Arts, Communication, & Humanities Resource Guide

How many of us have found ourselves hampered in our work and at home because we can't take a balanced view. If this is you then you're probably a lop-sided left or right brain person. This imbalance shows in other ways too: some of us suffer social embarrassment because of poor muscular co-ordination. Some even fall asleep at inconvenient times! Increasingly too we demand more of our students and sports people who need to operate to their optimum potential. To be an active learner and a whole person, why no try Educational Kinesiology, a method of integrating left and right brain processes? Put simply, the techniques in Switch on Your Brain will improve your left and right brain co-ordination. The exciting thing is that you can see results quickly - in some cases, immediately. The tests and exercises can be done at home. Easy to use, they are safe for all to try. By increasing our capacity to learn, we can all improve our performance and enhance our self-esteem. Switch on Your Brain has helped many people change their lives, especially those with obvious learning difficulties, and the efficacy of this approach has been proved over many years.

A framework for improving students' critical reading skills using five questions to ask any text.

The most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women's writing. The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison's writing within today's currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison's "trilogy" of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos' USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of "influence" that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner. Another cluster of essays treats seldom-discussed works by Morrison, including an essay on Morrison as writer of children's books and as speaker for children's education. In addition, a "Teaching Morrison" section is designed to help teachers and critics who teach Morrison in undergraduate classes. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is wide-ranging, provocative, and satisfying; a fitting tribute to one of the greatest American novelists.

How superhero narratives in the margins of the mainstream tell innovative, feminist stories. It's no secret that superhero comics and their related media perpetuate a model of a straight, white, male hero at the expense of representing women and other minorities, but other narratives exist. Searching for Feminist Superheroes recognizes that female-led superhero comics, with diverse casts of characters and inclusive storytelling, exist on the margins of the mainstream superhero genre. But rather than focusing on these stories as marginalized, Sam Langsdale's work on heroes such as Spider-Woman, America Chavez, and Ironheart locates the margins as a site of innovation and productivity, which have enabled the creation of feminist superhero texts. Employing feminist and intersectional philosophies in an analysis of these comics, Langsdale suggests that feminist superheroes have the potential to contribute to a social imagination that is crucial in working toward a more just world. At a time when US popular culture continues to manifest as a battleground between oppressive and progressive social norms, Searching for Feminist Superheroes demonstrates that a fight for a better world is worthwhile.

When twelve-year-old Michael Rosario meets a mysterious boy from the future, his life is changed forever. From bestselling author Erin Entrada Kelly, also the winner of the Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe and a Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, this novel explores themes of family, friendship, trust, and forgiveness. The First State of Being is for fans of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me. It's August 1999. For twelve-year-old Michael Rosario, life at Fox Run Apartments in Red Knot, Delaware, is as ordinary as ever--except for the looming Y2K crisis and his overwhelming crush on his sixteen-year-old babysitter, Gibby. But when a disoriented teenage boy named Ridge appears out of nowhere, Michael discovers there is more to life than stockpiling supplies and pining over Gibby. It turns out that Ridge is carefree, confident, and bold, things Michael wishes he could be. Unlike Michael, however, Ridge isn't where he belongs. When Ridge reveals that he's the world's first time traveler, Michael and Gibby are stunned but curious. As Ridge immerses himself in 1999--fascinated by microwaves, basketballs, and malls--Michael discovers that his new friend has a book that outlines the events of the next twenty years, and his curiosity morphs into something else: focused determination. Michael wants--no, needs--to get his hands on that book. How else can he prepare for the future? But how far is he willing to go to get it? A story of time travel, friendship, found family, and first loves, this thematically rich novel is distinguished by its voice, character development, setting, and exploration of the issues that resonate with middle grade readers. Finalist for the National Book Award and Winner of the Newbery Medal.  

Antony Melville is a Speedster like his mother, able to run a mile in 5.3 microseconds, and also shares her love for inventing. Or so he's told. Not long after he was born, his mother died under mysterious circumstances and his father is locked in a lifelong battle to enact revenge on the man he believes to be responsible. He turns to his inventor son to make his plots come to life in the forms of weapons, which Antony makes sure to sabotage so no one will actually be hurt. Antony, you see, comes from a line of villains, but he wants to be good. Terrell Goode is a hero with the ability to create fire in the palm of his hand and the son of the man Antony's father suspects for his wife's murder. Terrell wants to help his do-good parents make their city a better place to live, but his father refuses, not wanting a target on his son's back, as well. Once the two boys start dating, Antony's father's machinations don't take long to come to light, putting a strain on their relationship. Even so, Terrell vows to help Antony get to the truth of things while Anthony continues to do whatever he can to stop his father from making a life-altering mistake. But what Terrell and Antony discover along the way about the killer's true identity, nobody is prepared for.

This volume, devoted to Solomon Northup's 1853 oral memoir (put into writing by David Wilson), will explore that book from numerous perspectives, including those of race, class, history, biography, psychology, and sociology, to mention just a few. Northup's narrative will be examined in terms of its reception in its own day and later, its rediscovery by scholars, its adaptations for television and film, its relevance to the history of American slavery, and its effectiveness as a piece of writing. It will be compared and contrasted with other works concerning slavery, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (to which it bears intriguing similarities), and it will be set in the context of the American abolitionist movement and later movements for civil rights in the United States. The Critical Insights series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world's most studies literature. Edited and written by some of academia's most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: Twelve Years a Slave provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.

When Toni Morrison declares that she "can't wait for the ultimate liberation theory to imagine its practice and do its work," she raises an issue at the heart of modern political thought: How should we understand freedom? And what does freedom mean in the shadow of racial slavery and colonialism? In this study of Toni Morrison's writing, Lawrie Balfour explores Morrison's reflections on the idea of freedom in her novels and nonfiction. While Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her political thought has yet to receive the same attention. Balfour shows how Morrison's writing illuminates the meanings of freedom and unfreedom in a democratic society founded on both the defense of liberty and the right to enslavement. Morrison's fiction and meditations on the power of language challenge wishful notions of color-blindness and complaints that it is time to move beyond thinking and talking about race. Her attentiveness to the experiences of people "no one inquired of"--especially her interest in the lives of black women and girls--reorients democratic study toward racial slavery, settler colonialism, and the ongoing processes of theft and domination instituted by these practices. Morrison's writings kindle new forms of freedom-seeking that do not rely on the subjugation of others.