation of natural phenomena. Concluding that God may or may not exist, on the grounds that science, philosophy and theology are inherently incapable of proving or disproving his existence, The God Confusion acknowledges that religious faith based on a deliberate commitment to live as though there is a moral God is a coherent notion and a worthwhile, even prudent enterprise. At the same time, it rejects the idea of inner certainty as mere wishful thinking, arguing that it is not a coherent basis for belief and is simply bad faith.

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Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France is the first comprehensive study of cinematic representations of first-generation Muslim women from the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) in France. Women of this generation migrated to France during the decades preceding and following the end of French colonial rule, and they are generally – though not always accurately – regarded as belonging to a generation of migrants silenced under the weight of poverty, illiteracy, Islamic tradition, and majority ethnic Islamophobia. Situated at the intersection of post-colonial studies, gender studies, and film studies, this book brings together a diverse corpus of over 60 documentaries, short films, téléfilms (made-for-television films), and feature films released in France between 1979 and 2014, and it devotes one chapter to each kind of film. In examining the ways in which the voices, experiences, and points of view of Maghrebi migrant women in France are represented and communicated through a selection of key films, this study offers new perspectives on Maghrebi migrant women in France. It shows that women of this generation, as they are represented in these films, are far more diverse and often more empowered than has generally been thought. The films examined in this book contribute to larger contemporary debates and discussions relating to immigration, integration, and identity in France.

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Canada’s public higher education system is in trouble. The economic and social benefits of the Canadian university system are widely seen as a public good, which raises a pressing question: Why should we aspire to anything less than a great system? For that to happen, everything about the way universities currently operate, from the boardroom to the classroom, must change – but this kind of operational and public policy transformation will not be easy. Nothing Less than Great provides an expert analysis of the current state and challenges of Canada’s university system, looking for positive change by reclaiming what a university is meant to offer for society and for citizens. Harvey P. Weingarten begins with the fundamental question that all students must ask about higher education: Is it worth going to university? From there, he stresses the need for transparency about what universities do and what they accomplish, addresses the importance of modernizing curriculum to emphasize skills over content, and provides recommendations for reform. Exploring how universities might – and should – change to reclaim their central purpose for Canadians, Nothing Less than Great will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of our country and the important role universities play in determining that future.

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FATAL EXIT is the first and only book documenting the decades-long debate among the automotive industry, government regualtors, and safety and privacy advocates over what the public terms "automobile black boxes". The book briefly traces the history of the debate from 1974 to 2004, and then clearly presents opposing viewpoints for and against the widespread use of emerging Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorder (MVEDR) technology. The arguments are followed by proposals to proceed with developing and utilizing the technology in ways that are both effective and respectful of individual privacy. The reader of this book will be able to develop an informed opinion as to the usefulness of MVEDRs and thus contribute intelligently to the debate as the United States Congress considers legislation that mandates this technology. In the United States 220,935,000 registered owners of motor vehicles are becoming aware of black box technology through newspaper and magazine articles, and television news stories. Many understand that these boxes already exist in 40 million cars. Yet motorists still have many questions and concerns about widespread use of the technology. As the only book of its kind, written by an insider and expert on the subject, FATAL EXIT provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in why these devices have caused such international controversy.

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Praise for Gold Trading Boot Camp "If speculate you must, read Weldon first." —James Grant, Editor, Grant's Interest Rate Observer "This book delivers on all of the essential elements of successful financial literature. Weldon provides a compelling context, walks through the metrics that affect the price action, and assimilates the decision-making process in kind. From soup to nuts, this is one of the most comprehensive tutorials I've read on the subject of commodities." —Todd Harrison, founder and CEO, Minyanville Publishing and Multimedia, LLC "The gold price is rising in today's turbulent financial times. Preparation and knowledge are essential to profit from higher prices, and this book provides everything you need to take advantage of the trading opportunities thatlie ahead." —James Turk, founder, GoldMoney.com "This book, with its insights into the current investment climate coincides with what many feel is a new bull market in gold. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' investment approach, but every investor who applies such preparation and rigor as Greg outlines will certainly have increased returns with fewer losses. It should be on every investor's bookshelf, handy for reference, and re-read every year. Greg puts paid to the notion of random walk!" —Kim Evans, CEO, Global Building and Supply

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Are you one of the millions of people suffering from Binge Eating Disorder? Are you caught in the trap of binge eating, emotional eating, mindless eating, and diet obsession? This book will help you to stop binge eating right now. You will heal the underlying issues that lead to your binge eating when you implement this complete mind, body and spirit approach to healing. It will help you to become the person who you know you are while gently guiding you away from the tyranny of food and body obsession, diets, binge eating and scales. You will come to a place of freedom and peace around food and your body so that you can enjoy your life. You will be able to breathe with ease and settle in to a place of normalcy around food and your body. Reclaiming Yourself from Binge Eating uses a new approach to treating binge eating that does not include dieting, deprivation, willpower, or any kind of self-criticism. These easy steps to becoming a normal eater are thought provoking, action oriented and enjoyable. Recovery from the torment of food and negative body image is within reach.

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Documentary has once again emerged as one of the most vital cultural forms, whether seen in cinemas or inside the home, as digital, film, or video. In Recording Reality, Desiring the Real, Elizabeth Cowie looks at the history of documentary and its contemporary forms, showing how it has been simultaneously understood as factual, as story, as art, and as political, addressing the seeming paradox between the pleasures of spectacle in the documentary and its project of informing and educating. Cowie claims that, as a radical film form, documentary has been a way for filmmakers to acknowledge historical and contemporary realities by presenting images of these realities. If documentary is the desire to know reality through its images and sounds, she asks, what kind of speaking (and speaking about) emerges in documentary, and how are we engaged by it? In considering this and other questions, Cowie examines a range of noteworthy films, including Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, John Huston’s Let There Be Light, and Milica Tomic’s Portrait of My Mother.Recording Reality, Desiring the Real stakes documentary’s central place in cinema as both an art form and a form of social engagement, which together create a new understanding of spectatorship.

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The fundamental concepts of leadership that will guide, inspire and reassure aspiring or established leaders. Designed to challenge and inspire anyone who is seeking a deeper understanding of management, Lessons in Leadership provides a series of reflections on the very fundamentals of leadership as a management function. In the midst of current global concerns about the quality of leadership, this book is both a practical handbook and a vital contribution to the ongoing debate about what kind of leadership we should be encouraging in today’s volatile and uncertain world. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the basics in this dynamic sector. To help steer both current and future leaders to greatness, John Adair has distilled his vast experience into 12 key guiding concepts, including: · Leading from the front; · Integrity; · The strategic leader; · Warmth and humanity; and · Sharing dangers and hardships. Leadership and change go hand in hand – but even during times of change, the basic building blocks of leadership remain the same. Lessons in Leadership is the first book in the John Adair Masterclass Series, and it offers guidance, inspiration, reassurance and insight for anyone who is expected to lead or who wants to refresh and sharpen their current leadership practices.

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The Lord's commitment to make himself known throughout the nations is the missionary theme that spans the Bible, and is the central theological concern of the book of Exodus. Countering scholarly tendencies to fragment the text due to theological problems, Ross Blackburn contends that Exodus can be read as a unified whole, and that an appreciation of this missionary theme in its canonical context is of great help in dealing with difficult issues that the book poses. For example, how is Exodus 6:3 best understood? Is there a tension between law and gospel, or mercy and judgment? How should we understand the painstaking detail of the tabernacle chapters? From a careful examination of Exodus, Blackburn demonstrates that: * the Lord humbles Pharaoh so that the world would know that only God can save; * the Lord gives Israel the law so that she might display his goodness to the world, and live in a state of order and blessing; * the Lord deals with Israel's idolatry severely, yet mercifully, for his goodness cannot be known if his glory is compromised. In the end, Exodus not only sheds important light on the church's mission, but also reveals what kind of God the Lord is, one who pursues his glory and our good, ultimately realizing both as he makes himself known in Christ Jesus.

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The 4-Week Plan that Beat Out All Other Plans in the ABC Weight-Loss Reality TV Show “My Diet Is Better than Yours” For more than fifteen years, nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner has helped hundreds of clients lose their bad eating habits and step up to optimal health. The key Not deprivation, but a new kind of gratification, which she calls “super swapping”-- exchanging fake foods (C.R.A.P.: food with Chemicals; Refined sugar and flour; Artificial sweeteners and colors; and Preservatives) for wholesome high-quality foods--superfoods. A largely plant-based diet rich in fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants stabilizes hunger hormones, speeds metabolism, and fights disease.For each week, Blatner shares simple techniques, with eat/avoid lists, ideas for great lunches, advice on how to read labels to spot healthy-food impostors, and scores of useful infographics.The 100 tempting recipes—many vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free—include Fish Tacos with Crunchy Cabbage Slaw, BBQ Sandwich & Collard Chips, Sprouted Pizza, and Dark Chocolate Cherry Milkshake. Each one comes with a nutrition analysis.

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This book provides an innovative approach to meeting the challenges faced by philosophical hermeneutics in interpreting an ever-changing and multicultural world. Rudolf A. Makkreel proposes an orientational and reflective conception of interpretation in which judgment plays a central role. Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, he focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to orient us to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. Makkreel develops overlooked resources of Kant's transcendental thought in order to reconceive hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions of understanding and interpretation. He shows that a crucial task of hermeneutical critique is to establish priorities among the contexts that may be brought to bear on the interpretation of history and culture. The final chapter turns to the contemporary art scene and explores how orientational contexts can be reconfigured to respond to the ways in which media of communication are being transformed by digital technology. Altogether, Makkreel offers a promising way of thinking about the shifting contexts that we bring to bear on interpretations of all kinds, whether of texts, art works, or the world.

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In this charming madcap entry in the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Bed-and-Breakfast series, innkeeper and amateur sleuth Judith McMonigle Flynn’s plans for a relaxing vacation go awry when she realizes her fellow guests have a different kind of getaway planned.Vacations can be murder. No one knows that better than Judith McMonigle Flynn, owner of Seattle’s popular Hillside Manor B&B. After a busy summer, she desperately needs some R&R. Leave it to her thoughtful husband, Joe, to surprise her with a trip to the Canadian Rockies. Thrilled to be getting away, Judith’s overjoyed when Cousin Renie and Bill agree to join them. Though the husbands have made the arrangements, how bad can a short time away in the beautiful mountains be Judith and Renie are about to find out!While the accommodations certainly leave something to be desired, the other guests are the real prize. They’ve gathered on the mountainside to give a relative a proper and permanent send-off—a nice gesture, until Judith realizes that paying their respects might be a little premature . . . without some very sinister assistance. Now, it’s up to her and Renie to save a would-be corpse from an early date with the undertaker.

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Undoubtedly, the events of September 11, 2001 served as a wake-up call to the scourge of global terrorism facing twenty-first century societies. But was the attack on the World Trade Center a crime or an act of war? Is seemingly indiscriminate violence inflicted on civilians ever morally justified? And should society's response always be in kind – with blind, destructive violence? For that matter, are all civilians truly ‘innocent’? The answers are not always so simple. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy provides sobering analyses of the nature of terrorism and the moral justification – or lack thereof – of terrorist actions and counter-terrorism measures in today's world. Utilizing a variety of thought-provoking philosophical arguments, the historic roots of terrorism and its contemporary incarnations are explored in depth. Detailed analyses of organizations such as the IRA, the ANC, Hamas and Al-Qaeda will reveal the many faces of terrorism and its disparate motives and tactics. Discussion of the nature and scope of terrorism and whether it can ever be morally justified is balanced with analysis of counter-terrorism strategies and the methods and moral limits of counter-terrorism. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism will greatly broaden our understanding of the nature and morality of terrorism and counter-terrorist pursuits – a crucial precondition for establishing any form of enduring peace between nations in the twenty-first century world.

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To Save the Children of Korea is the first book about the origins and history of international adoption. Although it has become a commonplace practice in the United States, we know very little about how or why it began, or how or why it developed into the practice that we see today. Arissa Oh argues that international adoption began in the aftermath of the Korean War. First established as an emergency measure through which to evacuate mixed-race "GI babies," it became a mechanism through which the Korean government exported its unwanted children: the poor, the disabled, or those lacking Korean fathers. Focusing on the legal, social, and political systems at work, this book shows how the growth of Korean adoption from the 1950s to the 1980s occurred within the context of the neocolonial U.S.-Korea relationship, and was facilitated by crucial congruencies in American and Korean racial thought, government policies, and nationalisms. It also argues that the international adoption industry played an important but unappreciated part in the so-called Korean "economic miracle." Korean adoption served as a kind of template as international adoption began, in the late 1960s, to expand to new sending and receiving countries. Ultimately, Oh demonstrates that although Korea was not the first place that Americans adopted from internationally, it was the place where organized, systematic international adoption was born.

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University literary journals allow students to create their own venue for learning, have a hands-on part of their development in real-world skills, and strive towards professional achievement. But producing an undergraduate literary magazine requires commitment, funding, and knowledge of the industry. This practical guide assists students and faculty in choosing a workable structure for setting up, and then successfully running, their own literary publication. Whether the journal is print or online, in-house or international, Creating an Undergraduate Literary Journal is a step-by-step handbook, walking the reader through the process of literary journal production. Chapters focus on: defining the journal; the financial logistics; editing the journal; distribution; and what could come next for a student writer-editor after graduation. The first book of its kind to offer instruction directly to those running university-based literary magazines, this book includes insights from former editors, advisers, students and features an extensive list of active student-run literary magazines key literary organizations for writers/editors who serve literary publications. From Audrey Colombe, faculty adviser on the award-winning Glass Mountain magazine from the University of Houston, this is a text for both newcomers and those more informed on the production process to help them navigate through a successful publishing experience.

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