Continuum Publishing Group
A to Z of teaching in FE.
Steward (City College, Norwich, UK) makes good use of her three decades in further education (FE) by offering sound advice to new instructors in a remarkably accessible format, with entries arranged alphabetically so you can easily seek inspiration as you travel from part-time teaching job to part-time teaching job on the bus. She offers one extended entry and a variety of shorter ones for each letter of the alphabet, and although American readers may be confused by some of the acronyms and regulatory authorities, her comments on such issues as behavior, constructivism, emotional intelligence, gender, jargon, key skills, new technologies, planning programs, race relations, teaching style, and uncertainty successfully cross the pond. Ideal for newcomers, this also serves grizzled veterans who are becoming increasingly grizzled. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Academic literacy and the languages of change.
Thesen and van Pletzen (U. of Cape Town) present a collection of studies conducted by the Language Development Group at the U. of Cape Town. The project researches students' literacy practices at home, school, and university, and how these function both as resources and barriers to learning in higher education. Focusing on students for whom English is not their mother tongue, the researchers examine the nature of the academic literacy required of these students at the U. of Cape Town, and raise questions about the educational programs and the policies of the institution itself. They suggest ways that the educational environment should be changed to accommodate the needs and experiences of the changing student body, as the institution and the country as a whole continue to overcome past practices of racial, ethnic, and regional Apartheid. For postgraduates and academics researching sociolinguists or language and education. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Academic writing and genre; a systematic analysis.
A challenge for applied linguistics is posed by the expanding use of English internationally, e.g., at universities. In introducing his genre-based approach to language learning, Bruce (applied linguistics, U. of Waikato, New Zealand) explains the concept of 'discourse competence' central to academic writing, proposing that in teaching novice English writers to construct academic texts competently they need to be trained as discourse analysts to develop heuristic frameworks to categorize and analyze texts in their subject areas. Theoretical approaches to analyzing social and cognitive genres that have influenced teaching are examined, e.g., the systematic functional school of linguistics for the former, and Wittgenstein's construct of 'family resemblances' in regard to the latter. Tables and figures include taxonomies of text types. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The actor's survival guide; how to make your way in Hollywood.
This guide for beginning actors concentrates on the business aspects of the profession in Los Angeles. Many details are given on moving and living there, where to look for non-acting jobs, housing and the best areas to live, transportation, the business of Hollywood, marketing (headshots, resumes, etc.), talent agents and personal managers, unions, the specifics of the auditioning process, contracts, and bookkeeping. Robbins also covers continuing education and training. Personal anecdotes and advice from other actors is incorporated, and website resources are included for each chapter. There is no index. Robbins is an actor who has worked in plays, commercials, and films, and teaches performing and media arts at Evergreen State College. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Adorno's concept of life.
Morgan (U. of Nottingham) traces different ways that Theodor W. Adorno's (1903-69) thought circles around the concept of life, and suggests ways to bypass his strictly negative philosophy when thinking about the concept of life. More ambitiously, he defends the German philosopher's dialectical philosophy as a means of articulating a concept of life that eludes both biological reductionism and the hypo-stasization of life as a process that requires the dissolution of the human subject. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The American dream and contemporary Hollywood cinema.
Winn (film studies, Auburn U.) explores representations of the American Dream — the idea that the United States provides opportunity without unfair limitations — in popular contemporary Hollywood film. He conducts rhetorical analysis of films such as Saturday Night Fever, Breaking Away, Flashdance, Wall Street, Pretty Woman, Good Will Hunting, and Titanic in order to identify three themes: "moralizing mobility," in which the American Dream is realized by a moral protagonist; "moralizing failure," in which characters cope with failed mobility without questioning the basic tenets of the American Dream; and "moralizing the material," in which emotionally and/or physically distressed upper-class characters benefit from a relationship with characters from a lower social class. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Analytic philosophy; the history of an illusion.
Preston (philosophy, Malone College, US) traces the rise and fall of analytical philosophy and a distinct school or movement. He does not spend time on particular topics or people within the movement, saying that they have been thoroughly enough debated that they can be relegated to soft-focus elements in a higher level study. Nor does he require readers to be familiar with any notation or concepts of formal logic. The study began as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern California. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Applying Wittgenstein.
The elucidatory reading of German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1954) presents a more insidious threat to his reception than the doctrinal account, contends Read (philosophy, U. of East Anglia). In sections covering language, literature, and time, he discusses such topics as distinguishing meaningful consequences from grammatical effects, the strong grammar of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and how not to represent space-time. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Aristotle's theory of knowledge.
Kiefer (philosophy, Creighton U. and Southeast Community College) takes on the weighty but somewhat disorganized corpus of Aristotle's material on learning and cuts through the fog of interpretation by both Western and Middle Eastern philosophers to give an elegant and organized account of what Aristotle originally intended to say. Taking as his core question the nature of knowledge, what we know and how we can know, Kiefer takes a unique approach to such questions as what knowledge is in general and what it is for us, and the differences between semantic and psychological requirements for knowledge. As he does so he analyzes the metaphysics of knowledge, the theory of knowledge and the question of whether knowledge, as we now understand it, is possible. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Backstage stories.
Baker provides a behind-the-scenes look at live theater production through interviews with 21 highly-respected backstage professionals. The book was written for those who enjoy attending theatrical performances, and for those who may be contemplating a career in the theater. Stories include anecdotes and reminiscences from theater professionals, from wig makers to artistic directors, from a variety of theaters in the United States and Britain. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Badiou and Derrida; politics, events, and their time.
Calcagno (philosophy, U. of Scranton) brings together for the first time the works on politics by French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou. Derrida has long been regarded as one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in contemporary philosophy, and Badiou is quickly emerging as a prominent figure in French thought. The intent of this volume is to bring together the most recent work on politics by the two men. Also, and more importantly, it advances a theory regarding the relationship between political events and time that can account for both political "undecidability and decidability." In this critical essay, the author occasionally acts as referee, weighing and evaluating the work of one of his subjects against the other. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere; re-thinking emancipation.
Hewlett (French studies, U. of Warwick, England) argues that contemporary French writers Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, and Jacques Ranciére are all part of an emancipatory tradition in which freedom means freedom from oppression, in contrast to liberals, who conceive of freedom as freedom from interference. They have resisted the slide toward such liberalism as it has overwhelmed French thought since the 1970s, he says. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A beginner's guide to the study of religion.
Herling (religious studies, Marymount Manhattan College, US) prepares beginning students to learn about religion by presenting the most significant aspects of a methodical and theoretical approach to it. A general intellectual attitude is a promising start, he says, but having a few basic tools hanging from the belt as well can make a lot of difference when the job starts. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Being and number in Heidegger's thought; overcoming mathematics.
Although Heidegger is known more as a philosopher than a mathematician, Roubach (Hebrew U., Jerusalem) is likely to stir up enthusiasm for the study of Heidegger's relation of mathematics and ontology, especially as expressed in such works as Being and Time. Rouback provides a new analysis of Heideggerian finitude, which others have found not only challenging but practically opaque, and reconciles debate about Heidegger's take on logic and the foundations of mathematics. Along the way he examines the concepts of one as transcendental and one as number, the roles of number and time in Being and Time, and the interplay of mathematical physics, metaphysics, ontological regions, mathesis, the transcendental ego, and the limits of the mathematical (as in the Critique of Pure Reason. Rouback's comments on whether logic and mathematics are mathematical is especially interesting, as is his proposal for a continental philosophy of mathematics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ben; sonship and Jewish mysticism.
The many studies of sonship in Judaism and of Jewish mysticism have barely, if at all, acknowledged one another, so Idel believes his is the first attempt to investigate the intersection between them as a focused topic. He examines the different subcategories in the wide category of sonship as found in Jewish mysticism. His goal is to clarify the mystical forms of sonship particularly in Judaism but also in religion generally. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Berkeley's philosophy of spirit; consciousness, ontology, and the elusive subject.
What, exactly, was Berkeley's understanding of self-consciousness? Obviously, he rejected the basic metaphysics of his predecessors, creating a void over which his ontological framework ultimately does not stretch. However, Bettcher (philosophy, California State U., Los Angeles) has developed a new model of self-consciousness that provide promise for the reconstruction of Berkeley's core metaphysical views that place him as a transitional figure, a position that makes it possible to understand his philosophy of spirit, which seems otherwise to obscure the subject of experience or render it completely out of reach. In eight elegant essay-chapters she re-evaluates the old ideas about "subject" (as a metaphysical supporter of properties) with the new (meaning "as opposed to 'object'"), creating a framework in which Berkeley's elusive idea of a "subject of experience" becomes tangible. Bettcher's material on Berkeley's perceptions of Locke is particularly enlightening. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Bertrand Russell, language, and linguistic theory.
You would expect someone who got about 60 million words into print to have a certain level of comfort with them. However, most critics argue that Russell's prodigious output is not evidence of any interest in language per se. In contrast, Green (linguistics and English, Sheffield Hallam U.) has found that much of Russell's work, particularly that written from 1900 to 1950, indicates a number of linguistic considerations. Green places his arguments in historical context, showing that both linguistics and philosophy were in the process of seeking their respective identities and to create appropriate disciplines, and in essence ignored each other. Green builds upon this and other findings to develop a linguistic theory which is consistent with Russell's timing and observations and to reassess Russell's position in the philosophy of language and linguistic philosophy. The result is a completely new re-reading of a good number of those 60 million words. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Blame Canada!; South Park and popular culture.
Johnson-Woods (media and communication, U. of Queensland, Australia) presents a scholarly assessment of the South Park television show and its contribution to and reflection of popular culture. Coverage includes the show's history, media reception, Internet uptake/fandom, marketing, generic makeup, humor, intertextuality, music, food/drink references, community, characters, and its recurring themes of politics, "difference," religion, and gender/sex. A companion website contains Johnson-Woods' recaps of all episodes. While offering an academic analysis for students, scholars, and academics in media studies, popular culture, and similar fields, the text is also accessible to general readers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Bridging discourses in the ESL classroom; students, teachers and researchers.
Gibbons (language and literacy, University of Technology, Sidney, Australia) approaches English as a Second Language from the teacher's point of view. She uses theory from various disciplines but concentrates on classroom interaction to demonstrate how conversation can guide the student from basic daily English to that needed to succeed in academic and business situations. There are a number of sample dialogues for helping students learn and use technical language — especially helpful for ESL teachers without a strong science background. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The British left's "great debate" on Europe.
Mullen (politics, Northumbria U., UK) traces the debates within the British left (consisting of the Labour Party, the trade unions, the Cooperative Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party, and others) over the European integration project from 1945 to 2005. He offers detailed accounts of the shifting positions of the various parties influential in government and on the debate-shaping influence played by smaller groups including anarchist organizations, green and socialist parties, and pressure groups and think tanks. After the chronological narrative, he identifies the economic and political factors that precipitated tectonic policy shifts over the course of half a century, arguing that they resulted from transformations in the balance of power between anti- and pro-EU forces, themselves linked to competing social forces at the global, European, national, and institutional levels. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
