When you drink rum, you drink history. More than merely a popular spirit in the transatlantic, rum became a cultural symbol of the Caribbean. While rum is often dismissed as set dressing in texts about the region, the historical and moral associations of alcohol generally-and rum specifically-cue powerful stereotypes, from touristic hedonism to social degeneracy. Rum Histories examines the drink in anglophone Atlantic literature in the period of decolonization to complicate and elevate the symbolic currency of a commodity that in fact reflects the persistence of colonialism in shaping the material and mental lives of postcolonial subjects. As a product of the plantation and as an intoxicant, rum was a central lubricant of the colonial economy as well as of cultural memory. Discussing a wide spectrum of writing, from popular contemporary works such as Christopher Moore's Fluke and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland to classics by Michelle Cliff, V. S. Naipaul, and other luminaries of the Caribbean diaspora, Jennifer Nesbitt investigates how rum's specific role in economic exploitation is muddled by moral attitudes about the consequences of drinking. The centrality of alcohol use to racialized and gendered norms guides Nesbitt's exploration of how the global commodities trade connects disparate populations across history and geography. This innovative study reveals rum's fascinating role in expressing the paradox of a postcolonial world still riddled with the legacies of colonialism.

A guide for those who wish to develop their professional writing skills, this book explains fundamental skills such as carrying out research for your book or project, identifying your target readership and submitting copy to editors.

Perhaps the brevity of short fiction accounts for the relatively scant attention devoted to it by scholars, who have historically concentrated on longer prose narratives. The Geographies of African American Short Fiction seeks to fill this gap by analyzing the ways African American short story writers plotted a diverse range of characters across multiple locations-small towns, a famous metropolis, city sidewalks, a rural wooded area, apartment buildings, a pond, a general store, a prison, and more. In the process, these writers highlighted the extents to which places and spaces shaped or situated racial representations. Presenting African American short story writers as cultural cartographers, author Kenton Rambsy documents the variety of geographical references within their short stories to show how these authors make cultural spaces integral to their artwork and inscribe their stories with layered and resonant social histories. The history of these short stories also documents the circulation of compositions across dozens of literary collections for nearly a century. Anthology editors solidified the significance of a core group of short story authors including James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Using quantitative information and an extensive literary dataset, The Geographies of African American Short Fiction explores how editorial practices shaped the canon of African American short fiction.

The use of technological tools to foster language development has led to advances in language methodologies and changed the approach towards language instruction. The tendency towards developing more autonomous learners has emphasized the need for technological tools that could contribute to this shift in foreign language learning. Computer-assisted language learning and mobile-assisted language learning have greatly collaborated to foster language instruction out of the classroom environment, offering possibilities for distance learning and expanding in-class time. Recent Tools for Computer- and Mobile-Assisted Foreign Language Learning is a scholarly research book that explores current strategies for foreign language learning through the use of technology and introduces new technological tools and evaluates existing ones that foster language development. Highlighting a wide array of topics such as gamification, mobile technologies, and virtual reality, this book is essential for language educators, educational software developers, IT consultants, K-20 institutions, principals, professionals, academicians, researchers, curriculum designers, and students.

Across a wide range of fields of study and academic interests, there is often a common denominator in the need for successful, concise, and well-researched communications in the form of writing. Whether it be accessing credible research, pre-writing practices, or taking writing to the next level from good to excellent, there is a constant need for teaching writing skills and methods effectively as well as utilizing what has been learned within real-life applications to create quality written content. With composers of the written word ranging from students to researchers to business owners and more, multidisciplinary writing encompasses a range of research devoted to enhancing writing skills and providing an understanding of the writing process across diverse fields of interest. Strategies and Tactics for Multidisciplinary Writing provides writers in the professional and academic sphere resources for enhancing their writing skills through a clear understanding of the writing process. The chapters focus on the multiple stages of writing including planning, researching, drafting, revising, and more. While highlighting specific topics such as writing in virtual environments, topic research, writing for the internet, and pre-writing practices, this book is ideally intended for writers in the professional and academic spheres as well as practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in multidisciplinary writing.

Billy Collins "puts the 'fun' back in profundity," says poet Alice Fulton. Known for what he has called "hospitable" poems, which deftly blend wit and erudition, Collins (b. 1941) is a poet of nearly unprecedented popularity. His work is also critically esteemed and well represented in The Norton Anthology of American Literature. An English professor for five decades, Collins was fifty-seven when his poetry began gathering considerable international attention. Conversations with Billy Collins chronicles the poet's career beginning with his 1998 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, which exponentially expanded his readership, three years prior to his being named United States Poet Laureate. Other interviewers range from George Plimpton, founder of the Paris Review, to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor to a Presbyterian pastor, a physics professor, and a class of AP English Literature students. Over the course of the twenty-one interviews included in the volume, Collins discusses such topics as discovering his persona, that consistently affable voice that narrates his often wildly imaginative poems; why poetry is so loved by children but often met with anxiety by high school students; and his experience composing a poem to be recited during a joint session of Congress on the first anniversary of 9/11, a tragedy that occurred during his tenure as poet laureate. He also explores his love of jazz, his distaste for gratuitously difficult poetry and autobiographical poems, and his beguiling invention of a mock poetic form: the paradelle. Irreverent, incisive, and deeply life-affirming-like his twelve volumes of poetry-these interviews, gathered for the first time in one volume, will edify and entertain readers in the way his sold-out readings have done for the past quarter century.