bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The New Normal in Education
Authors: Klinger Mary Beth , Coffman Teresa
Published: July 2024

This book explores teaching, learning, and leadership in higher education following the Covid-19 pandemic. It examines opportunities that currently exist within higher education as they relate to innovative teaching and learning strategies, from instructional modalities to new models of transformative learning to meet students “where they are” in terms of career development and lifelong learning. Emphasis is placed on educational leadership and management skills, faculty and teaching acumen, and students and their quest for knowledge and understanding as we navigate past a global health crisis towards a future of hope and solutions to some of today’s most pressing issues using collaboration, community, and an inquiry-oriented approach. The current state of education is reimagined with emphasis on higher education as a learning organization. A sense of urgency in higher education is underscored to instill knowledge and competency, encourage innovation, and help the next generation of students flourish in an evolving and changing world with resilience, optimism, and creativity that will yield real solutions to some of the world’s most prevalent and challenging issues.
Ethics for School Leaders
Authors: Mahoney Dan
Published: July 2024

Ethics for School Leaders: The Human Condition and Organizational Dynamics is about the complex role of formal and informal leaders in schools. It presents multiple perspectives to enhance comprehension of the organizational and psychological dynamics that come into play when school leaders—those with authority and those without authority—are faced with ethically challenging situations. In addition to a tour of leadership theories, organizational dynamics, psychological dynamics, and ethical perspectives, the case studies in this book weave together aspects of people’s emotional make-up, cognitive framework, and past experiences to illustrate how school leaders use reason and emotion to make complex connections between their inner lives and the demands of their profession.

This book identifies specific examples of ways school leaders can enhance ethical practice at the organizational level as well as how to focus on the things they can do personally and interpersonally to improve their work as school leaders in order to make lives better for all of the people they serve. By integrating various approaches to the study of the leadership process, this book makes an important contribution to fields of leadership studies and professional ethics.
Flourishing Classrooms
Authors: Catania Jeff
Published: July 2024

This book shows educators why and how to put well-being in its rightful place beside learning at the very heart of schooling. A blend of practical activities and research-based approaches empowers Grade 7-12 teachers to cultivate positive wellness not just for themselves and their students, but for the entire school community. Classroom teachers will appreciate the over 100 ready-to-use cross-curricular wellness activities, spread across nine domains of well-being, in their Grades 7-12 classrooms Educational leaders can adopt the sharing strategies, including school-wide extensions, “lifeplay” and shareable activities, to spread wellness practices across schools, districts and into the community.
Renewal
Authors: Cameron Carolyn
Published: July 2024

Unquestioned educational practices must be re-examined. Now, more than ever, we need to breathe new life into school leadership to bring much-needed hope for renewal into our classrooms and schools. Our humanity’s future rests on the shoulders of our young people who deserve the most effective, empowered collective of teachers possible. Working and learning together with teachers across corridors, departments, and disciplines, school leaders can make this a reality.

In this one-of-a-kind exploration into the practice of school leadership, Dr. Carolyn Cameron moves beyond leadership theory or prescriptive “how to be a leader” guidelines. She courageously addresses the gap between knowing and doing, and takes a deep dive into the space of being a school leader dedicated to the work of nurturing the authentic learning of students and their teachers.

Cameron draws on her own lived experiences as a teacher, principal, and district principal. She adds to this personal journey the insights of colleagues, scholars, philosophers, and researchers, and takes inspiration from poets, writers, and students. This ground-breaking book weaves all of this together in a way that will cause the reader to think differently about teaching, learning, leading, and perhaps even life itself.
Revisiting John Dewey
Authors: Holt Latasha D.
Published: July 2024

John Dewey is widely accepted as one of the greatest educational philosophers of all time. Over 100 years ago, he warned that we must reset education. Without change, our society would suffer, and our democracy would wither.

Now’s the time to change. This book builds on information Dewey shared regarding the basic educational necessities and compares his findings to what is really happening in today’s schools. Heart-felt experiences are woven into the chapters and make us question the purpose of school, what teachers are facing, and if children really are the center.

This book is a glimpse of what Dewey might say to us today, and without change, why the future of our democracy is in trouble. Sharing real-world needs grounded in the basics, every reader will look at education like never before. United, we can finally get education moving in the direction it should have been going 100 years ago.
Teacher Shortages and the Challenge of Retention
Authors: Smith Barbara J.
Published: July 2024

Without taking the time to unravel the complexities of the teaching profession, many may assume that teachers are people who enjoy working with children, and making a difference in their lives. While some teachers may be drawn to the summers off, or the winter and spring breaks, it is doubtful that such shallow incentives propel most individuals to come to or remain in the profession. By identifying the obstacles, it is possible to generate new contexts for practice, that can not only limit the challenges, but create conditions for teachers and students to thrive. This book shares ideas about what such changes could be like, how change could benefit teachers and students alike, and how it could influence a positive shift in society. Before addressing significant reforms in teacher practice, it’s important to outline what kinds of experiences make the teacher profession attractive to some and not to others. Taking a closer look at teacher’s stories, what drives them to stay and leave, what makes them feel empowered or not, and what makes them feel fulfilled in the role, is this starting point for further exploration.
Doing the Right Thing
Authors: Jones Dewitt
Published: July 2024

Doing the Right Thing Sometimes Difficult, But Always Correct contains fourteen scenarios and solutions. The scenarios are real-life situations the author had to deal with as a principal and superintendent. Doing the right thing is sometimes challenging, but always correct. Each unique scenario is followed by questions that the reader or small groups should consider in a college/university graduate leadership course. These challenging scenarios will require discussions that will differ among each group member or individual and be shared by each group or individual.

The solution section describes what the author did with each scenario and identifies the applicable Professional Standards for Educational Leaders for that scenario. In the author’s nine years of teaching at the University of Northern Iowa, coordinating the superintendent preparation program, and teaching in the principal’s licensure program, he found that just teaching theory and concepts needed to be combined with real-world experiences to mean something to future leaders.
The Path to Equity
Authors: Coplin Bill
Published: July 2024

Coplin has been saving students from the damage done by the bait and switch business model of the liberal arts programs for fifty years. The bait promises career preparation and the switch is to teach undergraduates how to be scholars. He demonstrates how the Kingdom of Liberals Arts programs are based on an elitist attitude that is harmful to most undergraduates who value career preparation over love of learning. This elitism leads to increased anxiety for college students and a college completion rate lower than the worst high schools in the U.S. He shows how the elitism does not serve equity and inclusion but does the opposite. He demonstrates that the harm is not just confined to undergraduate education but to many socio-economic conditions in American society. The Kingdom has contributed to a K-12 education system that sends too many students to college and prevents the resources needed for careers without a college education. It shares some of the blame for the lack of skill and semi-skilled labor in this country. Coplin ends on a positive note by showing that some progress in transforming the Kingdom to an institution that serves its undergraduates has occurred but much more needs to be done. He suggests three most important structural changes need to quicken the pace of change and contribute to, rather than prevent, equity and inclusion.
Subjectivity and Realism in Modern Chinese Fiction
Authors: Wang Xiaoping
Published: July 2024

The questions of subjectivity and the literary style of realism, as manifested in Hu Feng's theoretical writings and Lu Ling's fictional writings, occupy a unique position in modern China. By looking more closely into the theoretical and fictional texts and the social-historical subtext, and through a re-examination of the issue of subjectivity and individualism, this book argues that individualism should not be treated as an ahistorical value-system, but understood within changing historical contexts; subjectivity should not be treated as an issue of personal choice, but as class-based and derived from collective community. To differentiate different subjectivities and the diversified foci of individualism in differing historical periods, Xiaoping Wang finds we need to explore the intellectuals' cultural-political strategy by situating them in the particular historical conjuncture and in the particular cultural fields. With this hermeneutical practice, the politics of recognition and the politics of style are mutually illuminated.
Gender Violence
Authors: Burrow Sylvia Jane
Published: July 2024

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title

In often mundane but sometimes quite obvious ways, persons belonging to groups routinely threatened with harm on the basis of gender and sexuality suffer restrictions to choice and action, impairing autonomy. Gender Violence: Resistance, Resilience, and Autonomy shows that resistance to, and cultivating resiliency within, a culture of gender violence is key to fostering autonomy.

Building on decades of research philosophically interrogating autonomy and its limits, and with a martial arts background spanning over twenty-five years, Professor Burrow develops a novel approach to autonomy development under everyday threats of violence. Appealing to empirical research to ground its philosophical analysis, the theory presented in this book establishes that cultivating self-confidence through self-defense training is a significant strategy contributing to resistance and resilience under threats of violence and hence, autonomy development.
Deporting Europeans
Authors: Vrabiescu Ioana
Published: July 2024

In Deporting Europeans, Ioana Vrăbiescu examines how states within the European Union (EU) collaborate in the policing and deportation of EU citizens within EU territory. Vrăbiescu argues that the deportation of EU citizens reifies existing inequalities between central states, like France, and peripheral states, like Romania. By highlighting the massive deportation of Romanians from France, Vrăbiescu showcases these inequalities and the intricacies of EU geopolitics.
Broadcasting Change
Authors: Braude Joseph
Published: July 2024

Amid civil war, failing states, and terrorism, Arab liberals are growing in numbers and influence. Advocating a culture of equity, tolerance, good governance, and the rule of law, they work through some of the region’s largest media outlets to spread their ideals within the culture. Broadcasting Change analyzes this trend by portraying the intersection of media and politics in two Arab countries with seismic impact on the region and beyond. In Saudi Arabia, where hardline clerics silenced their opponents for generations, liberals now dominate the airwaves. Their success in weakening clerics’ grip over the public space would not only help develop the country; it would ensure that the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad exports a constructive understanding of Islam. In Egypt, home to a brutal government crackdown on Islamists and a bloodsport of attacks on Coptic Christians, local liberals are acting with courage on the ground and over the airwaves. Through TV talk shows, drama, and comedy, they play off the government’s anti-Islamist agenda to more thoughtfully advocate religious reform.

Author Joseph Braude, himself a voice in Arabic-language broadcasts and publications, calls for international assistance to the region’s liberals, particularly in the realm of media. Local civic actors and some reform-minded autocrats welcome a new partnership with media experts and democratic governments in North America, Europe, and the Far East. Broadcasting Change argues that support for liberal reform through Arabic media should be construed as an international “public good” — on par with military peacekeeping and philanthropy.
The Power of Listening
Authors: Baab Lynne M.
Published: July 2024

Listening skills, and the perspective gained through careful listening, are more important in congregations than ever. Many factors make attentive listening a significant contributor to healthy congregations. As we enter into a post-Christendom culture, the people coming into congregations, as well as the people in the wider community, are less likely to be operating from a shared set of assumptions. With world-wide migration reshaping our communities and congregations, diverse perspectives coming from varied cultural backgrounds are also more common. The breakdown of many support structures in society has created profound pastoral care needs, making listening increasingly significant for both ministers and lay leaders. Polarization over so many issues and the increasing emphasis on story-telling in the journey of faith are two additional reasons why listening matters today. Careful and loving listening nurtures care, connection and depth, which contribute to congregational life and health.

Listening to God is another aspect of listening which is gaining increased attention today. Many congregational leaders have become weary of church as a business and are looking for authentic experiences of God’s guidance. Congregations are increasingly engaging in communal discernment. Many listening skills used in human interactions are also building blocks for listening to God.
Leading into the World
Authors: Galbreath Paul
Published: July 2024

The call to care for creation is a central part of our discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ. However, language and imagery of the earth is often absent in our worship services. This book helps reconnect our commitment to creation care with our life of discipleship. The process includes helping congregational members name ways that they are involved in caring for creationand encouraging them to see ways that these practices are related to Christian faith, and in doing so, nurturing the life of our communities while fostering our identity as those who care for the earth.

Central to the process of reconnecting holy discipleship with earth stewardship is the development and rediscovery of biblical imagery and language that will support our care of creation and shape our prayers. As our actions are more closely connected to the language of our prayers, praying and acting will inform and enrich each other. This book also includes custom liturgies that highlight earth care, prayerfully prepared for the major festivals of the church year.
Unique Challenges in Urban Schools
Authors: Jackson Eric , Turner Carolyn , Battle Dorothy E.
Published: July 2024

This study explores the various ways in which parental involvement can help to increase student academic success. More specifically, this analysis is based on the notions that:

1) parent involvement in inner city schools present unique challenges that are different from the traditional middle class perspective;

2) there is value in a cooperative approach between parents, teachers, and administrators that places the student at the center of each major discussion and decision; and

3) illustrates that parental involvement is a real perspective and not just rhetorical jargon.

Although the focus of this book is in increasing parent involvement in inner city schools, readers must be mindful that the ultimate objective for this work and others like it is the successful educating of all children, so that they graduate from high school, and move into higher education, or into the workforce. Parent involvement by itself will not ensure academic success of children, but, combined with many strategies, including a clear understanding of the differences between an inner city school environment and a middle class school setting, effective teaching, sound and relevant curricula, safe and secure learning environment, and visionary leadership, children attending inner city schools can be just as effective as those in middle class school settings.
Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism in the Victorian Gothic, 1837-1871
Authors: Dittmer Nicole C.
Published: July 2024

Nicole C. Dittmer offers a reimagining of the popular Gothic female “monster” figure in early-to-mid-Victorian literature. Regardless of the extensive scholarship concerning monstrosities, these pre-fin-de-siècle figurations have often been neglected by critical studies or interpreted as fragments of mind and body which create a division between culture and nature. In Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism, Dittmer deploys monism to delineate from and contest such dualism, unifies the material-immaterial aspects of fictional women, and blurs the distinction between nature-culture. Blending intertextual disciplines of medical sciences, ecofeminism, and fiction, she exposes female monstrosities as material and semiotic figurations. This book, then, identifies how women in the Victorian Gothic are informed by the entanglement of both immaterial discourses and material conditions. When repressed by social customs, the monistic mind-body of the material-semiotic figure reacts to and disrupts processes of ontology, transforming women into “wild” and “monstrous” (re)presentations.
The Essentials of Islamic Banking, Finance, and Capital Markets
Authors: Kuforiji John  Oluseyi
Published: July 2024

This multidisciplinary book on Islamic finance covers Islamic economic, financial, and legal systems, insurance (takaful), commercial jurisprudence, and the socio-political and political-economy of the Islamic world. It examines the dichotomies and similarities between Islamic and conventional financial systems and suggests future roles and governance of Islamic financial institutions. Distinctive features of the second edition include an emphasis on the theoretical foundations of Islamic finance, the distinctions between the micro- and macroeconomic concepts and theories to the readers, and an expansion on Islamic approved forms of trade dealings, transactions, and contracts. Furthermore, this work discusses the newly introduced Islamic capital market products of the years 2020 to 2022—including the transition from the inter-bank-offer-rates (IBORs) as global benchmark lending rate to the new risk-free-rates (RFRs) that became effective on January 1, 2022—and discusses the transition of Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency to Saudi Central Bank in 2020. Though every effort is made to avoid tedious mathematical proof and derivatives, this work provides working calculations for the pricing of Islamic instruments and provides supplemental materials in the form of faculty resources and students’ study guide and workbook. This work acts as a useful textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are looking at broadening their knowledge in finance. Similarly, this book is a helpful guide and tool for financial practitioners who are interested in learning more about the innovative discipline of Islamic finance. For financial practitioners to drive maximum benefits from this innovative financing mechanism, they need to know, understand, and participate in the investment opportunities which are provided by Islamic finance.
Europeanisation in Turkish Water Management Policy
Authors: Demirbilek Burçin
Published: July 2024

Rational institutionalism’s theoretical explanations for external Europeanisation focus on material incentives such as accession conditionality in determining change in non-EU states. However, such exogenous explanations struggle to interpret ongoing Europeanisation where accession incentives have declined or even reversed (‘stalled’ accession), but institutional adjustment still continues. This Europeanization phenomenon is evident in Turkey, a state that had actively pursued EU membership between 1999 and 2004, resulting in domestic institutional reform to align governance structures with the EU. Thereafter, Europeanisation has reversed in some policy sectors but nonetheless continued in others such as Turkish water policy, despite a declining accession process. Rational institutional arguments therefore appear to lose explanatory power for such events post-2005. An alternative theoretical proposition forwarded is that the EU accession process embedded a self-sustaining cycle of socialization through social learning around water policy norms amongst policy actors that has continued beyond this accession imperative.
Researching Creativity in Media Industries
Authors: Andersen Mads Møller T.
Published: July 2024

In this book, Mads Møller T. Andersen examines the methodological challenges that arise when studying creativity and creative processes in media industries, arguing that the field of media studies still has much to learn about how these industries facilitate their own creative processes. Andersen introduces and utilizes a theoretical framework of five traditions in creativity to guide readers through five different methods of approaching and understanding the concept of creativity, exploring whether media scholars should abandon current, romantic understandings of creativity in favor of more progressive and nuanced definitions. Ultimately, Andersen considers and offers examples of how, as a discipline, we can design studies of creative processes that also address what we still don’t know about creativity in these contexts. Scholars interested in media studies, cultural studies, and research methods will find this book particularly useful.
Ontological Branding
Authors: Molina García Bonard Iván
Published: July 2024

Using Heideggerian tool ontology to investigate antiblack racism in the United States, Ontological Branding: Power, Privilege, and White Supremacy in a Colorblind World provides a novel account of race and racial justice. Bonard Iván Molina García argues that race is best understood as a tool to brand persons of color, particularly Black persons, as subordinate in order to privilege whiteness as the proper state of persons in a world created by and for persons and in which all (and only) persons are equal. Persons of color, particularly Black persons, are thus excluded from full participation in the rights and privileges of personhood and instead relegated to ways of being in service to the white world. This white supremacist system was created through law, and despite significant changes, U.S. law’s current approach to racial justice through colorblindness only serves to safeguard white supremacy. Racial justice instead requires a critical race consciousness that accounts for the ontology of race. Racial justice requires ontological justice.
Investigating the Design and Implementation of Operational Safety Plans for Crisis at Higher Education Institutions
Authors: Passaro, Jr. Antonio
Published: July 2024

With the rising occurrence of human caused, natural, and technological crises, Investigating the Design and Implementation of Operational Safety Plans for Crisis at Higher Education Institutions offers guiding principles, implementation factors, and best practices for creating more effective operational safety plans at higher education institutions. In many cases, limited resources prior to a crisis may lead to inadequate planning that hampers implementation. Additionally, operational safety plans typically are created or revised in a reactive manner after the fact. As the result of an exhaustive literature review, the author determined that, unlike other fields, effective best practices for operational safety planning are either unknown to the institutions that need them most or institutional factors and financial constraints prevent them from implementing them in full.
White Educators Negotiating Complicity
Authors: Applebaum Barbara
Published: July 2024

While there is a proliferation of research on white educators who teach courses around anti-racism, White Educators Negotiating Complicity: Roadblocks Paved with Good Intentions focuses on white educators who teach about whiteness to racially diverse groups of students, and who acknowledge and attempt to negotiate their complicity in systemic injustice. Scholars continue to remind white people of the paradox through which their endeavors to disrupt systemic white supremacy often reproduce it. In this book, Barbara Applebaum explores what it means to teach against whiteness while living that paradox.

Rather than an empirical study, this book offers insights from recent scholarship surrounding critical whiteness and epistemic injustice and applies them to some of the most trenchant challenges that white educators face while trying to teach about whiteness to racially diverse groups of students. Introducing the concept of a vigilantly vulnerable and informed humility, Applebaum both illuminates what theory can tell us about praxis and offers guidance for white educators in their attempts to negotiate the effects of white complicity on their pedagogy.
Criminality and Crime
Authors: Walters Glenn D.
Published: July 2024

Walters provides a detailed description of how criminal thinking serves as a vital link between criminality and crime. Criminality, the propensity to become involved in criminal activity, and crime, participation in a specific criminal event, are normally treated as separate entities. Most criminological theories, in fact, can be classified as either theories of criminality or theories of crime. It is the author’s contention that criminality and crime are two sides of the same coin, and that criminal thinking can explain both. The first of three sections explores the elements of criminality and crime across biological, social, cognitive, and developmental forms. The second section integrates the individual elements into three models using mediation and moderation methodologies. Two of the models are designed to explain criminality (moral and control) and the third is designed to explain crime (decision-making). The final section of the book emphasizes application and explains that change is a function of our ability to build competencies in offenders regardless of age. The result is an integrated approach in which criminality and crime are viewed as indispensable parts of a larger theory of criminological development.
Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual
Authors: Hatherly Celia Kathryn
Published: July 2024

According to Avicenna, whatever exists, while it exists, exists of necessity. Not all beings, however, exist with the same kind of necessity. Instead, they exist either necessarily per se or necessarily per aliud. Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual: His Interpretation of Four Aristotelian Arguments explains how Avicenna uses these modal claims to show that God is the efficient as well as the final cause of an eternally existing cosmos. In particular, Celia Kathryn Hatherly shows how Avicenna uses four Aristotelian arguments to prove this very un-Aristotelian conclusion. These arguments include Aristotle's argument for the finitude of efficient causes in Metaphysics 2; his proof for the prime mover in the Physics and Metaphysics 12; his argument against the Megarians in Metaphysics 9; and his argument for the mutual entailment between the necessary and the eternal in De Caelo 1.12. Moreover, Hatherly contends, when Avicenna's versions of these arguments are correctly interpreted using his distinctive understanding of necessity and possibility, the objections raised against them by his contemporaries and modern scholars fail.
Paul's New Creation
Authors: Chun Sejong
Published: July 2024

In Paul’s New Creation: Vision for a New World and Community, Sejong Chun presents inter(con)textual readings of Paul’s new creation passages from the perspective of the Korean immigrant church in America. Chun focuses on Paul’s new creation’s cosmic dimension and ecclesiastical character and proposes the ekklēsia as a tangible embodiment. The author suggests that Paul, as a middleman, accomplishes the collective project of the Jerusalem collection with his Gentile churches to declare independence from the Jerusalem church authority and to demonstrate God’s alternative economy against the exploitative system of the Roman Empire.
Entertainment, Journalism, and Advocacy
Authors: Sherrill Lindsey A.
Published: July 2024

In this book, Lindsey A. Sherrill explores the exponential growth of true crime podcasting, including the role of the ubiquitous Serial podcast in the growth of the industry. Using both demographic population analysis and interviews with podcast hosts and producers, Sherill demonstrates that true crime podcasts exist as hybrid organizations, with diverse goals ranging from entertainment to criminal justice reform advocacy to journalistic inquiry. These competing motivations of podcast producers are explored, along with the ethical quandaries that emerge in the process of telling true crime stories. Sherrill traces true crime podcasting back to the infancy of the medium and examines the influences, innovations, and events that created the true crime podcast ecosystem, as well as its influence on real cases in the United States. Scholars of communication, sociology, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.
Indigenous Settlers of the Galápagos
Authors: Voelkl Pilar Sánchez
Published: July 2024

In Indigenous Settlers of the Galápagos: Conservation Law, Race, and Society, Pilar Sánchez Voelkl offers an anthropological and historical account about the early arrival and prominent presence of Andean Indigenous people in the Galápagos Islands. Her research traces the stories of the earliest colonizers, who permanently settled on the archipelago, from the 1860s onwards. Sánchez Voelkl argues that their journey illustrates the way multiple notions of nature, race, and society interact to shape a social order in Darwin’s archipelago. Contrary to common portraits of the islands as an example of untouched nature, Indigenous Settlers of the Galápagos provides compelling evidence about the complexities about human and non-human relationships.
Kwame Nkrumah's Political Kingdom and Pan-Africanism Reinterpreted, 1909-1972
Authors: Assensoh A.B. , Alex-Assensoh Yvette M.
Published: July 2024

Kwame Nkrumah’s Political Kingdom and Pan-Africanism ReInterpreted, 1909-1972 provides an in-depth study of the life of the late Pan-African leader from the former Gold Coast, Kwame Nkrumah. Authors A.B. Assensoh and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh analyze Nkrumah’s life from his birth on the Gold Coast through his studies in the United Kingdom and the United States, his activism and political life, and his exile and death. Throughout, Assensoh and Alex-Assensoh present a twenty-first-century reinterpretation of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist views in the context of Black unity as well as Black liberation within the African continent and the United States and Caribbean diaspora.
The Logic of Hungarian Political Development (1990–2022)
Authors: Csizmadia Ervin
Published: July 2024

The Logic of Hungarian Political Development, 1990-2022: Historical and Political Perspectives is a departure from most of the works focused on contemporary Hungarian politics. Most tend to focus on describing the transition from democracy to autocracy, with a focus on Viktor Orbán and the construction of an illiberal regime. Ervin Csizmadia's book differs from this literature in its approach. How it could have happened in Hungary in the first place. To understand the essence of this, you must recognize the whole process of Hungarian political development. Csizmadia argues that patterns of the old Hungarian development have emerged in our time., which cannot be dismissed as archaic; are reviving the old patterns today are intriguing and we know very little about them.
Sacred Body
Authors: Sabbath Roberta Sterman
Published: July 2024

Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination provides fresh and insightful interpretations of Jewish texts, narratives, and cultural practices that show how these artifacts unhinge the “sacred” from the divine and focus instead on the “everyday sacred” of a dynamic earthly existence that emphasizes the body, celebrates life-affirming decisions, actions, and relationships, and avoids abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism. Roberta Sabbath argues that a diverse array of Jewish artifacts, from sacred scripture to contemporary novels and ballet performance, articulate a tradition that has existed for millennia in mythic, proto-historic, legalistic, mystical, philosophical, and aesthetic expressions of Jewishness. The author refers to this tradition as Jewish literary illumination, and she deftly demonstrates how it illuminates the most salient message of Judaism: that earthly existence and the body are also the site of the spiritual and the sacred.
The Politics of Being Afro-Latino/Latina
Authors: Mallard Isreal G.
Published: July 2024

Historically, Afro-Latinos/as have been underrepresented in political offices in the District of Columbia. Isreal G. Mallard explores the social/racial factors that influence the political attitudes of Afro-Latino/a voters, the Latino voting community at-large, and political representatives. Also, the author examines factors such as ethnicity and “pigmentocracy” (skin color) which play a role in electing an Afro-Latino/a to political office in Washington, D.C. Furthermore, he provides answers to address the social/racial factors that influence the electability of light-skin and dark-skin, self-identified Afro-Latinos/as running for political office in Washington, D.C. In addition, he discusses how social/racial factors influence the pathway to political office for self-identified Afro-Latinos/as. He uses a qualitative methodological approach which includes interview participants to provide answers to this study.
The Griot Tradition As Remixed Through Hip Hop
Authors: Gooding Frederick
Published: July 2024

Although Hip Hop is known to come from the streets of South Bronx, New York, its origins go far deeper than that. Unconsciously, the innovative souls of the 1970s Hip Hop movement demonstrated the captivating, vibrational sound of the five regions in Africa: Northern Africa, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Thus, The Griot Tradition as Remixed through Hip Hop: Straight Outta Africa fleshes out the common threads of Hip Hop’s creative genius across the African diaspora and provides an analytical rubric as a guide to a greater understanding of Hip Hop. The author, Frederick Gooding, examines why Hip Hop holds such an important place within contemporary culture in order to determine how a genre that was so controversial and marginal could become mainstream and central. Through the use of various genres, artists, styles, sounds, images, and rhetorical techniques, Gooding analyzes how Hip Hop, when seen through the lens of African connection, can be appreciated for its regenerative and connective power to create relationships between people both nationally and internationally.
Indigenous Collective Rights in Latin America
Authors: Becerra Valdivia Katherine
Published: July 2024

Latin America is a region with high levels of recognition for Indigenous collective rights. Still, legal protections differ considerably among countries. Why do some countries in Latin America have a strong recognition of collective rights for Indigenous people while others do not? What are the factors that help enhance the presence of collective rights? The author argues that while Indigenous social movements are crucial to the protection of Indigenous rights, they are not enough. The recognition of these rights is influenced by organizational factors (such as coalitions between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous allies) as well as institutional conditions (including constitutional replacement and party systems). By employing qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and case studies from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, this book explores the ways various elements combine to create conditions for a variety of collective rights.
Sudan Media Makers
Authors: Satti Mohamed A.
Published: July 2024

In Sudan Media Makers: Writings from the Diaspora, Mohamed A. Satti identifies and interviews six prominent Sudanese media personalities in the diaspora to tell their stories and examine their contributions to Sudanese media. The media and communication professionals are from a variety of backgrounds, including print and television journalists, a political cartoonist, and a novelist. Throughout the book, Satti connects the lives of these media makers to the history of Sudan from the last three decades to the present, providing insights on Sudan, Sudanese media, and the Sudanese people.
Exposing the Roots of Constructivism
Authors: Smith R. Scott
Published: July 2024

Constructivism dominates over other theories of knowledge in much of western academia, especially the humanities and social sciences. In Exposing the Roots of Constructivism: Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge, R. Scott Smith argues that constructivism is linked to the embrace of nominalism, the theory that everything is particular and located in space and time. Indeed, nominalism is sufficient for a view to be constructivist.

However, the natural sciences still enjoy great prestige from the “fact-value split.” They are often perceived as giving us knowledge of the facts of reality, and not merely our constructs. In contrast, ethics and religion, which also have been greatly influenced by nominalism, usually are perceived as giving us just our constructs and opinions.

Yet, even the natural sciences have embraced nominalism, and Smith shows that this will undermine knowledge in those disciplines as well. Indeed, the author demonstrates that, at best, nominalism leaves us with only interpretations, but at worst, it undermines all knowledge whatsoever. However, there are many clear examples of knowledge we do have in the many different disciplines, and therefore those must be due to a different ontology of properties. Thus, nominalism should be rejected. In its place, the author defends a kind of Platonic realism about properties.
The Heroines of Henry Longfellow
Authors: Bartel Timothy E.G.
Published: July 2024

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poems are filled with powerful heroines, from Evangeline, the exiled wanderer, to Vittoria Colonna, the aging genius of the Italian renaissance. In The Heroines of Henry Longfellow: Domestic, Defiant, Divine, Timothy E. G. Bartel provides a survey of Longfellow’s major heroines, placing them in the context of Longfellow’s body of work and the poet’s interests in theology, politics, and history. Though Longfellow’s heroines have sometimes been dismissed as mere domestic caricatures, Bartel argues that Longfellow’s heroines are nothing of the sort. Instead, they provide us with unique pictures of how one’s individual talents and desires can be harmonized with the Christian ideals of communal justice, ethical living, and ultimate union with the Divine.
Inequality and Violence in the United States
Authors: Chasin Barbara H.
Published: July 2024

The second edition of Inequality and Violence in the United States: Casualties of Capitalism (2004) won the Best Book of the Year award from the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association. In the third edition, Dr. Chasin updates and expands the previous material, discussing the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis, access to firearms, and white supremacist movements. Written in a readable, accessible style, this book is a thoroughly documented account of the importance of connecting economic and political inequalities to dangers people face. The book emphasizes the importance of recognizing both structural and organizational violence, as well as discussing forms of interpersonal violence. Chasin analyzes relationships between social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and the three forms of violence.
Perspectives on the Life and Works of Gabriel García Márquez
Authors: Arango Gustavo
Published: July 2024

Perspectives on the life and works of Gabriel García Márquez: Caribbean Troubadour explores both the big picture and the small details about the Colombian Nobel Prize winner: his development as an artist, the construction of his public persona, the characteristics and the significance of his most relevant works, the secrets and the agonies of his trade, the blurred line between fact and fiction, and the recurrent themes of solitude, truth, love. Arango brings special attention to García Márquez’s Caribbean background, as well as the deep roots of his works in the tradition of the medieval troubadours. Archival materials, never before published in English, give the final touches to this portrayal of one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century.
American Film Noir Genres, Characters, and Settings
Authors: Hellwig Harold
Published: July 2024

American Film Noir Genres, Characters, and Settings argues that film noir style evolved out of American literature prior to the 1930s and continues to evolve long after the classic films that defined its presence in cinema. While many critics suggest that the film noir tradition ceased after the mid-1950s, labeling similar films produced later as ‘neo-noir’, Harold Hellwig contends that film noir itself has continued to evolve beyond cinema to include television series such as CSI, Have Gun Will Travel, and Frasier, among others. Hellwig posits that, rather than being a single genre in and of itself, film noir comprises several genres, including detective procedurals, science fiction, the Western, and even comedy. This book examines different elements of American film noir – including the characters and settings it is often defined by – and its contexts within different adaptations in both film and television. Scholars of film studies, American literature, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.
The Archetype of the Dying and Rising God in World Mythology
Authors: Rovang Paul
Published: July 2024

The Archetype of the Dying and Rising God in World Mythology is the first global treatment of the dying and rising god archetype since that classification was called into serious doubt in the final decades of the twentieth century. While assaults on the concept have focused on the Classical and ancient Near Eastern (Biblical) traditions, this study goes beyond but also includes these areas to encompass world mythology. Beginning with an interrogation of the most influential criticisms, the author then examines evidence for the archetype's validity by analyzing dying and rising god myths from ancient Near Eastern, Classical, and non-Classical sources from around the world. He treats implications of the archetype for religious studies, literature, and psychology, both in discussing the myths themselves and in separate chapters dedicated to these fields. The focused treatment on single myths makes this book a useful reference source. At the same time, its inductive approach to evidence provides a conclusive argument on the question with applications that warrant reading it from cover to cover. Additional distinctive features of this book include a thematic interpretation of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land, a new perspective on the Jungian archetypes, and a call for a neo-archetypal approach to literary criticism.
Humor in Pedagogy in Tertiary Education in the Age of COVID-19
Authors: Aka Philip , Yeralan Sencer
Published: July 2024

Using the major theories of humor as a point of departure, Humor in Pedagogy in Tertiary Education in the Age of COVID-19: Bosnia in Comparative Perspective argues for the expanded use of humor as pedagogy in Bosnian tertiary education, unfazed by the pandemic infections of COVID-19, with teachable lessons for other countries. It argues that the measures put in place to contain the spread of the pandemic neither foreclosed nor rendered less exigent, the drive for more quality education in Bosnia achieved through various means that include creative application of humor in tertiary education. Rather than minimize it, the era of non-classroom-based instructions ushered by COVID-19 offers an opportunity to promote intelligible learning by infusion of humor into every aspect of tertiary instruction, from course syllabus to student evaluation of faculty teaching.

Key highlights of this book include the features of Bosnian self-parody that it articulates as material for pedagogy in Bosnian tertiary classrooms, the boundaries for judicious use of humor in pedagogy that it spells out, and its formulation related to the continued value of humor in the Bosnian tertiary classroom unfazed by the public health challenges of COVID-19.

The book is designed as an innovative and less contentious contribution to the debates on educational reforms in postwar Bosnia, a contribution focused positively around the quality—and quantity—of instructions in tertiary institutions in Bosnia.
Attending to Student Success
Authors: Miller Andrew P.
Published: July 2024

The notion of class attendance has largely been ignored, where students, faculty, and administrators substitute assumptions for empirical evidence. The data is clear: attendance matters, more so than any other known contributor to student success. Yet, policies and practices often overlook these data.

Attending Student Success is a comprehensive guide for building sustainable cultures of student success in higher education, through the use of attendance data. Andrew P. Miller synthesizes decades of research pertaining to the myriad definitions, trends, and strategies of student success efforts. He explores the various perceptions and misconceptions surrounding attendance and illustrates the impetus for using these data to foster student success. Miller then provides guidance to make these data actionable through policy changes, early-alert strategies, and data-informed decision-making for cultural change management.