Continuum Publishing Group
Canonising hypertext; explorations and constructions.
Writing for scholars, instructors, and students of literature, Ensslin (new media, U. of Wales-Bangor) seeks to help canonize literary hypertext as a step toward promoting and teaching the written word among people increasingly oriented toward hypermedia. In addition to proposing an initial hypertext canon, she discusses such aspects as hypertextual ontologies, conceptual adaptations to literary competence, and hypertext in the literary classroom. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Can't learn, won't learn, don't care; troubleshooting challenging behaviour.
O'Reagan (an educator specializing in ADD/ADHD issues, Leicester U., UK) divides students with challenging classroom behavior into three types: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or "can't learn," Oppositional Defiant Disorder or "won't learn," and Conduct Disorder or "don't care whether they learn or not." The chapters models classroom-specific as well as school-wide strategies for teaching effectively while acknowledging the characteristics of each disorder, as well as managing the variety of behaviors — from excuse-making and emotional outbursts to theft or violence — that typically fall under the three types. Example scenarios are employed to demonstrate strategies and policies. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Can we trust the BBC?
Aitken describes his book as a plea for reform at the BBC, the British television and radio powerhouse. A former BBC reporter and journalist, the author notes that the BBC is an integral part of British life. The BBC has presented itself as an honest, unbiased provider of news coverage since its inception roughly 80 years ago. However, Aitken points to an internal culture biased to the left, jeopardizing its objectivity and impartiality. While crediting BBC with much excellent programming, he asks that it re-examine itself with an eye to eliminating bias. He also asks something of its audience: to become more skeptical. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Caryl Churchill's Top girls.
Tycer, who seems to be based in California, begins by locating the play within the whole work of British playwright Churchill and in the political, social, and historical milieu of Britain in the early 1980s, especially the career of Margaret Thatcher and the status of the socialist and feminist movements. Then she looks at characteristics of the play itself, its production history, and workshopping it. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The challenge of relativism; its nature and limits.
For many practicing within the humanities, relativism is a pervasive and persuasive intellectual position. They hold that relativism rightly views knowledge as relative to time, culture, group, and individual. In response, Phillips (York U., Canada) examines several varieties of relativism proposed over the past few centuries and identifies it as a way of thinking that imbues postcolonialism and postmodernism. He examines the reasons why relativism is both ageless and evergreen, and analyzes its popular appeal, describing the grounds of relativism and its wealth of variants and branches, the relations between Wittgenstein and skepticism (and Winch and culture) and the resulting impact on relativism, and the pluralist tradition set by Rorty and Schmitt. One of the most interesting passages deals with the relationship between relativism and what Phillips calls "ruthless liberalism." (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Christian community in history; v.3: Ecclesial existence.
Jesuit theologian and teacher Haight (Jesus Symbol of God) here completes his trans-denominational ecclesiology, which he insists does not alleviate the need for, or compete with, denominational ecclesiologies. He describes the history of the institutional church in light of challenges he sees Christianity facing in the 21st century. This third and final volume looks at characteristics of the current church, among them nature and mission, membership, activities, and partial communion. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A chronology of world Christianity.
Having produced two earlier prize-winning references on Christianity, Bowden here presents articles describing events in the faith all over the world, year-by-year and sometimes even day-by-day, from the time of Jesus to the year 2000. Some degree of selection has been necessary. Secular and religious people, literature, art, architecture, music, drama, and film and television are among the elements considered. Articles are often cross-referenced forward or backward in time. In-text boxes and terminal appendices discuss topics not tied to specific dates. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The coherence of Hobbes's Leviathan; civil and religious authority combined.
Thomas Hobbes' 1651 treatise is divided into two halves, the first a secular and the second a religious argument for a leader with absolute power and criteria for choosing the correct leader. Many have argued that the second part is mere religious cover for his essentially secular beliefs, but Brandon (philosophy, Cape Fear Community College, North Carolina) contends that the second half satisfies conditions that the first cannot, particularly addressing conflict between civil and ecclesiastical authority. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Coleridge's responses; selected writings on literary criticism, the Bible, and nature; 3v.
The writings of the prodigious literary critic and thinker have been sorted in this three-volume work to present, in chronological order, his notes and longer writings first on writing, and then on individual writers (Volume One, ed. by Seamus Perry); his writings on the Bible (Volume Two; ed. by Anthony J. Harding); and on nature and vision (Volume Three, edited by Samantha Harvey). Each volume contains a useful and lengthy introduction by the editor, as well as a short abstract at the beginning of each entry. Most of the works selected here have appeared in Coleridge's Collected works, but have not previously been arranged by theme. Others have not been previously published and were transcribed from Coleridge's notebooks by the editors. The editors' efforts to create coherent thematic volumes and present material previously found only in archives have resulted in an excellent resource for scholars and students. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Comparative and international education; an introduction to theory, method and practice.
Phillips (comparative education, U. of Oxford) and Schweisfurth (education in developing countries, U. of Birmingham) offer a unique approach to comparative education in that they introduce professionals in other areas of educational research to the field as well as students. Therefore they provide a general survey of what it means to make comparisons in education, and also show how comparative education has developed as a field of academic activity. They look into practice and fields of inquiry in international education, then focus on issues of development at practical and theoretical levels, methods in comparative education, including those involving cultural and language and resulting in prediction, outcomes of research, results of better understanding of schools, and ways in which international and comparative studies can inform each other in the future. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Conflict; from analysis to intervention, 2d ed.
The impetus and many of the contributors for this introductory graduate textbook came from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University; other contributors teach conflict resolution and anthropology at other institutions in the US, Australia, and Britain. It emphasizes links between theory, research, and practice in analyzing and resolving conflict at levels from the personal to the international. The first edition appeared in 1993. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Conversation in context; a corpus-driven analysis.
Rühlemann offers an examination of real-life speech data from the British National Corpus to show how language is used in natural conversation. The text is based on the thesis completed by the author for a PhD in English linguistics from Ludwig-Maximilians U., Munich. The study provides an overview of characteristic features of British conversation, describes the use of some frequent conversational features that have to-date not been systematically researched using corpus linguistic methods, and explores social differentiation in the use of selected features of British conversation. The author also tests the hypothesis that a situation-based description of conversation can demonstrate how conversational language is adapted to certain needs arising from specific types of constraints on speakers in conversational situations. For academics researching corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Contemporary western ethnography and the definition of religion.
While other scholars look at people who have left the conventional denominations, some to follow flashy alternatives and others to forget religion altogether, Stringer (liturgical and congregational studies, U. of Birmingham, Britain) focuses on those who continue to identify themselves as Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics, or United Reform Church members. In investigating what they believe, he finds them not so different from their neighbors as he might has thought. He discusses ethnography, graveyards and kitchens, gender, star signs and soap operas, and other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear war; lessons from history.
Scott (international politics, U. of Wales, UK) analyzes the risks that the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 could have led to nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. He examines the Soviet decision-making process that led to the deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba, Soviet and American thinking on the deployment and use of nuclear weapons as a matter of "rational" policy, scenarios concerning how nuclear weapons could have been used by accident or at the command of unauthorized figures, and scenarios concerning what would have happened if nuclear weapons had been used. He then draws lessons on the political and military role of nuclear weapons and connects them to current debates. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The demands of taste in Kant's aesthetics.
Kant argued that beauty is subjective, but the judgment of taste about beauty is capable of universal validity. This approach stands in stark contrast with other assessments, in which typically beauty was objective and judgments are universally valid or beauty was subjective and judgments are purely private preferences. Kalar (philosophy, U. of New Mexico) understands Kant's approach to the demands of taste should be understood as involving a uniquely aesthetic normality rooted in Kant's cognitive psychology. As he builds a new interpretation of Kant's idea of what is beautiful, he evaluates what is meant by the judgment of taste analyzes the problems of free play and the form of "purposiveness" (from the Critique of Judgment and other sources), rebuilds the concept of beauty and aesthetic ideals, and concludes with analysis of pleasure and justification. The result, while challenging, gives Kantian scholars and students new paths of inquiry. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Descartes; a guide for the perplexed.
Oft-quoted and more-than-oft misquoted, the works of Descartes stand somewhere at the foundation of most of the thinkers born after him. Skirry (philosophy, Nebraska Wesleyan U.) sorts the pure Descartes from the adapted in this accessible and lively explanation, giving first-time readers a solid structure and a grasp of the main themes. Skirry covers Descartes's method, including the roles of induction and deduction as well as enumeration, and gives full due to "I think, therefore I am," providing a solid grounding in the mind/body division and the role of the mind and soul. He explains Descartes's metaphysics down to the abstractions and universals and the causal adequacy principle; religion, including the causal arguments for God's existence, knowledge in terms of the Scientia and the Cartesian Circle; physics, including space and place, the nature of motion and the question of the condemnation of Galileo; human nature; and sensations, passions and morality. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Destruction and democracy; Derrida's Politics of friendship. (reprint, 2005)
Focusing largely on Politics of Friendship, the most explicitly political of Jacques Derrida's works, Thomson (English, U. of Edinburgh, UK) explores the links between deconstruction and democracy in the work of the French philosopher, who once declared "no deconstruction without democracy, no democracy without deconstruction." Taking an approach to Derrida's work that assumes more-or-less philosophical arguments which can be abstracted from a particular context and repeated independently of the project of reading within which they have arisen, he explores the implications of Derrida's philosophical practices for political theory and considers the relationship of Derrida's work to other strands of political thought. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 2005. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The dictionary of disruption; a practical guide to behaviour management.
Leaman, an experienced school teacher, offers a guide to classroom behavior management in the guise of a dictionary, with topics ranging from low-level disruption to physical assault to strategies for dealing with rudeness, willful misbehavior, and positive reinforcement. The author offers practical suggestions for language and strategies teachers can use to get the results they want. The information is realistic, easily understood, and sometimes humorous. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Discourse and politeness; ambivalent face in Japanese.
Geyer (Japanese language and linguistics, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) reports findings from a study documenting facework constructed and displayed in multiparty interactions among adult native speakers of Japanese. The research is based on data gathered from teachers participating in faculty meetings at several secondary schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The subjects range in age from the early 20s to late 50s, and range from recent college graduates to teachers with 30-plus years of experience. Geyer suggests a revision of Erving Goffman's (1967) notion of face, and applies this conceptualization to the analysis of several social actions that have rarely been dealt with in politeness studies, among them collaborative disagreement, teasing, and talking about troubles. For researchers in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and Japanese language. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Discourses of endangerment; ideology and interest in the defence of languages.
Quite prevalent in many domains of the early 21st century, are warnings about the imminent extinction of many of the world's languages. Linguists, anthropologists, and other scholars look at the phenomenon of such warnings and try to place them in social, political, and intellectual context. They consider language endangerment and nationalist discourses in Catalonia, defending English in an English-dominant world, protecting French, verbal hygiene, and other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
