Search results for ""Cambridge Scholars Publishing""

The study of altruism and altruistic behavior has caught the attention of social scientists especially in recent years. What motivates individuals to cultivate attitudes and actions that promote the wellbeing of others at the expense of, or at the risk of negative consequences for their own? In our contemporary global society marked by conflict and violence among different sectors of the population in various regions of the world, and wherein religion can be a factor that exacerbates such conflict and violence, harnessing the power of religion towards directions of reconciliation, creativity, and altruistic action, remains a crucial task for humankind. This volume addresses a question especially relevant in our day: do people who profess religious commitment or affiliation in a particular religious community tend to nurture altruistic kinds of attitude and action more than others? Social scientists present results of their empirical studies on Japanese society, as well as on North American, European, Indian, and Thai societies, to focus on this issue and offer insightful reflections on the relationship between religion and society.

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Twenty major German cities have a total of twenty-four theatres specializing, at a high level of sophistication, in presenting light comedy. They have their own typical ambience, principles of artistic management and casting. There are playwrights, actors, directors and designers who work almost exclusively in the genre, called boulevard comedy, developing highly specialised approaches to their work. In almost all cases, the predominantly privately run boulevard comedy theatres in Germany have been able to attract larger audiences than municipal or state theatres in the same cities. The book provides a description and an analysis of this phenomenon, which is unique to Germany. Chapters focus on an analysis of ambience, artistic managers, artistic policies and artistic structures, on major characteristics of the plays presented on the stages of German boulevard comedy theatres, on aspects of translation and the cultural transfer of comedy and laughter and on aspects of production and reception, dealing in turn with actors, directors, media coverage and audiences.

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The book Infinity in Language is a research monograph on the problem of the sublime in language. The authors use methods from cognitive semantics and poetics in order to thoroughly describe how the sublime is used in language. It is a unique attempt to account for one of the most fascinating problems of the human mind: the concept of infinity, and how the experience of infinity and enthusiasm is expressed in language. The book includes new findings in cognitive semantics relating to rhetorical figures such as hyperbole, gradation and accumulation. Cognitive semantics has focused so far on metaphor. This book fills the gap and gives an account of other rhetorical figures. It contains also a historical review of major theories of the sublime by Pseudo-Longinos, Boileau, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others, i.e. it spans a period from the first century AD till twentieth century. The authors answer the question how is it possible to present the unpresentable. It is an attempt to outline and develop a model of the rhetoric of the sublime. The model consists of three elements: antimimetic evocation of the unimaginable, a mimesis of emotions and figures of the discourse of the sublime. The books argues in favour of non-cartesian semantics which takes into account not only reason but also emotions, especially very intensive ones. However, the authors also express reservations regarding omnipresent rhetoric of the sublime. They follow those thinkers in the human history who argued against fanaticism and in favour of tolerance and empathy. The book is an original result of an interdisciplinary and international collaboration, lasting many years, between a cognitive scientist and a linguist and literary scholar.

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This book brings together several major essays on foundational topics of narrative studies and the theory of fictionality by one of the preeminent figures of postclassical narrative theory. It reexamines and reconceives the role of the author, the status of implied authors, the model for unnatural narrative theory, the nature of narrative, and the ideological implications of narrative forms. It also explores the status of historical characters in fictional texts, the paradoxes of realism, the presence of multiple implied readers, the role of actual readers, and the question of fictionality. In addition, an appendix offers a useful approach for teaching narrative theory. The book includes analyses of works by Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov, Beckett, Jeanette Winterson, Deborah Eisenberg, and others. Throughout, it argues for a more expansive conception of narrative theory and keen attention to the nature and difference of fiction. This provocative book makes crucial interventions in ongoing critical debates about narrative theory, literary theory, and the theory of fictionality, and is essential reading for all students of narrative.

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Issues of race and ethnicity in Latin America continue to gain a growing amount of academic attention. While themes of ethnic identities, indigeneity, and race relations are commonly examined in our respective disciplines, it is less common to bring together essays from scholars from such a broad variety of disciplines. The papers collected in this volume draw on a wide range of studies from across Latin America, including the examination of ethnohistory, the environment, and culture. They convey a large diversity of perspectives, disciplines, and issues that reflect the richness and complexities of the social processes that encompass the Americas.Taken as a whole, this broad range of studies on ethnohistory, environmental and legal issues, education, and culture advances our understandings of race and ethnicity in Latin America. In the process, these studies incorporate related issues of how historical and political developments in Latin America have, and continue to be, experienced differently based on varying gendered and class perspectives. These studies examine how those speaking from the margins continue to shape and reshape what we know as Latin America.

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This typological overview compares the degree to which different languages have means to give expression to modality (possibility, necessity) without lexical and direct inflectional means. The criterial patterns derive from a variety of languages such as German, English, Chinese, French, Scandinavian, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Polish, and Gothic as well as Old High German. They encompass mainly the auxiliaries HAVE and BE, together with either an infinitival embedding of a full verb linked by the infinitival preposition TO, or other aspectual means. It is demonstrated that what appears as typical covert modal expressions in the Germanic languages, and the Indo-European ones in a wider sense, cannot be seen as a recurrent pattern in non-Indo-European languages. Yet, there are recurrent and plausible forms that allow for generalizations.

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After a period of neglect, the idealist and romantic philosophies that emerged in the wake of Kant’s revolutionary writings have once more become important foci of philosophical interest, especially in relation to the question of the role of religion in human life. By developing and reinterpreting basic Kantian ideas, an array of thinkers including Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel, Hölderlin and Novalis transformed the conceptual framework within which the nature of religion could be considered. Furthermore, in doing so they significantly shaped the philosophical perspectives from within which later thinkers such as Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Wagner and Nietzsche could re-pose the question of religion. This volume explores the spaces opened during this extended period of post-Kantian thinking for a reconsideration of the place of religion within the project of human self-fashioning.

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Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).

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Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics is a collection of selected papers presented at the Graduate Colloquia on Slavic Linguistics held at the Ohio State University, and as such presents current research of young scholars from top European and American universities. The present volume is a continuation of Issues in Slavic Syntax and Semantics (2008). Unlike its predecessor, Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics exclusively focuses on synchronic analyses of challenging phenomena in various Slavic languages and expands its theoretical scope to include essays in virtually all areas of theoretical linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The papers in this volume discuss consonant deletion in Russian and phonetic patterns in Russian loan words, properties of Slovenian clitics and the constructions involving the prefix na- in Slovenian, subjunctive clauses in Polish, Serbo-Croatian multiple wh questions, negative-contrastive ellipsis and impersonal constructions in Russian. The formal frameworks employed in the analyses of these phenomena range from optimality theory to minimalism. Given its broad empirical and theoretical scope, Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics is bound to be of interest to Slavic scholars and general linguists alike.

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In Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing, a renowned Irish poet shows us how haiku may be used as a powerful tool for spiritual interpenetration. This implies that we divest ourselves of the ever-chattering mind, shed the voracious ego and enjoy momentary glimpses of unity with natural phenomena. In the companion volume, Haiku Enlightenment, he further explores these thoroughly delightful experiences and invites us to disappear! Haiku is dynamically focussed on the present, from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second. But how illusory, how fleeting is that present moment? How caught up is it with the past, with the future? Can we stop its flow? Are there more ways than one of experiencing its essence? If we experience a moment intensely enough, might we disappear? Surprises await those readers who may have considered haiku to be nothing more than an innocuous three-line poem.A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world.

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This book represents the physical outcome of the symposium “Academic Voices in Contrast”, organised at the University of Bergen, Norway, in May 2006. The symposium, focusing on recent research within the field of academic discourse, was initiated and organised by the KIAP project (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose; see www.uib.no/kiap/). In this project, a special focus has been put on the study of the voice(s) of the academic author, in the doubly contrastive perspective of language and discipline. A narrow selection of distinguished scholars were invited to participate at the symposium. They were asked to address issues related to “traditional” linguistic versus contextual approaches or to interlingual and interdisciplinary similarities and differences in academic discourse. By the papers of the following, the symposium and the present book constitute a clear advancement of the research on academic discourse: M. A. A. Ariza, L. Berge, M. Bondi, S. V. Bonn, S. Carter-Thomas, T. Dahl, K. Fløttum, A. M. Gjesdal, F. Grossmann, K. Hyland, T. Kinn, L. Lundquist, A. Mauranen, M. Pabón, E. Rowley-Jolivet, F. Salager-Meyer, P. Shaw, J. M. Swales, J.L. Tønnesson, E. T. Vold, F. Wirth.

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This book is for the next generation of leaders in business, industry and society, for whom it is important to know where wealth and jobs come from, how the government generates tax revenue and the principles which help society function best. It assumes no prior business knowledge, starting with foundational principles and plunges into important issues in business. It explores questions such as: What is the nature of leadership? What is entrepreneurship? What can financial analysis reveal? How can big data and analytics be used? What strategies are available? Every chapter lists learning objectives allowing the reader to know what to expect. Emphasis boxes throughout the text summarize concepts and provide additional examples. The book assumes no math beyond algebra, but develops quantitative tools through seventy worked equations. Each chapter has a Terms and Concepts section for reference and review. Chapter appendices provide practical information on networking, negotiation, professional dress, consulting, employment, and challenging statistics.

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Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.

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Byron at the Theatre is a collection of essays by a wide spectrum of European scholars, dealing with Byron’s dramas in a variety of ways. It starts with a long and detailed introduction on Byron and Drury Lane, incorporating much recent research done on the riotous and squalid conditions of the theatre in Regency London – conditions which go far towards explaining Byron’s distaste for the idea of theatrical success.There follows a chapter about the influence on Byron of Vittorio Alfieri, a vital subject which has not been written about thoroughly for over a century, and which goes far to explain what motivated Byron’s experiments in classical drama. The main body of the essays discuss Byron’s plays from thematic perspectives, and examine Byron himself as a figure in the dramas of Goethe and Stoppard. There is a chapter on Rudolph Nureyev’s little-known Manfred ballet, and another on Byron himself as a dramatic performer.Byron at the Theatre is a vital book for anyone interested in this much-discussed but little-understood aspect of Byron’s life and work.

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“Black” British Aesthetics Today is a collection of twenty-four exciting critical and theoretical essays exploring current thinking about the hottest artistic, literary, and critical works now being produced by “black” Britons.This book features a number of chapters by the avant-garde “black” British novelists, poets, and artists themselves. It includes, for instance, aesthetic manifestos by Diran Adebayo, Anthony Joseph, Roshini Kempadoo, Sheree Mack, Valerie Mason-John, and SuAndi as well as key essays by globally renowned critics, including Amna Malik, Kobena Mercer, Lauri Ramey, Roy Sommer, and many others. As a compendium, this book represents a powerfully fresh intellectual current of thought. It provides readers with important insights into contemporary “black” aesthetics, and it includes an array of important clarifications initially voiced at the groundbreaking international symposium that took place on April 8, 2006, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by outstanding new scholars in this burgeoning field of study: e.g., Kevin Etienne-Cummings, Valerie Kaneko Lucas, Michael McMillan, Magdalena Maczynska, Courtney Martin, Jude Okpala, Deirdre Osborne, Koye Oyedeji, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Sandra Ponzanesi, Andrene M. Taylor, Samera Owusu Tutu, and Tracey Walters.The authors contextualise contemporary “black” British aesthetics in relation to the African, African American, and Postcolonial aesthetic traditions; they explore an exciting array of critical theories, trends of feeling, and lively aesthetic movements thriving today in “black” Britain; and they examine and assess embodied aesthetics at play in a wide range of specific works by today’s most brilliant “black” British novelists, poets, photographers, live performance artists, dramatists, architects, musicians, graphic artists, and cinematographers.

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From Camera Lens to Critical Lens: A Collection of Best Essays on Film Adaptation, edited by Rebecca Housel, takes the reader through films by directors like Alfred Hitchcock to examining the relevance of twenty-first century British politics with current film; from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman to author Virginia Woolf; and, examining new theoretical approaches to international film adaptations from China, Japan, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Daughters of the Dust. The collection is derived from the Popular Culture Association (PCA) film-adaptation-area conference papers, researched and written by fourteen diverse scholars from all over the world, who gathered together in San Diego, California in April 2005 to further their research by presenting their ideas on film adaptation, now in full text versions within this exciting new volume. Accessible, engaging and informative, any audience may read and enjoy this edited collection on film adaptation. The volume would also work well for pedagogical purposes, both in and out of the classroom. Such a volume may easily be used in courses for English, film studies, gender studies, women’s studies, fine art, psychology, political science, history, and more. A work of diverse international voices, this collection represents the very best on film adaptation today.

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Why write a book about the stars? Of what use is their study? This book covers this ground with a number of anecdotes arising from the author’s almost 60 years’ experience as a research scientist who has worked with some of the largest telescopes in the world. The text exposes much of what is glossed over in the canned information that the public get and holds nothing back with respect to uncertainties within the subject. People want answers, want somehow to be reassured that someone out there has a handle on things. This book details the basis for our knowledge of the universe, warts and all, and offers important insights as to where the science is going.

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This volume offers a critical yet empathic exploration of the ancient myth of Medea as immortalized by early Greek and Roman dramatists to showcase the tragic forces afoot when relational suffering remains unresolved in the lives of individuals, families and communities. Medea as a tragic figure, whose sense of isolation and betrayal interferes with her ability to form healthy attachments, reveals the human propensity for violence when the agony of unresolved grief turns to vengeance against those we hold most dear. However, metaphorically, her life story as an emblem for existential crisis serves as a psychological touchstone in the lives of early twentieth-century female authors, who struggled to find their rightful place in the world, to resolve the sorrow of unrequited love and devotion, and to reconcile experiences of societal abandonment and neglect as self-discovery.

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This book is a curation of insightful and engaging narrations aimed at freeing women from the margins of Nigeria’s history. It chronicles their protest movements against colonial administrations, including “monster” petitions on taxation and food price controls. It details a string of remarkable political landmarks which highlight women’s historical credentials as nationalists, as well as their voice in early male-dominated legislative institutions. It also narrates more contemporary episodes in women’s resistance against oil exploitation, environmental pollution and anger over the mass abduction of school girls. This timely preservation of the voice and agency of Nigerian women from a wide variety of colonial and contemporary documents will benefit readers interested in African history and gender and women's studies.

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This book offers the reader a critical and interdisciplinary introduction to Brazilian history. Combining a didactic approach with insightful historical analysis, it discusses the main political, cultural, and social developments taking place in the Latin American country from 1500 to 2010. The historical narrative leads the reader step by step and in chronological succession to a clear understanding of the country’s three main historical periods: the Colonial Period (1500-1822), the Empire (1822-1889), and the Republic (1889-present). Each phase is treated separately and subdivided according to the political developments and successive regional forces that controlled the nation’s territory throughout the centuries. At the end of each section, an individual chapter discusses the foremost cultural and artistic developments of the period, engaging perspectives on literature, music, and the visual arts, including cinema. Through its multifaceted approach, the book explores economic history, foreign policy, education and social history, as well as literary and artistic history to reveal the multiethnic and culturally diversified nature of Brazil in all its fullness.

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Mistress, Mother, Muse: An Exploration of the Female in Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean Literature fills a vacuum in comparative literary studies in that it lays the foundations for Mediterraneanism to develop as an area in literary studies.The book is an exploration of aspects of female liminality, including motherhood, sexuality and creativity, in three distinctive Mediterranean cultures, namely Spanish, Greek and Arabic. It adopts myth as an approach to literary analysis, and, thus, introduces a new, ground-breaking method of analysis in literary studies.Mistress, Mother, Muse: An Exploration of the Female in Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean Literature represents a useful reference to students, scholars and academics in the fields of comparative literature, modern Greek literature, Spanish literature, Arabic literature, myth studies, classical Greek literature, and women’s studies.

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Contemporary Perspectives and Research on Early Childhood Education is a welcome addition to the field of early childhood education. This book enhances the understanding of different approaches to curriculum and instruction; appropriate assessment strategies; the role of math and science in children’s development; the importance of seeing the whole child and ensuring children develop holistically through play and arts; training effective teachers; and the importance of helping parents to be better supporters of their children. Along with this comprehensive content, the book also contains diverse methodologies including qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches, which will further enrich the reader’s perspective and understanding of a wide range of topics in the field. Thus, this book creates a platform for researchers and practitioners to share and discuss research findings, expertise, and experiences about early childhood education.

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Introduction written by Professor Benjamin B FerenczThis challenging volume examines the jurisprudence of international criminal justice from various points of view. The philosophy of justice may vary from time to time and from nation to nation, depending on prevailing attitudes towards the substantive rules which deal, in one way or another, with cultural norms. In the national and international area, the principles of criminal justice have a key role in examining the scope of the most serious violations of international criminal law. It is on the basis of appropriate judgment that these principles may be accumulated and achieved for the future conduct of man. This volume, therefore, examines the principles and dimensions of the constitutions of various international criminal tribunals/courts, with particular focus on the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As such, the volume offers a comprehensive evaluation of the rule of law and criminal justice and their legal tasks within the complementarity system of international criminal jurisprudence.The volume emphasises the prosecution and punishment of all those who may successfully escape from the proceedings of national and international criminal courts because of their juridical, political, religious, economic or military power. It demands the implementation of international law of jus cogens. The provisions of the Statute should not be deduced in contradiction to the norms from which no derogation is possible, such as prohibitions governing crimes against humanity, torture, apartheid, rape, war crimes, genocide and aggression. If the value of the task of the Court is to be realised by the majority of states in the international community, the cycle of impunity has to be abolished in the case of all states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations.

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This collection asks how we are to address the nuclear question in a post-Cold War world. Rather than a temporary fad, Nuclear Criticism perpetually re-surfaces in theoretical circles. Given the recent events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the ripple of anti-nuclear sentiment the event created, as well as the discursive maneuvers that took place in the aftermath, we might pause to reflect upon Nuclear Criticism and its place in contemporary scholarship (and society at-large).Scholars who were active in earlier expressions of Nuclear Criticism converse with emergent scholars likewise striving to negotiate the field moving forward. This volume revolves around these dialogic moments of agreement and departure; refusing the silence of complacency, the authors renew this conversation while taking it in exciting new directions. As political paradigms shift and awareness of nuclear issues manifests in alternative forms, the collected essays establish groundwork for future generations caught in a perpetual struggle with legacies of the nuclear.

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Higher education worldwide is operating in a highly volatile context, a consequence of rapid globalisation, constricting funding and intense technological change. These forces challenge assumptions about work, productivity, and international demand for knowledge, skills and resources, igniting needs for highly competent and educated graduates.To remain viable, universities have to build their capacity to respond promptly, positively and wisely to an interlaced combination of “change forces”. One approach is to redesign learning and teaching to enhance subject discipline knowledge and skills. An alternative approach is to develop a learning and teaching framework that builds institutional knowledge and capabilities and connects them to the university’s strategic plan. Taking a longitudinal perspective, covering seven years and three separate research projects, this book focuses on the alternative approach.Producing Pedagogy describes the development and subsequent evaluation of a whole-of-institution approach to pedagogy, based on five associated principles: Sustainability, Engagement, Scholarship, Flexibility, and Contextual Learning. This refereed volume collates insights about the development of the pedagogy using as its case study a regional Australian university.

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This book investigates the practice of family mediation and some of the challenges that may hinder its effective use by marginalised groups in a society. Those challenges include gendered power disparity and family violence, especially towards women, and the discussion extends to how the challenges can be overcome through a practice of evaluative mediation to provide fair outcomes for women. Unlike other contemporary books on mediation, this book not only discusses different theories of power and equity in mediation, it also includes a number of verbatim quotes from different mediation sessions to demonstrate how those theories are operationalised in a real life context.While other contemporary texts on mediation focus on Western style facilitative mediation and its limitations in attaining fair justice for women enduring gendered power disparity and family violence, this text emphasises an evaluative mediation style that is embedded in Eastern social practices. Instead of focusing on gendered power disparity and family violence as limitations on the practice of facilitative mediation, this book details the practice of evaluative mediation which may provide fair justice to women despite the presence of gendered power disparity and family violence in a society.

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This book offers an innovative engagement with the diverse histories of colonial and indigenous medicines. Engagement with different kinds of colonialism and varied indigenous socio-political cultures has led to a wide range of approaches and increasingly distinct traditions of historical writing about colonial and indigenous modes of healing have emerged in the various regions formerly ruled by different colonial powers. The volume offers a much-needed opportunity to explore new conceptual perspectives and encourages critical reflection on how scholars’ research specialisms have influenced their approaches to the history of medicine and healing. The book includes contributions on different geographical regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas and within the varied contexts of Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and British colonialisms. It deals with issues such as internal colonialism, the plural history of objects, transregional circulation and entanglement, and the historicisation of medical historiography. The chapters in the volume explore the scope for conceptual interaction between authors from diverse disciplines and different regions, highlighting the synergies and thematic commonalities as well as differences and divergences.

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Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).

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Rachel Ritterbusch’s Practical Approaches to Teaching Film is a collection of essays focusing on the use of film in settings ranging from an introductory film class to an upper-division Women’s Studies course. Drawing on their experience in the classroom, contributors to this anthology show how movies can be used to promote critical thinking, create an awareness of the male gaze, challenge dominant ideology, and unmask the constructedness of film. This volume treats a wide variety of film texts, from box-office hits like The Da Vinci Code to underappreciated art films such as Susan Streitfeld’s Female Perversions; from Pépé le Moko and other French classics to more contemporary francophone works like Chaos and Rosetta; from self-reflexive films that interrogate the act of filmmaking itself to those that draw attention to the phallocentric nature of cinematic apparatus. Common to all these essays is the belief that, if used judiciously, film can be a valuable pedagogical tool. Aimed both at those currently teaching film and those wishing to do so, this volume provides practical support in the form of sample syllabi, assignments, and a glossary of film terms.

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This collection of essays, comprised of research first presented at the seventh annual Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture, explores one of the most pervasive, vexing, and alluring concepts in the Humanities, that of place. Including essays which encompass a broad range of research fields and methodologies, from Geography to Cybernetics, it presents a cross-section of approaches aimed revealing the complex cultural machinations behind what once may have seemed a static, one-dimensional topic.Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature. Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha or Joyce’s Dublin become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. With the idea of place foregrounded in so much contemporary discourse, this collection promises to enter into an already lively debate and one which, due to its relevance to where we live and how we make sense of our own “places” within them, does not show any signs of flagging.

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Drawing on philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis as well as on literary criticism, this collection of essays explores a range of fantasy texts with particular attention to the various ways in which they seek to deal with the reality of death. The essays uncover some fascinating links, and indeed tensions, between the writers discussed.

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Critically investigating the gender of programming in popular culture, Sexing Code proposes that the de facto representation of technical ability serves to perpetuate the age-old association of the male with intellect and reason, while identifying the female with the body. Challenging this division, in which code is situated within the male sphere, the discussion highlights women¹s contributions in the writing and theorizing of code, particularly in the digital arts, hacking, and hacktivism. Presenting an accessible and lively discussion, Sexing Code demonstrates that the gendering of programming selectively confers the privilege of authorship and is therefore a salient factor in the production of culture in the twenty-first century.

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This volume is a compilation of articles written by renowned scholars and promising young researchers, in which the Jewish space is revealed as diverse forms of life and relations that developed in the rich context of urbanism, social life, leisure and economic activities, and coexistence with the non-Jewish world. Having undergone various transformations, the Jewish space has preserved its authenticity and individuality. In the book, the Jewish space is analysed in a wide chronological perspective from the viewpoint of literature, history, architecture and social relations. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in various forms of entertainment (sports, leisure, cabaret parties), living, participation in social life, reading and writing of Jews in Eastern European towns and shtetls in the 19th and early 20th century.

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The benefits of the digital age are huge. Our lives have been transformed, both in the developed and the undeveloped world. However, this transformation has its dark side. The same powerful technologies have enabled cultural or religious grooming to flourish, unmoderated social ‘influencing’ to have free reign, fake information to spread, and sophisticated hackers to create destabilizing international mayhem.What place does the Church have in all this? How does it respond? What about the master philosophers of the neo-Platonic age, whose wisdom, borne of the great philosopher himself, was formed through the emerging doctrines of the early Christian church? The excellent and thought-provoking essays gathered here provide answers to these questions and more.

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As a new trend in aesthetics appearing concurrently in the West and the East in the last ten years, the aesthetics of everyday life points to a growing diversification among existing methodologies for pursuing aesthetics, alongside the shift from art-based aesthetics. The cultural diversity manifest in global aesthetics offers common ground for the collaborative efforts of aesthetics in both the West and the East. Given the rapidly growing interest and its potential for attracting new audiences extending beyond the more narrowly focused traditions of twentieth-century analytic and environmental aesthetics, it stands to command its own share of attention in the future of aesthetic studies. The aesthetics of everyday life has become a stream of thought with a global ambition. This interest has led to numerous systematic and in-depth works on this topic, some of which were conducted by the authors represented in this volume. A salient feature of this book is that it not only represents the recent developments of the aesthetics of everyday life in the West, but also highlights the interaction between scholars in the West and the East on this topic. Thus, the project is a contribution toward mutual progress in the collaboration between Western and Eastern aesthetics. What distinguishes this book from other anthologies and monographs on this topic is that it reconstructs the aesthetics of everyday life through cultural dialogue between the West and the East, with a view to building a new form of aesthetics of everyday life, as seen from a global perspective. At present, the aesthetics of everyday life as a newly emergent approach to aesthetics may encounter skepticism among aestheticians accustomed to the rigors of analytic philosophers who prefer to discuss aesthetics at the level of abstract concepts and argument, and who tolerate the particulars of experience mainly as illustrations. But, there is no reason to abandon the pursuit of the aesthetics of everyday life in the face of such objections. On the contrary, there are many benefits to gain in bringing aesthetics to bear on a wider sphere of human life, made possible through efforts to show the relevance of aesthetics to a broader range of human actions.

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Popular anthologies hold that the Romantic Era in Great Britain ended promptly in 1832 and that the early Twentieth Century was the time of Modernism and the rejection of the Romantic in British letters. However, in Wales, just the opposite was true. This study traces the work of poets and novelists in Wales in the early- to mid-Twentieth Century who all found their poetic master to be William Wordsworth.In the early part of the century, W. H. Davies, John Cowper Powys and Huw Menai – a tramp, a mystic novelist and a coal miner – produce novels and poetry with Wordsworth as their acknowledged master. By mid-century, Idris Davies, a coal miner turned teacher, R. S. Thomas, an Anglican priest, and Leslie Norris, another teacher, are writing in the “mountainous shadow of William Wordsworth.”While the literary lights of London are leading the Modernist revolution, in Wales, the inspiration is still the English poet, Wordsworth. This study will illuminate this flare up of Romanticism, and show the way in which Romanticism re-emerges from unexpected quarters.

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Over the past decade, early childhood education and care has moved onto the policy agenda in many countries. There is growing recognition that early access to quality education and appropriate care provides young children with a good and fair start in life. While scientific research constantly brings new insights into brain development and the enormous importance of the first years of a child’s life, the early 20th century theories of one Russian psychologist, Lev S. Vygotsky (1896–1934), have had profound and diverse impacts upon the early childhood education traditions in both the East and the West and remain highly relevant today.Recently, more than 750 early childhood education researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and NGO activists from around the world met in Prague at “Exploring Vygotsky’s Ideas: Crossing Borders,” the 17th Annual Conference of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA), hosted by the International Step by Step Association (ISSA). In an effort to share many of the intriguing ideas and practices discussed during the conference with a broader audience, ISSA invited leading presenters to explore their experiences in early childhood through the prism of Vygotsky’s theories and ideas. The result of ISSA’s initiative is this volume of papers which examine Vygotsky’s legacy on early childhood education systems in both the East and the West, offering ideas which can be used to work for the benefit of children and societies across the globe.

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To what extent is there really a universal structure, whether innate or not, of language for learning? Or conversely, is language learning mainly context-based? And, in the end, does the very nature of language delimit our mental world—such that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” or, in a different parlance, constitute “the prison house of language”?Contrary to the conventional wisdom held by many in history, all these seemingly plausible views are highly misleading, to the extent that something vital is missing in the conventional debate, such that the nature of learning has yet to be more comprehensively and systematically understood.This is not to say, however, that the literature in the study of language (and other related fields) hitherto existing in history has been much ado about nothing. In fact, much can be learned from different theoretical approaches in the literature.The virtue of this book is to provide an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of learning, especially (though not exclusively) in relation to language—which, while incorporating the different views in the literature, transcends them all in the end, with the use of language and also beyond it. This inquiry may sound academic, but it has enormous implications not just for the narrow concern with the nature of language, but also, more importantly, for the larger concern with the nature of thinking, feeling, and doing in learning, both with the use of language and beyond it.If true, this seminal work will fundamentally change the way that we think, not only about the nature of language, in a small sense— but also about the nature of learning, with the use of language and also beyond it, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate, in a broad sense.

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Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited reflects on the ways that artists and filmmakers address the innovations and limitations of producing and exhibiting their work. Ranging from community collaboration to individual interpretation, and from gallery installation to cinematic screening, exploring the differences and overlaps between definitions and methodologies. With an international reach, including contributors who are both practitioners and theorists, this book maps out developments in art and documentary, covering themes that include explorations of personal experience and representations of the past, while examining interactive galleries and the cinematic space.

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Pandemics are large-scale epidemics that spread throughout the world. Virologists predict that the next pandemic could occur in the coming years, probably from some form of influenza, with potentially devastating consequences. Vaccinations, if available, and behavioral methods are vital for stemming the spread of infection. However, remarkably little attention has been devoted to the psychological factors that influence the spread of pandemic infection and the associated emotional distress and social disruption. Psychological factors are important for many reasons. They play a role in nonadherence to vaccination and hygiene programs, and play an important role in how people cope with the threat of infection and associated losses. Psychological factors are important for understanding and managing societal problems associated with pandemics, such as the spreading of excessive fear, stigmatization, and xenophobia that occur when people are threatened with infection. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the psychology of pandemics. It describes the psychological reactions to pandemics, including maladaptive behaviors, emotions, and defensive reactions, and reviews the psychological vulnerability factors that contribute to the spreading of disease and distress. It also considers empirically supported methods for addressing these problems, and outlines the implications for public health planning.

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As the field of conflict analysis and resolution continues to grow, scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize that we can learn from one another. Theory must be informed by practice and practice must draw on sound theory. Above and beyond this lies a further recognition: without at least attempting to actually engage and transform entrenched conflicts, our field cannot hope to achieve its potential. We will merely remain in a more diverse, multi-disciplinary ivory tower. This edition breaks new ground in explicitly connecting the Scholarship of Engagement to the work of conflict resolution professionals including those in the academy, those in the field, and those who refuse to choose between the two. The text explores a wide variety of examples of, and thinking on, the Scholarship of Engagement from participatory action research to peace education, and from genocide prevention to community mediation and transitional justice.

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Researching the Self originated in a conference held at the University of Amsterdam in 2005, where scholars from various academic backgrounds presented their current theories and research. One central theme that emerged from the conference is the need for interdisciplinarity in the study of self. The present volume tries to meet this need, as it covers fields as diverse as psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy, sociology, and computer science. Additionally, the authors have contributed interdisciplinary reflections, in which they contemplate the other contributions to the present volume, and consider integrating this work with their own.•What are the neural correlates of self?•Can individuals have multiple selves?•How do selves depend on other people?•Will engineers ever construct artificial selves?•What is the problem of self we are trying to solve?•What does the future hold for the self?•Do selves really exist? “As I read the other entries in the current volume I was struck by the implications that the many different perspectives on the self had for each other” (Gillihan, this volume).“We must continue to keep in mind what we know, what we don’t know, and what we only think we know in order to successfully conquer this interdisciplinary problem of the self” (Gorman and Keenan, this volume).

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At this moment in time, when the world is only just beginning to recover from the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research in this book makes for essential reading. It will serve to help re-establish confidence and reduce anxiety in business and leisure travellers who are planning to embark on new travel experiences in a world impacted by longer-lasting armed conflicts, increased global violence, and higher frequencies of natural disasters. This book blends in-depth academic research around global risk mitigation with unique perspectives on business and leisure travel safety, narrated by authors who have extensive knowledge of security and risk mitigation systems. Each page contains easy-to-follow advice for domestic and international travel, but differs from other books, in that it addresses the ‘hard’ issues of travel safety (such as theoretical research around risk mitigation), in lieu of setting the focus solely on the ‘soft’ issues (like itinerary planning) which tend to be the focus of many travel publications today. Moreover, unique to this book is an extreme travel section adapted to business and leisure travellers, which makes for compelling reading and deals with kidnapping, risk mitigation and contingency planning. It incorporates the real-life experiences of one of the authors, who survived torture and abduction, and whose experiences now inform pre-deployment training for Australian Defence Force personnel for operations in armed conflict. This book blends the female and male voice into a narrative that combines the perspectives of professional security experts with common sense travel advice. The research that has gone into this book is essential reading for anyone who intends to embark on business or leisure travel, either in their own country or overseas, or who is interested in studying travel from an academic viewpoint.

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This book highlights the present status of manuscript collection in the different repositories of India, and also suggests some remedial measures which are required to be adopted for the proper conservation, care and management of manuscripts. It showcases the nature of base material, ink, pigments, binding materials, writing and illustration techniques used in different manuscripts, given the importance of having thorough knowledge about the chemical composition of different materials before adopting any kind of conservation practice.As dating of manuscript is a very difficult task, a great variety of techniques and methodology such as palaeography, style of writing, illustration and terminology, colophon, spectrometric methods, and radio carbon dating, among others, are discussed here. Furthermore, as prevention is better than cure, different preventive measures, including indigenous methods practiced during the ancient period for preservation of manuscripts, are also outlined, as are the hazards of using different chemicals for conservation of manuscripts.

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This book explains, in a simple and practical way, how and when the diabetic patient should conduct self-management activities. These include healthy eating, physical activity, the consumption of medication, the monitoring of blood glucose level, the cessation of smoking, and foot care, among others. Such activities can help the patient to establish a level of control over their condition, and thus reduce the risk of developing serious complications. As such, this book will be of particular interest to diabetic patients and their family members, as it will provide them with further information in their fight against diabetes. Additionally, it will also appeal to physicians, pharmacists and nurses as a guide for their work in educating diabetic patients.

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This is a concise, informed and practical manual detailing the cause, prevention and interventional treatment of oral cancer – the deadliest of oral diseases. In the 21st century, oral cancer remains a lethal and deforming disease exhibiting rising incidence of epidemic proportions, particularly in younger patients, and is of global significance with over 300,000 new cases presenting each year. Despite advances in diagnosis and management, half of all patients die within five years. Even following successful initial treatment, long-term prognosis is compromised by the presentation of advanced tumours and development of widespread, multi-focal disease throughout the mouth and upper aero-digestive tract. The transformation of normal mouth lining into ‘potentially malignant’ and subsequently malignant tissue is a complex, multistep and multifactorial process in which accumulated genetic alterations, often instigated by overuse of tobacco and alcohol, disrupt the normal functioning of oral epithelial cells. Unfortunately, there is considerable public ignorance regarding oral cancer, and it is imperative for disease prevention to raise awareness of the causes and symptoms of the disease, especially in those populations most ‘at-risk’ of cancer. This book provides pragmatic strategies to improve both prevention and treatment intervention. Spanning nearly 40 years of clinical investigation, it reviews the biological basis of oral cancer, outlines primary, secondary and tertiary preventive strategies and describe a pragmatic treatment intervention protocol that specifically utilizes the ‘potentially malignant window’ to identify malignant disease at the earliest possible stage and intervention to ‘stop the oral cancer clock’ and halt the progression of this deadliest of oral diseases.

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As chaste women devoted to God, nuns are viewed as the purest of the pure. Yet, as females who reject courtship, sex, marriage, child bearing, and materialism, they have been the anathema of how society has proscribed, expected, and regulated women: sex object, wife, mother, and capitalist consumer. They are perceived as otherworldly beings, yet revered for their salt-of-the-earth demeanor. This book illustrates how both English and Spanish Renaissance-era authors latched onto the figure of the nun as a way to evaluate the social construction of womanhood. This analysis of the nun’s role in the popular imagination via literature explores how writers on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide employed the role of the nun to showcase the powerful potential these women possessed in acting out as sanctified subversives. The texts under consideration include William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, María de Zayas’s The Disenchantments of Love, Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun, Catalina de Erauso’s The Lieutenant Nun, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s autobiographical and literary works. No other book addresses these issues through a concentrated study of these authors and their literary works, much less by offering an in-depth discussion of the literature and culture of seventeenth-century England, Spain, and Mexico.

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Commentators have noted the extraordinary impact of popular culture on legal practice, courtroom proceedings, police departments, and government as a whole, and it is no exaggeration to say that most people derive their basic understanding of law from cultural products. Movies, television programs, fiction, children’s literature, online games, and the mass media typically influence attitudes and impressions regarding law and legal institutions more than law and legal institutions themselves.Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives enhances the appreciation of the interaction between popular culture and law by underscoring this interaction’s multinational and international features. Two dozen authors from nine countries invite readers to consider the role of law-related popular culture in a broad range of nations, socio-political contexts, and educational environments. Even more importantly, selected contributors explore the global transmission and reception of law-related cultural products and, in particular, the influence of assorted works and media across national borders and cultural boundaries.The circulation and consumption of law-related popular culture are increasing as channels of mass media become more complex and as globalization runs its uncertain course. Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives adds to the critical understanding of the worldwide interaction of popular culture and law and encourages reflection on the wider implications of this mutual influence across both time and geography.

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