If you have not read Heather King before, her honesty may shock you. In this remarkable memoir, you will see how a convert with a checkered past spends a year reflecting upon St. Therese of Lisieux--and discovers the radical faith, true love, and abundant life of a cloistered 19th-century French nun.

A collection of pedagogical essays that presents proven strategies for the teaching of adaptation and eighteenth-century texts The eighteenth century was a golden age of adaptation: classical epics were adapted to contemporaneous mock-epics, life writing to novels, novels to plays, and unauthorized sequels abounded. In our own time, cultural products of the long eighteenth century continue to be widely adapted. Early novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, the founding documents of the United States, Jane Austen's novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-all of these have been adapted so often that they are ubiquitous cultural mythoi, even for people who have never read them. Eighteenth-century texts appear in consumer products, comics, cult mashups, fan fiction, films, network and streaming shows, novels, theater stagings, and web serials. Adapting the Eighteenth Century provides innovative, hands-on pedagogies for teaching eighteenth-century studies and adaptation across disciplines and levels. Among the works treated in or as adaptations are novels by Austen, Defoe, and Shelley, as well as the current worldwide musical sensation Hamilton. Essays offer tested models for the teaching of practices such as close reading, collaboration, public scholarship, and research; in addition, they provide a historical grounding for discussions of such issues as the foundations of democracy, critical race and gender studies, and notions of genre. The collection as a whole demonstrates the fruitfulness of teaching about adaptation in both period-specific and generalist courses across the curriculum.

I came of age during the '60's and '70's. I'm a former waitress, an ex-lawyer, a sober barfly, a Catholic convert, and a self-supporting writer. I've been financially independent all my life. But I've never much been able to reduce the mystical to the political. I've never been much moved to call myself a feminist. The feminists had said that sleeping around would be empowering. The feminists had maintained that "choosing" would make me free. The feminists had asserted that there'd be no repercussions. The feminists had been wrong. That I'm for life-and against abortion, war, the prison industry, capital punishment, and the destruction of all that is most precious in us and the people around us-is a given. That I'm for life is why I suffered, in silence, in guilt, in sorrow, for over twenty years. Even women, who will talk about anything, don't talk about abortion. But I do, in this 10,000-word essay that I hope might open the door to a new way of thinking about and talking about this difficult subject. Because abortion is not a political issue; abortion is a mystical issue. Abortion is a matter of emotional and spiritual poverty, of what we inherit from our parents and what we pass on to our children, of what we absorb from a culture that is saturated with violence. As Dostoevsky observed: "Love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." "Poor Baby" is the tragicomic story of a harsh and dreadful thing. May it shed some light on our collective yearning for love. NOTE: POOR BABY is a 54-page essay, not a full-length book.

Young Khana's heart holds one desire above and beyond all others: to attend school and become educated. But Khana lives in a dangerous war zone in the Middle East, where girls are not allowed to go to school. Khana's thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched. She courageously cuts her hair so she can look like a boy and attends school just like the neighborhood boys. But Khana's plan is interrupted when her father suddenly disappears. Now, instead of going to her classes, she is forced to spend her days filtering through the local landfill looking for trash treasures to sell at the market so her family can eat. Will Khana's father ever return? Will she ultimately get the chance to discover that girls from different cultures can study and live in peace? Author M. Heather King writes stories about tolerance issues because she has a deep desire to encourage the progression of humanity toward acceptance and respect for the uniqueness of all people. King received her bachelor's degree from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, and her master's degree in English from National University, La Jolla, California. She is currently working on her Ph.D. The author resides in Bedford, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three children, and enjoys spending part of every summer in New Hampshire and Maine. She teaches English and reading at a community college. Publisher's website: http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/PeaceOfTrash.html

After decades of living on the edge, Heather King settled into sobriety, marriage, and a financially lucrative but unfulfilling career as an upwardly mobile lawyer. As someone who had reached middle age "never believing in much of anything,"she found herself in the last place she thought she'd end up: the Catholic Church. An unforgettable, fervent, darkly funny tale of an ongoing, stumbling conversion, "Redeemed" will appeal to fans of Lauren Winner's "Girl Meets God" and Anne Lamott's writing. King's refreshing sense of humor, mesmerizing voice, and piercing honesty will touch readers whatever their beliefs.

The Pious Sex strives to enlighten the reader with respect to the relationship between women and religion. The notion that there is a special relationship between women and piety may call to mind the worst of the prejudices associated with women over the ages: the characterization of women as superstitious and inherently irrational creatures who must be kept firmly in hand by the patriarchal establishment. The suggestion that there is a special relationship between women and piety conjures up the most oppressive picture of womanly virtue. The contributors of this volume revisit the claim that women constitute the pious sex and investigate the implications of such a designation. This collection of original essays examines the relationship between women and religion in the history of political thought broadly conceived. This theme is a remarkably revealing lens through which to view the Western philosophical and poetical traditions that have culminated in secular and egalitarian modern society. The essays also give highly analytical accounts of the manifold and intricate relationships between religion, family, and public life in the history of political thought, and the various ways in which these relationships have manifested themselves in pagan, Jewish, Christian, and post-Christian settings.

The Pious Sex strives to enlighten the reader with respect to the relationship between women and religion. The notion that there is a special relationship between women and piety may call to mind the worst of the prejudices associated with women over the ages: the characterization of women as superstitious and inherently irrational creatures who must be kept firmly in hand by the patriarchal establishment. The suggestion that there is a special relationship between women and piety conjures up the most oppressive picture of womanly virtue. The contributors of this volume revisit the claim that women constitute the pious sex and investigate the implications of such a designation. This collection of original essays examines the relationship between women and religion in the history of political thought broadly conceived. This theme is a remarkably revealing lens through which to view the Western philosophical and poetical traditions that have culminated in secular and egalitarian modern society. The essays also give highly analytical accounts of the manifold and intricate relationships between religion, family, and public life in the history of political thought, and the various ways in which these relationships have manifested themselves in pagan, Jewish, Christian, and post-Christian settings.

During the last half of the eighteenth century, sensibility and its less celebrated corollary sense were subject to constant variation, critique, and contestation in ways that raise profound questions about the formation of moral identities and communities. Beyond Sense and Sensibility addresses those questions. What authority does reason retain as a moral faculty in an age of sensibility? How reliable or desirable is feeling as a moral guide or a test of character? How does such a focus contribute to moral isolation and elitism or, conversely, social connectedness and inclusion? How can we distinguish between that connectedness and a disciplinary socialization? How do insensible processes contribute to our moral formation and action? What alternatives lie beyond the anthropomorphism implied by sense and sensibility? Drawing extensively on philosophical thought from the eighteenth century as well as conceptual frameworks developed in the twenty-first century, this volume of essays examines moral formation represented in or implicitly produced by a range of texts, including Boswell's literary criticism, Fergusson's poetry, Burney's novels, Doddridge's biography, Smollett's novels, Charlotte Smith's children's books, Johnson's essays, Gibbon's history, and Wordsworth's poetry. The distinctive conceptual and textual breadth of Beyond Sense and Sensibility yields a rich reassessment and augmentation of the two perspectives summarized by the terms sense and sensibility in later eighteenth-century Britain.