Where Drowned Things Live

Where Drowned Things Live
Author: Susan Thistlethwaite
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2017-03-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1532613636

Where Drowned Things Live describes the struggles of an untenured professor, Kristin Ginelli, as she tries to counsel a young woman student at her university and get her to reveal who is abusing her. Kristin fails, and the student is found drowned. As a former Chicago cop who quit the force over sexual harassment and the death of her detective husband in the line of duty, Kristin doggedly investigates this mysterious death, pushing back on foot-dragging by the university and obstruction by the Chicago police. Kristin is almost killed twice, but she does not give up on questioning why this student died. The novel is wholly fictional. What is not fiction, however, is that often students at colleges and universities around the country are vulnerable to sexual assault and abuse and they can receive very little help from their schools or from law enforcement. Today more than 300 schools of higher education are being investigated under Title IX for failures to prevent sexual assault and harassment on their campuses, and to deal fairly with reports.

Edgework

Edgework
Author: Wendy Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2005-12-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780691123615

'Edgework' brings together seven of Wendy Brown's recent essays in political, cultural and feminist theory. They range from explorations of the post 9/11 political landscape to critiques of the norms in the fields of political theory and feminist studies.

Censorship and Silencing

Censorship and Silencing
Author: Robert Post
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1998
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780892364848

Censorship was once a predictable topic, dividing liberals and conservatives down the middle on issues like obscenity and national security. Today, the debate over the regulation of speech offers no such easy dichotomy, with feminists joining forces with religious fundamentalists to control pornography, and abortion rights advocates seeking to restrict clinic demonstrations while prolife groups defend their freedom to picket. Underlying this trend is a fundamental intellectual shift--exemplified by the work of Michel Foucault--that holds that the state is not the only agent of censorship. The thirteen contributors here explore the topic of censorship from the viewpoint of numerous disciplines and viewpoints.

The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets

The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets
Author: Ruth A. Miller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190638370

Biopolitics and posthumanism have been passé theories in the academy for a while now, standing on the unfashionable side of the fault line between biology and liberal thought. These days, if people invoke them, they do so a bit apologetically. But, as Ruth Miller argues, we should not be so quick to relegate these terms to the scholarly dustbin. This is because they can help to explain an increasingly important (and contested) influence in modern democratic politics-that of nostalgia. Nostalgia is another somewhat embarrassing concept for the academy. It is that wistful sense of longing for an imaginary and unitary past that leads to an impossible future. And, moreover for this book, it is ordinarily considered "bad" for democracy. But, again, Miller says, not so fast. As she argues in this book, nostalgia is the mode of engagement with the world that allows thought and life to coexist, productively, within democratic politics. Miller demonstrates her theory by looking at nostalgia as a nonhuman mode of "thought" embedded in biopolitical reproduction. To put this another way, she looks at mass democracy as a classically nonhuman affair and nostalgic, nonhuman reproduction as the political activity that makes this democracy happen. To illustrate, Miller draws on the politics surrounding embryos and the modernization of the Turkish alphabet. Situating this argument in feminist theories of biopolitics, this unusual and erudite book demonstrates that nostalgia is not as detrimental to democratic engagement as scholars have claimed.

Seven Stories of Threatening Speech

Seven Stories of Threatening Speech
Author: Ruth A. Miller
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472117963

Treating language as a type of machine code opens new avenues for the study of history and politics

Living is a beautiful thing

Living is a beautiful thing
Author: Suat Ünsal
Publisher: Sama Kitap
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2024-07-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 6259454139

Pitch dark… You can’t see your hand in front of your face. You don’t see anything... When you don’t see, you don’t know, you aren’t known. Something like nothingness... But suddenly, as if you’ve pushed a button, everything becomes illuminated, visible, known... What a beautiful thing it is to exist. Living is a beautiful thing indeed. Life is the button of that light. Our Lord gave us life while we were far from life and friends. He gave us both life and friends... What a beautiful thing life is... Whatever is beautiful, we know it through life; we taste it through life; we experience all the beauties of life. We also find ourselves with life. Life is such a beautiful thing... It’s beautiful like air, like breathing... It’s beautiful like feeling as if you’re drowning, surfacing quickly and taking a deep breath. We save ourselves from drowning with every breath. It would be so good if we could enjoy being kept alive with every breath... How to be grateful for living; how to pay for the blessing of life. Getting used to things makes us blind, we can no longer see. Although the blessing we take for granted is staring us in the face, we throw it into that pitch darkness. When you can’t see it as a blessing, you can’t be grateful... Is there a cure for habituation? Yes, there is. Let’s close our eyes for a few seconds. Let’s open our eyes as if we were using them for the first time after the darkness... What is it like to see, to be able to see? What would you miss if you didn’t see? You can apply such a method of ‘breaking habituation’ for every blessing you have received and everything you love. This is how you can tear the veil of habituation... As the poet says: “Living is such a beautiful thing By understanding, like a master, a book Like a love song Living in wonder like a child...” As we get used to something and take it for granted, the taste, meaning and beauty of seeing it for the first time disappears. We can tear the veil of habituation and renew the meaning of life in our minds by changing our perspective. There lies the taste of life… … Isn’t this important too? The perfect level of life is the life of heaven. Our most vital issue is to turn this world into heaven on the one hand, and to do things that will elevate our lives to heavenly life on the other hand. Man was created for happiness in two worlds... However, happiness on earth and happiness in heaven are not the same. Since opposites coexist in the world, it will be unrealistic to seek full happiness. However, man can find peace with a ‘faithful attitude’ among the waves, turmoil, changes and the hustle and bustle of the world. One should live life to the fullest... He should increase his good deeds. He should fill his life with beauty. Living is really beautiful if you live like this... One should not forget the one who gave this beautiful life. We should not forget that we have Lord, who loves us more than anything He created. He is the one who creates love, He is the one most worthy of being loved; we should not forget it... Flowers, roses, especially butterflies; the stars, the moons, the sun, the seasons... one should live by appreciating them. In other words, we should give them their due on behalf of Allah... Living is really beautiful when you live like that... Otherwise, you see that living has become a dungeon and something meaningless... … Inshallah, “Living is a Beautiful Thing” will touch hearts and lead people to good deeds... May Allah be with you.

The Power of Silence

The Power of Silence
Author: Colum Kenny
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-03-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429921780

This book demonstrates that silence is eloquent, powerful, beautiful and even dangerous. It surrounds and permeates our daily lives. Drawing on a wide range of cross-cultural, literary and historical sources, the author explores the uses and abuses of silence. He explains how silence is not associated with solitude alone but has a much broader value within society.The main themes of The Power of Silence are positive and negative uses of silence, and the various ways in which silence has been understood culturally, socially and spiritually. The book's objectives are to equip people with a better appreciation of the value of silence and to enable them to explore its benefits and uses more easily for themselves.

Passages

Passages
Author: Elizabeth Kovach
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-11-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1800083181

The study of literature and culture is marked by various distinct understandings of passages – both as phenomena and critical concepts. These include the anthropological notion of rites of passage, the shopping arcades (Passagen) theorized by Walter Benjamin, the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade, present-day forms of migration and resettlement, and understandings of translation and adaptation. Whether structural, semiotic, spatial/geographic, temporal, existential, societal or institutional, passages refer to processes of (status) change. They enable entrances and exits, arrivals and departures, while they also foster moments of liminality and suspension. They connect and thereby engender difference. Passages is an exploration of passages as contexts and processes within which liminal experiences and encounters are situated. It aims to foster a concept-based, interdisciplinary dialogue on how to approach and theorize such a term. Based on the premise that concepts travel through times, contexts and discursive settings, a conceptual approach to passages provides the authors of this volume with the analytical tools to (re-)focus their research questions and create a meaningful exchange across disciplinary, national and linguistic boundaries. Contributions from senior scholars and early-career researchers whose work focuses on areas such as cultural memory, performativity, space, media, (cultural) translation, ecocriticism, gender and race utilize specific understandings of passages and liminality, reflecting on their value and limits for their research.

Reading Is My Window

Reading Is My Window
Author: Megan Sweeney
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080789835X

Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.