Artistic accomplishment was an important social and cultural skill for young women of the elite and aristocratic classes in the eighteenth century. Georgiana Keate, the subject of this book, is an example of just such an accomplished young woman. Using the previously unknown diaries of Georgiana, and other contemporary sources, to reconstruct her life and to illustrate her artistic education, this book compares her experience with other young women of her class at this time. Also considered are Georgiana's experiences with professional and amateur artists of this period such as Angelica Kauffman and Mary Delany, together with her connections within the artistic and literary circles of this time. Integral to her artistic endeavours is her father, the amateur artist and poet George Keate. Her marriage to the amateur artist John Henderson caused upset within the family, but Georgiana happily swapped her artistic life for that of wife and mother. This overview of a female amateur artist should be of interest to students of art, social and women's history of the 18th and 19th centuries.

A Paleya is a type of historical and exegetical writing compiled by Byzantine and Orthodox Slavic authors, and in some redactions taking on a strong anti-Judaic polemic character. This research deals with the Paleya in general, and with the Hilandar manuscript of the Tolkovaya Paleya of 1633 in particular, which so far has been completely neglected. The author presents all types of the Paleya, and offers an overview of the scholarly research to date with some critical remarks. He demonstrates how the Paleya served as the substitute for the Old Testament and was helpful in the liturgical field. It was an encyclopaedic companion that offered a comprehensive worldview and guidelines for further reflection, rather than a handbook for the fight against the Jews and Judaism. The second chapter is the edited Slavonic text of the story of original sin with a parallel English translation, while the third chapter is a commentary on it, exploring its relation to the Bible, genre aspects in the text, and its sources, including the apocrypha and the patristic tradition. Researchers of Old Slavonic literature and medieval anti-Semitism, as well as Biblicists will find the book truly absorbing.

Traditional instruction in the social studies has been content rather than process oriented, concentrating on the lower level thinking skills. With coverage of the culture and history of the fifty United States, "Reading the Fifty States" offers librarians and teachers the tools to encourage higher order thinking skills. Students read novels set in each of the states and participate in targeted reader-response activities that are process oriented, develop higher cognitive skills, and spark creativity. Helpful tools include 200 booktalks (4 for each state), lists of other recommended titles for each state, a fact sheet, a listing of the national standards covered, and a plethora of reproducible, reader-response activities directly linked to national standards in language arts and social studies. Grades 3-6

Reading culture has a dual meaning: the way in which people read (make sense of) images of culture and the reading culture of a community (the conditions in which readers and texts exist together). In the contemporary reading environment, understanding of the depictions of culture found in a novel is influenced by publicity and promotion, educational institutions, book stores, funding bodies and other links between the reading public and the production and sale of books. This study draws on translation theory to show that all of these interested parties act as translators of the text, making it available and comprehensible to new readers. Using contemporary Australian fiction, this examination of the movement of culturally-specific texts from their places of origin into other cultural markets will show that no text is read without some form of translation. This highlights hitherto unexplored aspects of the marketing of fiction, and the nature of reading cultures, which will interest authors, readers, publishers and translators, along with the many funding bodies who support them.

"Here's Our Child, Where's The Village?" conveys that every child deserves the opportunity to flourish as happy, thriving and free spirited people regardless of race and the displacement factors governing their lives. The question isn't "Here's Our Child, Where's The Village?" The question is whose village will you be? "We must bear each others burdens. Though the village has been replaced by concrete and Roe v. Wade, there remains innocent children deserving of love and a safe haven. They may be parentless, but they are not Godless..." -Bruce George, Co-Founder of Def Poetry Jam
"Connecting kids to permanency is paramount."
Stacia C. Hammond- Executive Director/Founder
Adoption Support & Consultation Services of Florida, Inc. (ASCS)

"It gives me great pleasure to pen the foreword for "Here's Our Child; Where's the Village?" and participate in the efforts of the Gumbo for the Soul project. The joy one gets from a child is indescribable, but something everyone can enjoy in one capacity or another; especially if we believe in the old African Proverb, it takes a village to raise a child." -Tee C Royal, founder of RAWSISTAZ Literary Group

Gumbo for The Soul Publications and logo are registered
trademarks of Beverly Black Johnson. All Right Reserved
www.gumboforthesoul.com

Proverbs 10: 14
Wise people treasure knowledge, but the babbling of a fool invites disaster.

Truman Capote became a controversial and much debated personality in the 20th century. The themes he elaborated in his works, the 'other' Gothic characters and motifs he presented in the short story collection as well as 'Other Voices, Other Rooms' are as fascinating in the present as they were in his era. Numerous readers rediscovered the sublime and ingenious universe Capote created. Today when the borders of surprise and cruelty were broadened to extremes cinematographic productions portraying Capote and his process of creating 'In Cold Blood 'enjoy international fame and admiration. This book offers a profound analysis as well as interpretation of the Gothic elements that pervaded the works of Capote as well as their possible source of inspiration rooted in the author's frustrated childhood and controversial adulthood. This study sheds light on the vivid imagination of the writer and his indisputable contribution to the enrichment of both American and world literature with numerous biographical references.

Bob Dylan's mastery of the pen is a perennial source of intrigue to fans and scholars alike. Here, the author explores various functions of figurative language in Dylan's 1960s lyrics. Focusing on the period in which the artist rose to fame as a critically acclaimed performer and songwriter, this book reveals matters of metaphor and tropology to be at the very heart of the constant changes and artistic metamorphoses so characteristic of Dylan's career. Founded on influential modern accounts of metaphor in literary theory, the study follows certain key recurring metaphors as the usage evolves through Dylan's 1960s works. Through the book, the author traces these changes in the deployment of metaphor, from its origins as a foremost rhetorical tool in Dylan's "topical" lyrics, towards functioning as a self-reflective literary device in his later "psychedelic" phase. As an academic approach to a popular theme, the work should be of interest to scholars interested in the workings of metaphor in literature, and song lyrics in particular, as well as to those who crave further insight into the lyrical universe of one of the most acclaimed lyricists in popular music.

Literature textbooks used in secondary schools in Alberta reflect the belief that not only does literature have the power to change and shape our thinking, but also that the non-White voices of the culture need to be heard if Canada is to become a country which truly welcomes and values cultural diversity. The realization that many high school students in the Crowsnest Pass area of Southern Alberta held negative stereotypes about Canadian Aboriginal people prompted this study which measured how effective studying literature written by Aboriginal writers was in reducing prejudice. Within each grade, individual students showed significant attitude changes. In all grades, female students had significantly lower scores than males, both pre - and post-test, evidence that there are perhaps different stages of moral development in females than males. Qualitative data revealed an increased understanding of Aboriginal issues and student attempts to view the world from a non-White perspective. This study documents successful and unsuccessful methods of combating racism in the classroom and will be valuable to teachers and all those planning to work with children.

Jack London lived in a period of rapid industrial expansion and the rise of corporations, banks, and department stores. Born in poverty, he saw something else, too: filthy slums, exhausted labourers, and struggling families. Like others, he could have been a victim? Instead, he became a successful writer. His readings directed his way of thinking and writing towards realism and naturalism. This book deals with the examination of the naturalistic elements in two of London's works: Martin Eden (1909) and "The White Silence" (1899). Martin Eden is the story of a young working class man who becomes a writer, hoping to win a high society girl's heart and to be a part of the bourgeoisie. The trio of "The White Silence" have to cope with the cruel laws of nature in order to survive in the remote, vast land of the Yukon. The two different genres and landscapes have been selected deliberately in order to prove London's versatility and his accuracy in documentating the world around him.

This book investigates the relationships between chaos theory, feminism, and postmodern literary theory, based on two premises. On the one hand, it considers the traditional view of hermetically distinct fields and disciplines no longer corresponding to what we may call postmodern experience. It articulates chaos theory as a conceptual background at the 'crossroads' of various paths within the culture. On the other hand, the work takes an approach which assumes that chaos theory is a concrete manifestation of a broader cultural phenomenon called 'the paradigm of chaos'. This paradigm is present in various sites and disciplines within the culture (including poststructuralism, chaos theory, as well as various aspects of feminist theorizing). The book hopes to demonstrate that chaos theory is not only significant in itself, articulating basic assumptions about the ontological status of contemporary science, shifting away from the principles characterizing modern science, such as order, prediction, and reduction, but it renders itself to various appropriations in diverse areas, such as literary and feminist theories.

Do they ""get it""? Are students mastering information literacy? ACRL's standards for information literacy provide a solid foundation to help faculty and librarians establish the context for learning. Neely, a top information literacy expert, frames these ACRL standards as benchmarks and provides a toolbox of assessment strategies to demonstrate students' learning. Sharing best practices and actual sample assessments, these proven materials and programs: represent best practices from 27 institutions (US, Canadian, Australian); exemplify the best library-related assignments to strengthen information literacy skills; offer proven tips for incorporating the five ACRL standards into instruction; go beyond the classroom, with insights on partnering with teachers and administrators; and, explain the basics of automating assessments.

The idea and image of Englishness has changed a lot within the last decades. As Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has memorably observed, modern Britain is "more reflected in multiracial families, curry and the fiction of Zadie Smith than the Royal family, fish and chips, and Shakespeare?." This book analyses the works of two mixed-race English writers: Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith. Hanif Kurishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia was published in 1990, Zadie Smith's debut novel White Teeth a decade later in 2000. Both authors deal with questions of identity, racism and cultural hybridity amongst second- and third-generation immigrants living in England. The aim of this book is to show how the images of Englishness and the attitude towards hybridity have changed between 1990 and 2000. Whereas Kureishi's novel focuses primarily on racism, Smith portrays millennial London as a city where hybridity - either by birth or by experience - is an integral part of everyday life.

The 1990s saw a climax of adaptations of novels previously accepted into the American literary canon, while television and radio marketed literature through book clubs and literary shows. This book argues that the U.S. mediatized literature of the 1990s constitutes a post-modern re-enactment of the traditional oral literature that initially emerged on U.S. territory with minority pre-literate populations. While existing scholarship acknowledges the impact of the oral tradition on written literature and sporadically discusses fiction to film translations, this study demonstrates the traditional oral features and functions of the mediatized literature and aesthetically validates this type of literature based on theories of the linguistic sign, the Bakhtinian dialogic system, and the Jungian concept of the collective unconsciousness among others. Literature and media scholars will be intrigued to discover that mediatized literature is yet another product of globalization, and avid consumers of literature will find this book a valuable resource for understanding the commercial and political levers that predicate the production, dissemination, and consumption of mediatized literature.

Not even Joseph Conrad might have thought that his novel, Nostromo, will be so topical at the beginning of the 21st century as it was more than a hundred years ago. It was first published in 1904, but it seems that the fundamental problems of the world have not changed during the last century. The novel's central concern, material interests and its impact on people and politics, is an invariably exciting topic to study. Conrad's masterpiece, however, is so complex that the message can only be understood if the upper layers of the adventurous story are ripped. And this is the aim of this book. It deals with the political aspects of Conrad's novel and tries to dig deep into the main thoughts and concerns of the story to deduce general ideas from the complicated structures. The mission of the work is to prove that material interests have a serious effect on human personality and from a wider perspective, it can even change the social and political matters of a whole country. The last chapter contains some pedagogical ideas on employing authentic literature in TEFL classes.

'The Case for Cummings' shows how E.E. Cummings has become fixed in criticism due to a misreading of his work by critics. Many critics in the 1920s were hostile to Cummings, forcing Cummings supporters to either defend or apologise for him. Thus, in the 1920s pro-Cummingsian critics defined and fixed the battleground' - collectively collating Cummings themes - love, spring, satire, individualism, and transcendence yet these areas became the very source of attack from anti-Cummingsian critics. This investigation, utilizing the literary theories of Derrida, Bakhtin, Foucault, Bloom, and Cixous, among others, aims to show how both sides have misread Cummings work and in doing so sees a new Cummings emerge, a Cummings who appears less fixed in criticism, who is more complex and richer in scope than first thought, and whose work demands major re-evaluation.

Cultural hybrids like Kim often have trouble with identifying himself with either the blood or the culture. Located in the colonial context, Kipling is often defined as a patriot who glorifies the British Empire in the way he represents Indian cultures in the eyes of the colonizer. However, in Kim, it seems that there are more complexities in the protagonist's swings among India, Lama, and the Secret Agent as well as his spiritual quest with Teshoo Lama. The binary opposition of the colonizer and the colonized has been subtly switched with Kim's multiple role-playings. If read merely as a political propaganda, a cultural hybrid like Kim would never be as appealing as what is seen a cultural stereotype to us today...

Why is Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra so much neglected compared to Romeo and Juliet? If one looks at the plot, one can find an abundance of similarities, among which the most important is the climax of both dramas, i.e. the suicides the main characters commit for each other. Yet, the reception of the two works is rather different. While the love of Romeo and Juliet is still a synonym for eternal love, the true story of Antony and Cleopatra did not manage to attract the attention it could have deserved. This book is a comparison of the two tragedies that endeavours to find the reasons for the success of Romeo and Juliet and the controversial welcome of Antony and Cleopatra. The analysis is made through different aspects of the two dramas, like the background of the protagonists, matter of intimacy, conception of love, effect of love, and death. This book is mainly useful to university or college students learning English literature, but it can be an interesting reading to anyone fascinated by Shakespeare's world.

The literary theory Literature as Cultural Ecology implies the notion that literature, in imaginatively bringing together various discourses, may release new potential for the extra-textual, cultural world. Why and in what way do the postmodern American novels E.L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel and T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain act like ecological forces within their culture? They serve as metaphorical cultural ecosystems. The cultural ecology of each of the two novels is revealed in a combination of the three discourses cultural-critical metadiscourse, imaginative counter-discourse, and reintegrative inter-discourse. The Book of Daniel and The Tortilla Curtain gain a unique status in that they have the power to interact with their readers and may serve as a source of cultural self-exploration, self-preservation, and self-renewal. This book addresses students of literature and literary scholars as well as everybody else interested in an evolutionary, reflective process of reading.