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The Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil
Fr. Henriques' Arte da Lingua Malabar: Translation, History, and Analysis
Jeanne Hein
Harvard University Press

Arte da Lingua Malabar is a grammar of the Tamil spoken in the sixteenth century by the Parava pearl fisher community on the east coast of South India between Kanyakumari and Rameswaram. Fr. Henrique Henriques, S.J., a Portuguese Jesuit missionary to South India, was the first diligent student of Tamil from Europe. He wrote this grammar in Portuguese around 1549 CE for the benefit of his colleagues engaged in learning the local language for spreading their religious beliefs. Consequently, Arte da Lingua Malabar reflects the first linguistic contact between India and the West.

This grammar is unique in many aspects. It is not based on traditional Indian grammars; rather, it uses Latin grammatical categories to describe sixteenth-century Tamil. The effort to describe a language (Tamil) in terms of an unrelated language (Portuguese) has resulted in several inaccuracies in transliteration and scribing. Yet, Arte da Lingua Malabar is the best evidence for showing how sixteenth-century Tamil was heard and written by a sixteenth-century Portuguese. This English translation by Jeanne Hein and V. S. Rajam also includes analysis of the grammar and a description of the political context in which it was written.

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Egypt in Search of Political Community
An Analysis of the Intellectual and Political Evolution of Egypt, 1804-1952
Nadav Safran
Harvard University Press
A book about Egypt's search for a secure place in the modern world, including many problems common to her sister Arab and Muslim countries, and, by extension, to all newly developed countries. Mr. Safran combines the approach of the "Islamist," immersed in the culture he examines, with that of the modern social scientist. Sympathetic to Egypt, he is objective in his belief that Egypt's troubles are the inescapable result of transforming one of the oldest civilizations into an integral part of the modern world.
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The Egyptian Mummies and Coffins of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
History, Technical Analysis, and Conservation
Michele L. Koons
University Press of Colorado, 2020
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science acquired two ancient Egyptian mummies and three coffins. The mummies are the remains of two women who lived in an unknown locale in ancient Egypt. They both died in their thirties and have now been subjected to a number of unpublished scientific and unscientific analyses over the years. In 2016, as DMNS prepared to update its Egyptian Hall, staff scientists decided to reexamine the mummies and coffins using innovative, inexpensive, and accessible techniques.

This interdisciplinary volume provides a history of the mummies’ discovery and relocation to Colorado. It guides the reader through various analytical techniques, detailing past research and introducing new data and best practices for future conservation efforts. The new analysis includes more accurate radiocarbon dating, fully comprehensive data from updated CT scans, examples of Egyptian blue and yellow pigments on the coffins uncovered by non-invasive x-ray fluorescence, unprecedented analysis of the coffin wood, updated translations and stylistic analysis of the text and imagery on the coffins, gas chromatography of the paints and resins, linen analysis, and much more.

The Egyptian Mummies and Coffins of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science provides replicable findings and consistent terminology for institutions performing holistic studies on extant museum collections of a range of material types. It will add substantially to what we know about the effective conservation of Egyptian mummies and coffins.
 
Contributors: Christopher H. Baisan, Hans Barnard, Bonnie Clark, Pearce Paul Creasman, Farrah Cundiff, Jessica M. Fletcher, Kari L. Hayes, Kathryn Howley, Stephen Humphries, Keith Miller, Vanessa Muros, Robyn Price, David Rubinstein, Judith Southward, Jason Weinman
 
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Elements of Rhetoric
Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution
Richard Whately. Edited with a Critical Introduction by Douglas Ehninger. Foreword by David Potter.
Southern Illinois University Press, 1963

Direct, comprehensive, well organized, simple in statement, Elements of Rhetoric is in all respects well fitted to fulfill its assigned role as a textbook. The remarks on practical problems and the examples and analogies confirm contemporary reports that Whately was himself a talented and stimulating teacher.

The modern field of speech was born near the beginning of the twentieth century, some seventy years after Whately wrote. But influential leaders in the new field endorsed Whately’s judgments, and courses and textbooks in public address have remained strongly influenced by his ideas. Whately’s views on a number of major questions in rhetoric have proved sound and fruitful during many decades of practice, and his book remains one of the most influential works on the subject.

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Experimenting with Ethnography
A Companion to Analysis
Andrea Ballestero and Brit Ross Winthereik, editors
Duke University Press, 2021
Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, the essays invite readers to focus on the imaginative work that needs to be performed prior to completing an argument. Whether exchanging objects, showing how to use drawn images as a way to analyze data, or working with smartphones, sound recordings, and social media as analytic devices, the contributors explore the deliberate processes for pursuing experimental thinking through ethnography. Practical and broad in theoretical scope, Experimenting with Ethnography is an indispensable companion for all ethnographers.

Contributors. Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Andrea Ballestero, Ivan da Costa Marques, Steffen Dalsgaard, Endre Dányi, Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne de Laet, Carolina Domínguez Guzmán, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Clément Dréano, Joseph Dumit, Melanie Ford Lemus, Elaine Gan, Oliver Human, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Graham M. Jones, Trine Mygind Korsby, Justine Laurent, James Maguire, George E. Marcus, Annemarie Mol, Sarah Pink, Els Roding, Markus Rudolfi, Ulrike Scholtes, Anthony Stavrianakis, Lucy Suchman, Katie Ulrich, Helen Verran, Else Vogel, Antonia Walford, Karen Waltorp, Laura Watts, Brit Ross Winthereik
 
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Expert Advice for Policy Choice
Analysis and Discourse
Duncan MacRae Jr. and Dale Whittington
Georgetown University Press, 1997

Economic reasoning has thus far dominated the field of public policy analysis. This new introduction to the field posits that policy analysis should have both a broader interdisciplinary base—including criteria from such fields as political science, sociology, law, and philosophy, as well as economics—and also a broader audience in order to foster democratic debate.

To achieve these goals, MacRae and Whittington have organized their textbook around the construction of decision matrices using multiple criteria, exploring the uses of the decision matrix formulation more fully than other texts. They describe how to set up the matrix, fill in cells and combine criteria, and use it as an aid for decision making. They show how ethical assessment of the affects that alternatives have on various parties differs from political analysis, and then they extend the use of the decision matrix to consider alternatives by affected parties, periods of time, or combined factors.

The authors also thoughtfully address the role of expert advice in the policy process, widening the scope of the field to describe a complex system for the creation and use of knowledge in a democracy.

An extended case study of HIV/AIDS policy follows each chapter (in installments), immediately illustrating the application of the material. The book also contains a glossary.

Expert Advice for Policy Choice provides a new basis for graduate education in public policy analysis and can also serve as a text in planning, evaluation research, or public administration. In addition, it will be of interest to students and professionals wishing to aid policy choice who work in such fields as sociology, political science, psychology, public health, and social work.

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Exploiting the Wilderness
An Analysis of Wildlife Crime
Greg L. Warchol
Temple University Press, 2017

Illegally harvested ivory and endangered plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, and even insects are easily found for sale throughout East and Southern Africa. And this is just one part of the multi-billion-dollar illegal global trade in wildlife. 

Wildlife is an important and even vital asset for both intrinsic and economic reasons. Yet it is illegally exploited on a massive scale to the point where some species now risk extinction. Exploiting the Wilderness provides a concise overview of this shameful business, describing some of the main species being exploited and examining select wildlife whose survival is imperiled due to heavy pressure from poachers to meet consumer demand. 

Greg Warchol draws on his firsthand experience and research in Africa to examine the structure and operation of the illegal trade in wildlife. He identifies the participants as well as their motivations and operations, and explains the behavior of poachers, traffickers, and consumers of illegally obtained goods. He concludes with a description of legislative and law enforcement efforts to control and prevent wildlife exploitation along with a number of contemporary conservation initiatives designed to improve the ability of rangers to protect wildlife.

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