Search results for ""Equinox Publishing Ltd""

Tend Your Garden offers an original and adaptable classroom model, built on a foundation of educational research, for motivating young adolescent writers. The Young Adolescent Motivation Model of Writing (YAMM) places the young adolescent learner, aged 11-14, at its center, surrounded by the components needed to motivate the learner to high levels of academic composition or creative writing. The components of the model are: teaching to the whole child; developing a writing community; presenting motivating, high-interest lessons; integrating process writing across the curriculum; offering choice and critical thinking; building upon each writer's strengths; and using authentic assessment. Each component is revealed within succeeding chapters that blend best practice pedagogy with related theory. Sample lessons that fit the needs and engagement levels of young adolescent writers are provided, representing a wide array of writing genres and content area subjects. The YAMM model and the illustrative lessons build upon a background of motivation theory, authentic inquiry, and multi-modal responses. Literature, drama, music, drawing, and painting are offered both as invitations to writing and as responses to writing, and these are applied within a process-based, workshop format, with teacher modeling of each stage of the writing process. The approach recognizes motivation that is tied to the needs of young adolescent writers and that places responsibility on students in their development as writers and learners, while the teacher assumes a facilitative and supportive role of discovering the strengths, interests, and literacy needs of each student. The holistic, learner-centered process approach represented by the YAMM model nurtures students' motivation for achieving success in writing because it necessitates evolving, facilitative roles for the teacher in a collaborative writing community decidedly focused on the success of all young adolescent writers. A primary purpose for writing the text is to identify and describe the characteristic needs of young adolescents, and what these needs imply for those student writers, to the key adults in their lives-teachers, school officials, and parents-who undoubtedly support these young people's achievements. The author selects and weaves thirty years of classroom teaching experiences into each chapter, highlighting memorable moments with her students and inserting her own reflections and inspirations of learning to write along with her students.

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"Writing Poetry Through the Eyes of Science" presents a unique and effective interdisciplinary approach to teaching science poems and science poetry writing in secondary English and science classrooms. A collaboration between two award-winning teachers, one in English, the other in science, this crossover work demonstrates how scientific literacy, knowledge, and methods can inform and inspire poetic response in the classroom and in the field. "Writing Poetry Through the Eyes of Science" illustrates how students can utilize field research, observations, sensory data gathering, poetic writing strategies, and model science poems by poets, scientists, students, and teachers to produce skillful and creative science poetry. The authors explore the commonalities shared by the domains of science and poetry as well as the potentials for intersections and interactions across those two domains. As the science teacher raises scientific questions and suggests technical vocabulary to further language specificity and precision, the poetry teacher demonstrates multiple poetic stances enabling imaginative poetic responses. The active, hands-on, collaborative nature of the classroom atmosphere motivates students to write inspired poems, and students who have never before written poetry can become excited, engaged, and productive. "Writing Poetry Through the Eyes of Science" is built on original field data gathered by Colfax from expeditions to Iceland and other locations around the world as well as the original poetry and poetry teaching techniques of Gorrell. It illustrates basic science poetry writing exercises useful for students of all levels and abilities, and includes student work as well as commentary and feedback on their science poems in each chapter. It then moves to advanced exercises designed to teach the inspired poems of awe, empathy, outrage, protest, meditation, speculation, and perplexity. In the final section of the work, the authors present sample lesson plans specifically designed for the advanced English language and composition curriculum as well as for advanced science courses in research, ecology, and the environment.

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The aim of this book is try to illustrate with numerous examples how quantitative methods can most fruitfully contribute to linguistic analysis and research. In addition, it does not intend to offer an exhaustive presentation of all statistical techniques available to linguistics, but to demonstrate the contribution that statistics can and should make to linguistic studies. This book shows how quantitative methods and statistical techniques can supplement qualitative analyses of language. It attempts to present some mathematical and statistical properties of natural languages, and introduces some of the quantitative methods which are of the most value in working empirically with texts and corpora, illustrating the various issues with numerous examples and moving from the most basic descriptive techniques to decision-taking techniques and to more sophisticated multivariate statistical language models.

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The major task of the book is a sociophonetic exploration of voice pitch characteristics of speakers across the cultures of Japan and America. This volume makes a cogent argument for the socio-cultural role of voice pitch in the expression of emotion and politeness and how culture and gender can intersect with each other. The book tenders acoustic phonetic evidence (as well as discourse analyses) in construing how an individual's voice pitch modulation utilized in conversational speech is reflected in this intersection as it demonstrates several methodological innovations crucial for sociophonetic research. Observations of people's voice pitch commonly made impressionistically not only contributed to this prosodic feature's perceptual stereotypes, but also inform us about our attitudes towards certain voice pitch characteristics.This volume includes an extensive review of these impressionistic remarks and acoustic phonetic investigations of voice pitch initiated in the early 20th century in the two nations, the latter of which contributed to both confirming and reconsidering the former. The volume further alludes to how attitudinal differences between these cultures were found to surface in the acoustically measured voice pitch modulation patterns obtained for this volume, stressing that voice pitch is capable of revealing various socio-cultural aspects of human behaviors.

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This book explores the richness of Pakistan's religious landscape, giving attention to a number of topics: Shia flagellation processions, Urdu-language pulp fiction, streetside rituals involving animals (pariah-kites and fortune-telling parrots), and the use of sorcery to contend with the jinns that are believed to infest cities such as Lahore. Uniting these topics is an investigation of how Islamist politicians seek to eradicate sectarian diversity and repress localized forms of Muslim folk practices in the name of a standardized, uniform, and globalized version of Islam. The book looks at forms of resistance to this Islamist globalization, such as collaborative efforts by Christian, Hindu, and Muslim human-rights activists to repeal Pakistan's notorious blasphemy law and assert the worth of religious pluralism.

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This book, first published in German in 2005, offers a compact, concise and accessible survey of Zoroastrianism. This tiny religious community traces its root to Zarathustra who lived some 2,500-3,500 years ago. Chapters address Zarathustra and the origins of the religion, religious concepts and narratives, ethics and gender, priesthoods and rituals, transitions and festivals. A postscript by Anders Hultgard, one of the leading experts on this field, discusses the influences of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

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There has been much passionate debate and emotion aroused by the introduction of contemporary music styles into the modern church. While these debates have rarely produced a victor, the detrimental effects of them have resonated throughout many Protestant churches worldwide. Rather than simply fuelling this debate further, "Open Up The Doors" represents an attempt to provide objective criteria and analytical frameworks by which the quality and function of contemporary congregational music can be assessed. The latest music from Hillsong, Soul Survivor, Parachute, Vineyard, Christian City and others is examined in order to reveal both the beneficial and dangerous trends occurring in modern church music. "Open Up The Doors" considers how well modern music is serving the modern church, and also how effectively it is operating as a musical form in the secular culture that surrounds it.

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This book presents the research of the 'Sydney School' in language and literacy pedagogy. Widely known as genre-based pedagogy, the research is cutting-edge, but is built on 30 years of developments in the field, in a unique collaboration between functional linguists and literacy educators. This collaboration has transformed linguistic and pedagogic theory into a powerful, comprehensive methodology for embedding literacy teaching in educational practice. The book is written to be useful for practitioners, researchers and students, building up pedagogic, linguistic and social theory in steps, contextualized within teaching practice. Topics covered include the genre-based writing pedagogy, genres across the school curriculum, pedagogy for learning through reading, and the pedagogic metalanguage developed in the research. On one hand this volume offers educators an unparalleled set of strategies for transforming educational outcomes; on the other it offers researchers powerful tools for investigating and redesigning educational practice.

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Based on ethnographic research among contemporary Pagan communities in Southern Italy (Salento, Apulia), The Spider Dance challenges (uni)linear ideas and experiences of time and temporality by showing the interconnectedness of alternative historicities, healing, and place-making among persons engaged in Pagan practices.

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In this volume, we capture some of the lessons learned during and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to move forward as a field with intention and purpose, and to take advantage of any crisis-prompted innovation.

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Examines the history of the Middle Way as the biological development of organisms in relation to reinforcing or balancing feedback loops, as the psychological development of individual humans during a lifetime, as a succession of reinforcing and balancing feedback tendencies in human culture through history.

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This book provides an overview of the various ways the concepts enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment have been used both within religious studies scholarship and in related fields.

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Venue Stories is an anthology of creative non-fiction that remembers, celebrates and reinvigorates our complex and plural relationship with small and independent music spaces. Written by musicians, promoters, fans and academics who have a shared passion for small music venues and musical cultures in all their splendid variety, this anthology features memoir, essays, life writing, historiography and autoethnography. Each chapter is united by a focus on the personal, the sensory and half-remembered. These are stories that cross disciplinary lines and blur distinctions between creativity, reportage and critical analysis. Venue Stories pays a visit to the toilet venues, back rooms and ad-hoc club nights that make up so much of our musical landscape. It spends time in small and local venues and asks what they mean in personal and cultural terms. Writers visit celebrated spots, long forgotten spaces and emergent venues. Whatever the lineage, they are independent, original and wonderfully weird. The stories are memories of seismic gigs and life-altering raves. They are mosaic remembrances and recollections; funny, heart-breaking, rage induced and sometimes a combination of all of these things. This is a collection of stories by and for fans, band members, merch sellers, pint pullers, journalists with a freebie, roadies with a backache and sound techs with an earache.

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This book investigates teacher and student boredom from the perspective of the teacher and illustrates how thinking about different aspects of this negative emotion might enhance reflective practices. It consists of seven chapters. The first four (Chapters 1-4) are devoted to the role of positive and negative emotions in L2 learning, conceptualizations of boredom, theories accounting for this negative emotion, and a brief overview of student and teacher boredom-related studies carried out in educational psychology and L2 education. The second part (Chapters 5-6) is empirical in nature. It reports on a mixed-methods investigation which tapped learner and teacher boredom from the perspective of EFL secondary school practitioners. It focused on: (1) teacher-perceived causes of learners' boredom, (2) causes of teachers' own boredom, (3) ways in which teachers confront student boredom in the classroom, (4) ways in which teachers deal with their own boredom, (5) factors that underpin teacher and student boredom, (6) ways of combating student and teacher boredom. The third part of the book (Chapters 6-7) integrates teachers' recommendations with outcomes of previous research to propose a reflective practice model of dealing with boredom in the classroom as well as strategies that can be employed to minimize teacher boredom.

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Religions of the World: Questions, Challenges, and New Directions provides a critical introduction to the social, political, and cultural interests that inform how people describe and identify with religion. One of its goals is to provide a sense of methodological transparency that few, if any, other textbooks today offer. The book opens with an Introduction that discusses contemporary methodological concerns in the study of religion, with special focus on the World Religions Paradigm. This is followed by ten chapters, six (6) of which discuss a distinct religion and four (4) of which discuss regional traditions. This organization is intentional and self-conscious, as the authors discuss how these scholarly categories (distinct tradition vs. regional tradition) shape the ways that both insiders and outsiders discuss, practice, and engage religion in their daily lives. Each chapter introduces four different popular descriptions, or representations, of a particular religion or regional tradition. Following each representation is an analysis of what this representation accomplishes for those who promote it and what (or who) it also leaves out. Following this, a specific case study provides a real-world example of the difficulties in thinking about religion in overly simplistic ways. The text does not attempt to diminish or reconcile the possible contradictions between the different representations so as not to leave the reader with the idea that one representation is more correct or authentic than another, or that all four can be easily stitched together to make a tidy picture. Instead, students take away from each chapter a foundation of knowledge about the practices, issues, and conceptions that are associated with global religious traditions as well as the complexity behind any single representation. The objective is to make more transparent the human activity of constructing religion as well as the contemporary consequences of these representations, as people use them to legitimize identities and negotiate for social, legal, and economic resources. Thus, throughout the text, students are challenged to interrogate who gets to decide on a particular portrayal of a religious tradition as well as the interests informing those decisions. An Afterword also discusses ways that the skills learned in the text have applicability beyond the study of religious discourses.

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The book is targeted at professional scholars as well as language students who plan their own research in the fuzzy field of applied linguistics, while working on their degree papers, or doing an any academic work related to language study. The uniqueness of the volume consists in its methodological character which is made operational and thus the book may function as a methodological manual. The academically fashionable and catchy word 'interdisciplinarity' is frequently made void in the research perspective. Comprehended as a mark of academic liberalism, standing for anything goes, it is questioned by orthodox minds adhering to the compartmentalization of scientific disciplines. This volume tries to bridge the gap in at least three ways. It offers theoretical justification for crossing disciplinary borders in methodological terms, presents an application of adopted methods or techniques from a different discipline and finally considers research benefits resulting from such an approach. These three elements, around which each chapter is organized, account for the integrationist aspect of interdisciplinarity. The volume includes seven chapters dedicated to a selected methodology incorporating an empirical avenue coming from outside of the linguistic domain, yet it is applied to linguistic issues which are interdisciplinary in their character. They either occupy a contested space between disciplines, or need an interdisciplinary insight, which ultimately imparts a more comprehensive understanding.

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Writing the Pandemic addresses the many challenges that writing instructors and students have faced since the arrival of COVID-19 and their ramifications for teaching and learning, including: Instructional Delivery – in-person, hybrid, and remote classes; Campus and Classroom Protocols – masking, distancing, and cleaning; Safety – quarantining, isolating, and reporting; and Justice – antiracism, political divides, and implications for education. The book is intended for an audience of first-year college composition teachers and other English and language arts instructors at the postsecondary and secondary levels who have experienced the seismic shifts in writing instruction and education more generally that have been necessitated by the pandemic. The author paints portraits of the pandemic experience that writing teachers and their students will relate to and offers practical learning material that can be used in writing courses. An original compilation of material on this theme, Writing the Pandemic includes reflections by a highly experienced writing instructor and his students together with ready-to-use assignments. It is written in a lively style by the author of English Composition Teacher’s Guidebook, Tom Mulder, an award-winning instructor who teaches at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan. With each chapter, the author offers selected notes blogged at intervals during critical incidents in the unfolding coronavirus as well as individual students’ stories along with their photographs, both inside composition classrooms adapted for distanced learning and writing or working from home. He also presents questions for reflection and his own speculations about the future that are sure to stimulate readers’ own thoughts about what has changed, and how much, as a result of the pandemic, and about what writing instruction will look like going forward.

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While many people engage in interpretation, it is not clear what interpretation is. This critical primer examines the nature of interpretation, strategies within interpretation, and negotiations about the adequacy of an interpretation, with special attention paid to possible roles hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation) plays in the academic study of religions. This book addresses a number of fundamental questions posed throughout the history of hermeneutics: • What is an “interpretation”? • What or who determines the meaning of a text? • What helps in navigating competitions or conflicts of interpretation? • What is the place of interpretation in the academy, relative to explanatory sciences and productive arts? Many books have focused on historical developments of hermeneutics, on key modern hermeneutic philosophers, or on specific sacred texts such as in biblical or Quranic hermeneutics. The unique approach taken to interpretation here is based on the fundamental axiom of philosophical hermeneutics—the hermeneutic priority of questioning. Through this, the author makes a case for the critical value of interpretation. Each chapter of this book refines a conceptual element that combines with others into a theory of interpretation useful for the classroom and in scholarship on hermeneutics.

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This book examines the lived experiences of oppression and opportunities encountered by contemporary Tibetan Buddhist nuns living in the People’s Republic of China and the Tibetan exile community in India. It investigates how the intersections of the nuns’ female gender, their Buddhist religion and their Tibetan nationality on the one hand produce subordination and an unequal distribution of power but, on the other, provide the nuns with opportunities and agency. Depending on the intersection of her status positions, the Tibetan nun can be either disadvantaged or privileged, and sometimes both at the same time. Power structures and relations that disadvantage nuns as women, as religious practitioners, and as Tibetans, are constructed and maintained in different domains of power. In the structural domain, traditional but still dominant institutions – such as the distribution of work, marriage, educational practices and religious institutions – disadvantage Tibetan nuns. In the disciplinary domain of power, the nuns are monitored by traditional culture and the Chinese authorities. The unequal distribution of power in these domains is justified by hegemonic ideas based on religious and cultural beliefs, ideas of religion and modernity, and religion and gender. These domains of power find their expression in the everyday life in the interpersonal sphere. Analysis also reveals that many nuns were highly active in choosing and determining their life course. Monastic life offers Tibetan women freedom from the suffering faced by laywomen. The juncture of their gender, religion and nationality also provides them with agency in their nationalism, which is both visible and more subtle. Monastic life also offers them religious agency as compassionate bodhisattvas, who aim to not only benefit other living beings but also themselves.

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Voice and Mirroring in L2 Pronunciation Instruction presents an approach to teaching pronunciation which aims for learners to internalize the “voices” (complexes of linguistic and non-linguistic features that embody particular speakers’ emotion, social stance, and group identification) of proficient speakers of the second language (L2). Beginning with a review of “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to second language acquisition (SLA) research and pronunciation teaching, the authors present previously published and new findings in interlanguage phonology and variationist approaches to SLA showing the powerful impact of sociolinguistic context on L2 pronunciation. On the basis of this review, the authors argue that a top-down approach which begins with social context is preferable in both the research and teaching of L2 pronunciation. They highlight the Mirroring Project as one such approach that includes the social factors impacting L2 pronunciation, such as interlocutor, empathy, and nonverbal elements. With accompanying instructional activities that have been used in a variety of teaching and learning settings in the U.S., the authors demonstrate how this project can help language learners modify their L2 pronunciation patterns and improve their intelligibility as they internalize and channel the voices of speakers they have selected as models. The audience for the volume includes language teachers, particularly those desiring to use top-down pedagogical approaches like the Mirroring Project to improve learners’ intelligibility, and academic researchers interested in studying the way adults can acquire second language phonology by holistically adopting and channeling the voices of speakers they admire. The book is also of potential interest to language teacher educators, curriculum developers, and textbook writers.

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Fo Guang Shan, “Buddha’s Light Mountain”, is a Buddhist movement founded in Taiwan in 1967 and led by the Ven Hsing Yun (b.1927), who had fled to Taiwan from mainland China in 1949. It stands in the Chinese tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism and more specifically is a form of Buddhism which in English is usually referred to as “Humanistic Buddhism” or as “engaged Buddhism”. Humanistic Buddhism owes its origin to the Chinese monk Tai Xu (1890-1947). He found the Buddhism which surrounded him in China dreary and moribund, preoccupied with rituals for the dead, and offering nothing to help or guide people living in the world outside monasteries. His determination to reverse this decay centred on the idea that it was the vocation of a Mahayana Buddhist to do good to others, finding their own spiritual benefit in benefitting society. Hsing Yun has been a devoted disciple of Tai Xu. It is telling that he founded a seminary before he founded a monastery, and has laid huge emphasis on education. As the sub-title of this book indicates, in order to make Buddhism widely attractive and relevant he has incorporated every influence available. Gifted with a benign personality, he has turned his seemingly boundless energy and prodigious versatility to creating an institution which presents Buddhism as potentially a source for benefitting society through making life enjoyable. This book hopes to convey the movement’s ethos primarily by focusing on his views and activities.

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This book aims to explore the theory of love in the writings of the Great Andalusian Sufi Sheikh, Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi (558-638/1165-1240). It begins by examining Divine and human love as found in the works of many Sufi masters that preceded Ibn 'Arabi, and then turns to the views of Ibn 'Arabi himself. The Sufis from the early centuries of Islam (9th-10th) sometimes defined love as their "religion," by which they meant, their way to God. Ibn 'Arabi not only expanded on these earlier Sufi theories, but also detailed his own original insights. He openly declared the primacy of love over all else and argued that love is the dynamic force behind creation. The present study is focused primarily on outlining the importance of Divine love in Ibn 'Arabi's thought, which is accomplished through an in-depth reading and a close textual analysis of selected works on Divine love in several of his key works including: The Interpreter of Longings (Turjuman al-Ashwaq), The Ringstones of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam), and The Meccan Openings (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya). The approach taken in Love in the Teachings of Ibn 'Arabi demonstrates the centrality of love in Ibn 'Arabi's worldview. Additionally, the monograph offers certain interpretive keys to help unlock the meanings embedded in the imagery and symbolism of Ibn 'Arabi's unique language.

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Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes aims to answer many of the questions that come to mind when we think about the religious lives of Native and Indigenous peoples of the world. Scholars from many fields answer dozens of questions about a wide variety of specific Indigenous religious traditions and an array of the ideas, practices, and beliefs many people associate with them. Do Native peoples have creator Gods? What is shamanism? Why are there so many spellings of voodoo? Is Paganism considered an Indigenous religious tradition? We also interrogate the concept of Indigenous religious traditions, by asking what the phrase means in relation to the larger fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and Religious Studies, whether all religions were at some point indigenous, and what the value of studying Indigenous religious traditions is today. Specialists respond to questions like these and many others in easily accessible language and provide references for further exploration, making this volume useful for personal study or classroom use.

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The Economy of Deuteronomy's Core contributes to the current debate over the date and purpose of the biblical book of Deuteronomy to advance the discussion beyond the Josianic hypothesis of Wilhelm M. L. de Wette that has dominated the field for the last two centuries. It is the first comprehensive analysis and synthesis of the economic issues that the laws of Deuteronomy 12-26. It provides the basis for the identification of the functions of the three institutions upon which a new Israelite identity builds: the local autonomous settlement (your gates), the yearly gathering of all Israel to eat and drink joyfully in front of YHWH (the Place), and a guild-like brotherhood involving Israelite, Edomite and third generation Egyptian associates (qehal-YHWH). Grounded in the text itself, The Economy of Deuteronomy's Core reads Deuteronomy 12-26 in light of what we know about Ancient Near Eastern economies. The results open new horizons regarding the origins of the Deuteronomic laws.

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This volume explores the interaction between text and image in Indian Buddhist contexts, including not only the complex relationship between verbal stories and visual representations at Indian sites, but also the ways in which visual imagery is used within textual narratives. The chapters are authored by a mixture of textual scholars and art historians, bringing together different disciplinary perspectives in order to seek a richer understanding of how text and art relate, and of the role of narrative imagery in different media and contexts. The book opens with an introduction that explores what narratives and visual narratives are, and why we might want to study narrative images alongside imagery-rich literary narratives. The volume is then divided into three parts. The chapters in Part I: Visual Narratives (Zaghet, Reddy, Zin) explore visual depictions of stories in their own right; those in Part II: Narrative Networks (Mace, Appleton & Clark, Strong) seek to understand the relationship between specific visual and verbal narratives; and those in Part III: Narrative Visions (Gummer, Fiordalis, Walters) primarily investigate how visual imagery and visualisation work in textual narratives. The volume seeks to bridge the divide that traditionally exists between textual scholars and art historians, and to challenge the contributors to think beyond the usual boundaries of our work.

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Madeira, Port, Sherry: The Equinox Companion to Fortified Wines fills a niche for all those seeking to understand the fortified wine industry as a whole: its history, producers, winemaking methods, and practical aspects of enjoying these unique wines, numbered among the world's most long-lived beverages. This book constitutes an educational compendium representing organised cutting-edge knowledge on the three classic fortified wines, brought to us by the Iberian culture. The reference work enables an appreciation of the histories of madeira, port and sherry against the background of world-changing events. Extensive terminological research has distilled years of professional knowledge into a reliable compendium, taking the reader on unique educational journeys through winemaking activities, from selection of grapes to bottle ageing. The companion offers comprehensive terminological coverage, including classifications and serving temperatures, as well as the intricacies of flavour compounds, responsible for various notes identified in wine bouquets, such as those of an old blended madeira, a vintage port, or a palo cortado sherry. Guidelines on wine and food pairing have been included to ensure the companion's suitability for a wide audience of readers: from wine experts to connoisseurs, from gourmet restaurant chefs to home cooks.

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This volume brings together scholars to reflect on the work of Professor A. Bernard Knapp and on some of the challenges thrown down in his extensive scholarship. Knapp is a central figure in the pre and proto-history of the Mediterranean in the last generation, and the essays in this volume will be of interest and attention to a wide range of scholars and students of Mediterranean pre- and proto-history. Topics include studies of sites, places, materials and texts in the Levant, Cyprus, Crete, Greece and Sicily and wider theory and method critiques address connectivity and mobility, maritime archaeology, landscapes, climate and environment, and publication history and practice in the overall Mediterranean field. The authors comprise a mixture of senior, mid-career, and rising junior scholars - from various backgrounds, in order to offer a broad range of perspectives on the state and future of the archaeology of Cyprus and the wider Mediterranean.

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Religion is, at its very root, a sensual and often tactile affair. From genuflections, prayer, dance, and eating, to tattooing, wearing certain garments or objects, lighting candles and performing other rituals, religions of all descriptions involve regular bodily commitments which are mediated by acts of touch. Contributors to this volume have isolated the ‘sense of touch’ from the general sensorium as a particular ‘sense tool’ from which to creatively innovate and operationalize fresh concepts, theories, and methods in relation to a diverse range of case studies in Africa, South America, Polynesia, Europe, and South and Southeast Asia. Common and overlapping themes include how touch mediates direct physical (often deliberate) contact between physical bodies (human and other than human) and the things that are crafted, blessed, related with, engaged with, or worn. Understanding touch as the vehicle to alternative forms of knowledge-making in specific religious contexts is the driving force behind the contributions to this collection. The volume argues that touch is not only an intrinsic part of religion but the principal facilitating medium through which religion, religious encounters and performances take place. The diverse contexts presented here signal how investigations that centralise the body and the senses can produce nuanced, culturally specific knowledges and allow for the development of new definitions for lived religion. By placing both ‘body’ and the sense of touch at the centre of investigations, the volume asserts that material practice and bodily sensation are lived religion.

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Although his activity as a recording artist spanned a period of just three years, from 1967, the year of his arrival in England from America to 1970, the year of his death, Jimi Hendrix created a body of work that has exerted a significant influence on a number of artists in the 20th century and beyond. A headline-grabbing, explosive performer, he is widely recognized as an innovative guitarist who broadened the vocabulary of his instrument through both his technique and daring use of technology. For several generations of critics and audiences, he remains the archetypal rock star who framed his immeasurable talent with lifestyle excesses inherent to his profession. Hear My Train A Comin' seeks to appraise Hendrix's legacy in different terms. His ability as a soloist is undeniable, but it is not necessarily the defining aspect of his genius. This book focuses on Hendrix the songwriter, a superlative storyteller who was able to combine melody, lyric and arrangement in order to create pieces that take pride of place in the pantheon of post-war popular music. Why do anthems such as Crosstown Traffic, The Wind Cries Mary, Little Wing, Voodoo Child [Slight Return] Purple Haze or Foxy Lady still affect us today? They alchemize word and sound. These are just a few examples of Hendrix crafting a composition in the most complete sense of the term, making judicious decisions with regard to mood, texture, contrast and overall orchestral richness, looking at his basic resource, the guitar-bass-drums set up as a unit to be enhanced by a range of other instruments and studio production. This book investigates the artist's immense creativity, and the intriguing relationship he had with the art of song, a platform for a multitude of ideas and improvisation.

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Language in Action: SFL Theory across Contexts brings together recent research in elementary and secondary education, higher education, and translation studies, informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics. Authors reporting from a range of international contexts offer new insights into curriculum and instructional issues in subjects including history, physical education, and mathematics, with a focus on development of students' reading, writing, and disciplinary literacy skills. The chapters also report on studies in teacher education and student learning in settings where Spanish, Danish, or English are the languages of instruction, and the development of advanced academic writing in these languages is a particular focus of studies in higher education. The translation studies offer new perspectives on translation from classical Chinese literature and Italian museum texts. Across the volume, the chapters present innovations in genre pedagogy, pedagogical and methodological uses of SFL metalanguage, and approaches to curriculum development and school-based research. The authors draw on functional grammar, register theory, Appraisal, and Legitimation Code Theory to offer new analytic approaches and insights. This book offers readers a range of work that can inspire and inform researchers and students interested in new approaches to systemic functional linguistics in action.

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In his bio-bibliographical essay, J. Z. Smith wrote that he was fond of the expression “when the chips are down” in the sense of all being said and done. With his passing in December 2017, the phrase has gained an additional layer of sad finality—the chips are really down. Scholarship is not poker, however, which means that these chips not only can but in fact should be picked up and circulated. Thinking with J. Z. Smith brings together the contributions of scholars who do exactly that by considering theoretical and methodological issues central to J. Z. Smith’s oeuvre in the context of their own research. Through analyses of Smith’s own work as well as applications of his concerns to new situations, historic periods, and regions, the contributors to this volume test the adequacy and applicability of Smith’s ideas and provide an indirect assessment of his influence and legacy in the field of religious studies.

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This collection of essays constitute an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused, study of religious practices. The basic premise of the argument, offered in the opening section, is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place and all their complex existence-that includes creating more-than-human beings and realities. As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, the second part of the book contains essays that address practices, rhetoric and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as "biblical studies," into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in the opening section. For a general reading of modern biblical scholarship makes clear the assumption that the Christian bible is a "sacred text" whose principal raison d'etre is to stand, fetish-like, as the foundational and highest authority in matters moral, ritual or theological; how might we instead approach the study of these texts if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun's Jesus and Addiction to Origins seeks to answer just that question-doing so in a way that readers working outside Christian origins will undoubtedly find useful applications for the people, places, and historical periods that they study.

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Understanding Attitude in Intercultural Virtual Communication focuses on attitude, the "willingness to explore, learn and participate in online networks, collaborate with others, share ideas, knowledge, media and contribute to the collective construction of knowledge" (Helm & Guth, 2010, p. 81) in telecollaborative encounters. Recent studies have suggested that, to ensure successful virtual collaboration, interpersonal factors such as identity, rapport and trust are essential and the development of these factors relies heavily on the attitudinal dimension and how participants chose to reflect it in their interaction (Oskoz & Gimeno-Sanz, in press; Vinagre & Corral, 2018; Vinagre & Corral, forthcoming). In telecollaboration, research on the participants' use of attitudinal resources has been mostly content-based and Byram's (1997) model of intercultural competence the approach most widely used for analysis. More recently, studies have looked at attitude from a linguistic perspective, and frameworks such as appraisal (Martin & White, 2005) that examine L2 learners' attitudes and ideological positions have been employed. Despite these efforts, research in this field is still scarce and this volume aims to further explore this topic by gathering contributions in which a variety of approaches and perspectives have been taken to investigate attitude in virtual communication.

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This book seeks to elucidate the concept of justice, not so much as it is expressed in law courts (retributive and procedural justice) or in state budgets (distributive justice), but as primary justice - what it means and how it can be grounded in the inalienable rights that each human being possesses qua human being. It draws inspiration from two recent works of philosopher Nicolas Wolterstorff, but also from the groundbreaking Islamic initiative of 2007, the Common Word Letter addressed by 138 eminent Muslim scholars and clerics to the pope and all Christian leaders. This document affirmed that the two highest commandments in both Judaism and Christianity are also at the heart of the Islamic tradition - love of God and love of neighbor. In a style that lends itself to the classroom and beyond, the book's six chapters all begin with a case study of justice, so as to emphasize that justice must also be embodied in righteous social, political and economic practices. Along the way, leading contemporary scholars and activists from both traditions urge the reader - Muslim, Christian, or whatever - to look afresh at an age-old conundrum: how do justice and love interact so as to create a world in which everyone finds his or her rightful place?

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Sangharakshita (1925-2018) was a Buddhist writer and teacher, founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community (previously FWBO). Apart from his practical achievements, Sangharakshita was an original thinker on the adaptation of Buddhism to modern conditions, an autodidact whose intellectual creativity was stimulated by both cross-cultural experience and practical contingency. His thinking is little known or appreciated outside the movement he founded, but over-dominant within it. This means that there is a shortage of balanced critical discussion of his work that finds any middle way between hagiography and dismissal. Sangharakshita has also been an object of controversy in recent years, but his more controversial views and actions need to be seen in proportion to the whole of his thinking. This book surveys Sangharakshita's most important and original ideas with an eye that combines appreciation and critical awareness in equal measure. It celebrates Sangharakshita's pioneering syntheses of Buddhist and Western ideas, but warns against the inconsistencies and dogmas that are also found in Sangharakshita's work - dogmas whose negative practical effects can also be traced.

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Many Buddhas, One Buddha introduces a significant section of the important early Indian Buddhist text known as the Avadanasataka, or "One Hundred Stories", and explores some of its perspectives on buddhahood. This text, composed in Sanskrit and dating to perhaps the third to fifth centuries of the Common Era, is affiliated with the Sarvastivada or Mulasarvastivada, and thus provides important evidence of the ideas and literatures of lost non-Mahayana schools of Indian Buddhism. The text is a rich literary composition, in mixed prose and verse, and includes some elaborate devotional passages that illuminate early Indian perspectives on the Buddha and on the role of avadana texts. The book introduces the first four chapters of the Avadanasataka through key themes of these stories, such as predictions and vows, preparations for buddhahood, the relationship between Sakyamuni and other buddhas, and the relationship between full buddhahood and pratyekabuddhahood. The study of these stories closes with an argument about the structural design of the text, and what this tells us about attitudes towards different forms of awakening. The second part of the book then presents a full English translation of stories 1-40.

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Miniature books, handwritten or printed books in the smallest format, have fascinated religious people, printers, publishers, collectors, and others through the centuries because of their unique physical features, and continue to captivate people today. The small lettering and the delicate pages, binding, and covers highlight the material form of texts and invite sensory engagement and appreciation. This volume addresses miniature books with a special focus on religious books in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The book presents various empirical contexts for how the smallest books have been produced, distributed, and used in different times and cultures and also provides theoretical reflections and comments that discuss the divergent formats and functions of books.

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Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book's aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception. The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

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Religions of a Single God is like no other introductory textbook on the Western monotheistic religions. As expected, it teaches both the basics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, presenting the trajectories of their development over time, their main theological debates and claims, sacred writings, and their common practices and holy days. But rather than claiming to show the “essence” of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, Religions of a Single God shows the diversity within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experience, theological dispute, and practice. Rather than relying solely on the traditional theorists of religion, this book also introduces the approaches of contemporary critical thinkers to questions of defining, classifying, and studying religion. Rather than presenting Mormonism and the Baha’i Religion as “New Religious Movements”, this book treats them as part of the continuing history of religion, growing out of and within Christianity and Islam respectively. Religion, in other words, is not a thing of the past. It’s happening right now, all around us.

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This volume presents contributions from academics, practitioners and researchers who reflect on aging and argue that while the financial impact of aging appears to be receiving increased attention, the more personal, familial and communal consequences of aging must also be examined. This collection delves further into the topic of aging as both personal and social phenomenon. The perspectives the papers engage with range from theoretical to applied. This demonstrates how those perspectives can and must engage with each other. From the invisibility of aging persons, to the manner in which discourses of aging-well rely on normative assumptions, to the ways in which we engage with persons with dementia, to the responsibility of providing care locally and across borders, this collection endeavours to advance aging as a positive challenge that can enrich us all.

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Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category "data" is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled "Subjects," "Objects," "Scholars," and "Institutions," with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume's aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political structures through which scholars identify (and therefore create) data, and second, on the institutions, extensions, and applications of that data. The first three sections are spearheaded by a key essay and followed by four responses, all of which consider how the politics of the academy determine the very nature of the things we purport to study. The fourth section considers what these concepts look like as they are applied and further institutionalized in college and university structures, and itself includes four essays on "teaching," "departments," "research," and "labor." Finally, the epilogue closes the volume with a consideration on the politics of scholarly collegiality, transforming the data-makers (scholars) into data themselves.

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