The Transformative Power of Literature and Narrative: Promoting Positive Change


Book Description

Narrative plays a central role for individual and collective lives - this insight has arguably only grown at a time of multiple social and cultural challenges in the 21st century. The present volume aims to actualize and further substantiate the case for literature and narrative, taking inspiration from Vera Nünning's eminent scholarship over the past decades. Engaging with her formative interdisciplinary work, the volume seeks to explore potentials of change through the transformative power of literature and narrative - to be harnessed by individuals and groups as agents of positive change in today's world. The book is located at the intersection of cognitive and cultural narratology and is concerned with the way literature affects individuals, how it works at an intersubjective level, enabling communication and community, and how it furthers social and cultural change.







Re-thinking Picturebooks for Intermediate and Advanced Learners: Perspectives for Secondary English Language Education


Book Description

Der didaktische Wert von picturebooks für den Englischunterricht in der Grundschule gilt als unumstritten. Jedoch gibt es in Forschung und Unterrichtspraxis derzeit kaum Ansätze, wie der Transfer dieses vermeintlich kindlichen Literaturmediums in die Sekundarstufe gelingen kann. Dieser Band legitimiert picturebooks als komplex angelegte Textform, die sich auch mit fortgeschrittenen Lernenden zu kompetenz- und inhaltsorientierter Arbeit im Englischunterricht anbietet. Die im Band versammelten konzeptuellen und empirischen Perspektiven zeigen angehenden und praktizierenden Lehrkräften konkret auf, wie vielfältig picturebooks den Unterricht bereichern können. Eine große Bandbreite praktischer Beispiele verdeutlicht ihr Potenzial für den Englischunterricht der Sekundarstufen - von der Förderung verschiedener literacies und literarischen Lernens bis hin zur Fokussierung von Themen wie Umwelt, sozialer Gerechtigkeit oder kultureller Diversität.




Literature and Psychology: An Interdisciplinary Approach


Book Description

Literature and Psychology: An Interdisciplinary Approach brings together two captivating fields, each with its own unique ability to explore and illuminate the human experience. The book is based on “Call for Book Chapters” in which chapters are received from reputed institutions of India along with Iran and Nigeria. This book presents the intricate interplay between Literature and Psychology, examining how they inform and enrich each other, opening up new avenues of understanding and insights. The chapters within this volume cover a broad range of topics, including the psychological analysis of literary characters, examination of literary texts through Psychological theories, the influence of literature on psychological well-being, and essence of Psycholinguistics. By integrating these diverse perspectives, the reader will get the deeper appreciation of the power of literature to illuminate the human psyche and the relevance of psychological insights in understanding literary works. This anthology aims to serve as a valuable resource for scholars, students, and enthusiasts of both Literature and Psychology, where it offers a unique paradigm for connecting the two disciplines together and inspiring them for further research, dialogue, and cross-pollination of ideas.




In the Blood


Book Description

The New York Times bestselling author and International Thriller Writers “Best Novel” finalist Lisa Unger returns to the dark psychological suspense that made Beautiful Lies a bestseller around the world. Lana Granger lives a life of lies. She has told so many lies about where she comes from and who she is that the truth is like a cloudy nightmare she can’t quite recall. About to graduate from college and with her trust fund almost tapped out, she takes a job babysitting a troubled boy named Luke. Expelled from schools all over the country, the manipulative young Luke is accustomed to controlling the people in his life. But, in Lana, he may have met his match. Or has Lana met hers? When Lana’s closest friend, Beck, mysteriously disappears, Lana resumes her lying ways—to friends, to the police, to herself. The police have a lot of questions for Lana when the story about her where­abouts the night Beck disappeared doesn’t jibe with eyewitness accounts. Lana will do anything to hide the truth, but it might not be enough to keep her ominous secrets buried: someone else knows about Lana’s lies. And he’s dying to tell. Lisa Unger’s writing has been hailed as “sensational” (Publishers Weekly) and “sophisticated” (New York Daily News), with “gripping narrative and evocative, muscular prose” (Associated Press). Masterfully suspenseful, finely crafted, and written with a no-holds-barred raw power, In the Blood is Unger at her best.




Transformative Language Arts in Action


Book Description

Changing the World with Words explores how Transformative Language Arts embraces and engages social change in various realms of our culture, including history, education, theology, economics, ecology and social welfare.




Find Your Stride


Book Description

A no-nonsense guide to finding your unique fitness program Have you struggled to stick with a nutrition or training plan long enough to see your desired results? Or perhaps you’ve devoted time and effort to your training but are frustrated because you’re not seeing the tangible changes you really want. If either scenario sounds familiar, then Find Your Stride is for you. In it, avid runner and fitness writer Emily Rudow explains why there’s no universal formula for fitness success—how trying to stick to a rigid plan, with no flexibility for individual needs, causes us to veer off our well-intentioned paths. Emily combines the latest research on nutrition, exercise science, and psychology with her personal, in-the-trenches experience, giving you the tools to transform your body and mind. Find Your Stride offers an unconventionally complete approach to fitness, covering mindset, nutrition, training, and sustainability, to help you: • Practice self-compassion and reframe fitness as a self-experiment • Discard the diet mentality and finally escape the vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting • Achieve your physique goals (build muscle and strength and/or lose fat) • Uncover intrinsic motivation to build a healthy routine over the long term As someone who, like the rest of us, has struggled to consistently stick to a fitness regimen, Emily is approachable for those of us at any fitness level who want to learn how to apply fitness concepts to our lives in a sustainable way. Find Your Stride will help you create a fitness plan that’s uniquely yours, so that you can feel good in your own skin, build confidence, and experience the high energy and happiness that come along with fitness being an integral part of your life.




Self-Narratives


Book Description

Chapters describe how clinicians can work with what is openly discussed, and how to ascertain less conscious events and motives. A powerful clinical tool that enhances cooperation between the client and therapist, the model delineated in this volume can be used in a wide variety of settings and is easily integrated with a range of orientations. Providing complete guidelines for its clinical use, Self-Narratives is an ideal resource for psychotherapists and counselors alike. Teachers or trainers who want to educate students in self-knowledge and self-reflection will find here an ideal method for stimulating these processes.




The Overstory: A Novel


Book Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.




Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change


Book Description

This handbook provides a single reference resource for communication for development and social change. Increasingly, one considers communication to be crucial to effectively tackle the major problems of today. Hence, the question being addressed in this handbook is, is there a right communication strategy? Perspectives on sustainability, participation, and culture in communication have changed over time in line with the evolution of development approaches and trends, and in response to the need for effective applications of communication methods and tools to new issues and priorities. Divided into prominent themes comprising relevant chapters written by experts in the field and reviewed by renowned editors, the book addresses topics where communication and social change converge in both theory and praxis. Specific concerns and issues include food security, climate change, poverty reduction, health, equity and gender, sustainable development goals, and information and communication technologies (ICTs). The book shows how communication is essential at all levels of society. It helps readers understand the processes that underlie attitude change and decision-making and the work uses powerful models and methods to explain the processes that lead to sustainable development and social change. This is essential reading for academics and practitioners, students and policy makers alike.