Life has its ups and downs, and it can feel like we're always in the middle of a transition. Whether it's a painful end or a joyful beginning--or even an uncertain middle--theologian and minister Amy Davis Abdallah has found something that helps: rituals. In Meaning in the Moment, she shows why we need rituals to help survive and even thrive through various seasons of life. Starting with the foundation that rituals are a core, and underexplored, part of Christian practice, Davis Abdallah draws from theology, psychology, and personal experiences in creating rituals for herself and others. She offers practical guidance for readers to create their own meaningful rituals, including three types requiring varying levels of planning and participation: right now, with friends, and at church. Readers will emerge with fresh ways to bring their faith to life for themselves, their families, and their church communities--and ready to experience the transformative power of rituals. The book includes a foreword by W. David O. Taylor.

This important Research Handbook explores the nexus between human rights, poverty and inequality as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key challenges of the coming decades, including the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals. The Research Handbook starts from the premise that poverty is not solely an issue of minimum income and explores the profound ways that deprivation and distributive inequality of power and capability relate to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. Leading experts in the human rights field representing a range of disciplines outline a future research agenda to address poverty and inequality head on. Beginning with an interrogation of the definition of poverty, subsequent chapters analyse the dynamics of poverty and inequality in relation to matters such as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, geography and migration status. The rights to housing, land, health, work, education, protest and access to justice are also explored, with a recognition of the challenges posed by corruption, climate change and new technologies. The Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty is an essential reference guide for those who teach in these areas and for scholars and students developing future research agendas of their own. This will also be a much-needed resource for people working practically to address poverty in both the Global North and Global South.

This important Research Handbook explores the nexus between human rights, poverty and inequality as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key challenges of the coming decades, including the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals. The Research Handbook starts from the premise that poverty is not solely an issue of minimum income and explores the profound ways that deprivation and distributive inequality of power and capability relate to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. Leading experts in the human rights field representing a range of disciplines outline a future research agenda to address poverty and inequality head on. Beginning with an interrogation of the definition of poverty, subsequent chapters analyse the dynamics of poverty and inequality in relation to matters such as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, geography and migration status. The rights to housing, land, health, work, education, protest and access to justice are also explored, with a recognition of the challenges posed by corruption, climate change and new technologies. The Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty is an essential reference guide for those who teach in these areas and for scholars and students developing future research agendas of their own. This will also be a much-needed resource for people working practically to address poverty in both the Global North and Global South.

A volume in Contemporary Language Education Series Editor: Terry A. Osborn, Fordham University The significant change in public schools over the last two decades warrants a response in how we prepare teachers. This volume is an effort to share the contributors' knowledge, experience and ideas with colleagues, particularly with novice language teacher educators. The suggestions in the chapters are primarily provided for the teaching methods course, but many can be adapted to other education courses or for professional development programs. The first section of the introduction provides a review of issues identified in teacher education including debates, accountability, and government influence over education. The second section explores teacher educators in the literature such as issues in their practice, and a focus on foreign language teacher educator practice. The third section provides a brief overview of the chapters in the book

"This is a book about getting, and staying, involved with God-what it takes, what it costs, what it looks and feels like, why anyone would want to do it anyway. It is at the same time a book about reading the Old Testament as a source of Good News and guidance for our life with God. The key piece of Good News that the Old Testament communicates over and over again is that God is involved with us, deeply and irrevocably so." -from the Introduction With sound scholarship and her own vivid translations from the Hebrew, Old Testament professor Ellen Davis teaches us a spiritually engaged method of reading scripture. Beginning with the psalms, whose frank prayers can be a model for our own, Davis reflects on the stories of the patriarchs and the pastoral wisdom of the book of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs in helping us cultivate those habits of the heart that lead to a rich relationship with God.

Ezra-Nehemiah has been neglected in biblical studies, but it is important as one of the few windows into the Persian period of Israel's history, the setting for so much of the final shape of the Hebrew Bible. To know this period is to know what influenced these redactors. In "Ezra and Nehemiah" Gordon Davies provides that knowledge using rhetorical criticism, a methodology that reveals the full range and progress of the book's ideas without hiding its rough seams and untidy edges.

The purpose of rhetorical criticism is to explain not the source but the power of the text as a unitary message. This approach does not look at plot development, characterization, or other elements whose roughness makes Ezra-Nehemiah frustrating to read. Instead, it examines the three parts of the relationship - the strategies, the situations, and the effects - between the speaker and the audience. Rhetorical criticism's scrutiny of the audience in context favors the search for the ideas and structures that are indigenous to the culture of the text.

Rhetorical criticism is interested in figures of speech as means of persuasion. Therefore, to apply it to Ezra-Nehemiah, Davies concentrates on the public discourse - the orations, letters, and prayers - throughout its text. In each chapter he follows a procedure that: (1) where it is unclear, identifies the rhetorical unit in which the discourse is set; (2) identifies the audiences of the discourse and the rhetorical situation; (3) studies the arrangement of the material; (4) studies the effect on the various audiences; (5) reviews the passage as a whole and judges its success. In the conclusion, Davies explains that Ezra-Nehemiah makes theological sense on its own terms, by forming a single work in which a range of ideas is argued.

Biblical scholars as well as those interested in literary criticism, communication studies, rhetorical studies, ecclesiology, and homiletics will find Ezra and Nehemiah enlightening.

Chapters are Ezra 1:1-6," "Ezra 4:1-24," "Ezra 5:1-6: 15," "Ezra 7," "Ezra 9-10," "Nehemiah 1- 2," "Nehemiah 3-7," and "Nehemiah 8-10."

"Gordon F. Davies is associate professor of Old Testament and dean of students at St. Augustine's Seminary of Toronto.""

Stress Management How to Remain Calm in a Crisis offers very practical and down to earth solutions to everyday stressful occurrences. Yet the information provided is also philosophical, spiritual and research based. It makes the reader think and encourages him to make the necessary changes that will help to de-stress his life. It is a must read for anyone who is feeling stressed out or over-whelmed and for those who just want to sharpen their stress management tools!

Taking its cue from Baudelaire's important essay "The Painter of Modern Life," in which Baudelaire imagines the modern artist as a "man of the world," this collection of essays presents Oscar Wilde as a "man of the world" who eschewed provincial concerns, cultural conventions, and narrow national interests in favor of the wider world and other worlds-both real and imaginary, geographical and historical, physical and intellectual-which provided alternative sites for exploration and experience, often including alternative gender expression or sexual alterity. Wilde had an unlimited curiosity and a cosmopolitan spirit of inquiry that traveled widely across borders, ranging freely over space and time. He entered easily and wholly into other countries, other cultures, other national literatures, other periods, other mythologies, other religions, other disciplines, and other modes of representation, and was able to fully inhabit and navigate them, quickly apprehending the conventions by which they operate. The fourteen essays in this volume offer fresh critical-theoretical and historical perspectives not just on key connections and aspects of Wilde's oeuvre itself, but on the development of Wilde's remarkable worldliness in dialogue with many other worlds: contemporary developments in art, science and culture, as well as with other national literatures and cultures. Perhaps as a direct result of this cosmopolitan spirit, Wilde and Wilde's works have been taken up across the globe, as the essays on Wilde's reception in India, Japan and Hollywood illustrate. Many of the essays gathered here are based on groundbreaking archival research, including some never-seen-before illustrations. Together, they have the potential to open up important new comparative, transnational, and historical perspectives on Wilde that can shape and sharpen our future understanding of his work and impact.

This work presents the thinking of thirteen distinguished foreign observers who examine and evaluate the imprint of America on their own lives and on their nation. It covers the whole spectrum of American political and cultural influences ranging from the material benefits of American influence to the violence which can be found in American life.

This is a collection of Davis' works that contains selections from his principle writings from 1977-2008. Included are his postmodern epics, Aspects of Actuality and Order and Chaos, as well as his essays that address contemporary philosophical issues, including Humanistic Salvation, Toward Human Perfection, The Purpose Paradox Unraveled and On the Possibility of Revelation.
Also included in this volume are other works by Davis, including Egress and The Fugues in their entirety, and a selection of his plays written for dancers and voice which includes; The Preludes to the Five Acts of Prometheus: One Now There Is and the complete plays, Dream Of The Last Romantic and Sabrina's Fantasy. A selection of his poems from the same period are also included.

Small group research is of particularly wide interest to people working in a fairly broad variety of areas concerned with understanding conflict, especially for practitioners and researchers concerned with conflict resolution, peace, and related areas.

The editors will focus on six main topical areas of small group research, which include:

- Cooperation, competition, and conflict resolution
- Coalitions, bargaining, and games
- Group dynamics and social cognition
- The group and organization
- Team performance
- Intergroup relations

The Teaching of Psychology is centered around the masterful work of two champions of the teaching of psychology, Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer, in order to recognize their seminal contributions to the teaching of the discipline. The book's main goal is to provide comprehensive coverage and analysis of the basic philosophies, current issues, and the basic skills related to effective teaching in psychology. It transcends the typical "nuts and bolts" type books and includes such topics as teaching at small colleges versus a major university, teaching and course portfolios, the scholarship of teaching, what to expect early in a teaching career, and lifelong learning.
The Teaching of Psychology also features:

• Biographies of Bill McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer
• Fourteen chapters written by leading authorities in the teaching of psychology, which provide overviews of the latest psychological research and theories in effective college and university teaching. These chapters cover lecturing, classroom presence, using humor in teaching, pedagogy, advising, teaching critical thinking, writing, and technology, and training graduate students to teach
• Useful advice to new teachers and seasoned veterans, including qualities of master teachers, understanding the many facets of working within the academy, and teaching with technology
• Insights into teaching specific courses within the psychology curriculum, including the history of psychology, biological psychology, statistics and research methods, learning, social psychology, personality, psychology of women, cross-cultural psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, psychology of religion, and environmental psychology
• A closing section containing Bill McKeachie's and Charles L. Brewer's perspectives into the teaching of psychology and its history, highlights, and future.

This book is intended for academic psychologists who teach and/or train graduate assistants to teach at the college and university level. All royalities from this book will be donated to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (Division 2 of the American Psychological Association), which each year sponsors many activities across the country to promote the teaching of psychology.

This excellent, in-depth review of diamond films and coatings covers their properties, growth, deposition, characterization, and applications. The eight chapters are written by experts in their field. Early studies on synthetic diamonds were done in the 1950s and 1960s, however, their use and importance were not recognized until the late 1970s and early 1980s. These coatings are now being used in high temperature and tribological applications, optics and electro-optics applications, and certainly biological applications.

1) An updated study of music in the Mediterranean that reconsiders the region's status as a crossroads between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, exploring the encounters of performance and aesthetics 2) Describes how experiences of the Mediterranean are shaped through musical performance, and attempts to explain what we can we learn by listening to the musical traditions in this Middle Sea 3) Explores art, folk, popular, and hybrid musical practices