BiblioVault - Books about Theory Practice

The Disabled in the Soviet Union

Past and Present, Theory and Practice

William O. McCagg

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989

In topics ranging from industrial accident prevention before and during Stalin's industrialization drive to the long and complex history of the Soviet “science” called defectology, the essays in this collection chronicle the responses of the state and society to a variety of disabled groups and disabilities. Also included, in addition to the editors, are Julie Brown, Vera Dunham, David Joravsky, Janet Knox and Alex Kozulin, Stephen and Ethel Dunn, Bernice Madison, Paul Raymond, and Mark Field.

This unusual and provocative collection brings to light a dimension of Soviet history and policy rarely explored.

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Feminist Locations

Global and Local, Theory and Practice

DeKoven, Marianne

Rutgers University Press, 2001

Contemporary feminist scholarship has done much to challenge the many binary constructions at the heart of Western culture: white/nonwhite, theory/practice, and, most notably, masculine/feminine. Feminist criticism has reshaped these conceptions by breaking them apart and reconfiguring them into intersecting, relational fields of difference. The contributors to this collection look to the future of feminist theory and practice, specifically in terms of their complex relationship with the global and local configurations of postmodernity.

In the first part of this book, current feminist theory is assessed for possible future directions. Part two focuses primarily on political issues and part three on questions of the body. Topics include feminist success versus social backlash, global womens human rights, postcolonial feminism, the politics of reproduction, and narratives of womens aging in postmodern culture.

Contributors: Karen Barad, Anne C. Bellows, Charlotte Bunch, Nao Bustamante, Elaine K. Chang, Marianne DeKoven, Leela Fernandes, Susan Stanford Friedman, Coco Fusco, Radha S. Hegde, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, E. Ann Kaplan, Debra J. Liebowitz, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Cynthia Saltzman, Lynne Segal

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Jewish Rhetorics

History, Theory, Practice

Edited by Michael Bernard-Donals and Janice W. Fernheimer

Brandeis University Press, 2014

This volume, the first of its kind, establishes and clarifies the significance of Jewish rhetorics as its own field and as a field within rhetoric studies. Diverse essays illuminate and complicate the editors’ definition of a Jewish rhetorical stance as allowing speakers to maintain a “resolute sense of engagement” with their fellows and their community, while also remaining aware of the dislocation from the members of those communities. Topics include the historical and theoretical foundations of Jewish rhetorics; cultural variants and modes of cultural expression; and intersections with Greco-Roman, Christian, Islamic, and contemporary rhetorical theory and practice. In addition, the contributors examine gender and Yiddish, and evaluate the actual and potential effect of Jewish rhetorics on contemporary scholarship and on the ways we understand and teach language and writing. The contributors include some of the world’s leading scholars of rhetoric, writing, and Jewish studies.

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The Kurdish Women’s Movement

History, Theory, Practice

Dilar Dirik

Pluto Press, 2021

'One the foremost writers and participants in the Kurdish women's movement' - Harsha Walia

The Kurdish women's movement is at the heart of the most exciting revolutionary experiment in the world today: Rojava. Forged over decades of struggle, most recently in the fight against ISIS, Rojava embodies a radical commitment to ecology, democracy and gender equality. But while striking images of Kurdish women in desert fatigues proliferate, a true understanding of the women's movement remains elusive.

Taking apart the superficial and Orientalist frameworks that dominate, Dilar Dirik offers instead an empirically rich account of the women's movement in Kurdistan. Drawing on original research and ethnographic fieldwork, she surveys the movement's historical origins, ideological evolution, and political practice over the past forty years. Going beyond abstract ideas, Dirik locates the movement's culture and ideology in its concrete work for women's liberation and radical democracy.

Taking the reader from the guerrilla camps in the mountains to radical women's academies and self-organized refugee camps, the book invites readers around the world to engage with the revolution in Kurdistan, both theoretically and practically, as a vital touchstone in the wider struggle for a militant anti-fascist, anti-capitalist feminist internationalism.

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Language and Sexuality

Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice

Edited by Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah Roberts, and Andrew

CSLI, 2001

Language and Sexuality explores the question of how linguistic practices and ideologies relate to sexuality and sexual identity, opening with a discussion of the emerging field of "queer linguistics" and moving from theory into practice with case studies of language use in a wide variety of cultural settings. The resulting volume combines the perspectives of the field's top scholars with exciting new research to present new ideas on the ways in which language use intersects with sexual identity.

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Mind and Context in Adult Second Language Acquisition

Methods, Theory, and Practice

Cristina Sanz, Editor

Georgetown University Press, 2005

How do people learn nonnative languages? Is there one part or function of our brains solely dedicated to language processing, or do we apply our general information-processing abilities when learning a new language? In this book, an interdisciplinary collaboration of scholars and researchers presents an overview of the latter approach to adult second language acquisition and brings together, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the latest research on this subject.

Clearly organized into four distinct but integrated parts, Mind and Context in Adult Second Language Acquisition first provides an introduction to information-processing approaches and the tools for students to understand the data. The next sections explain factors that affect language learning, both internal (attention and awareness, individual differences, and the neural bases of language acquisition) and external (input, interaction, and pedagogical interventions). It concludes by looking at two pedagogical applications: processing instruction and content based instruction.

This important and timely volume is a must-read for students of language learning, second language acquisition, and linguists who want to better understand the information-processing approaches to learning a non-primary language. This book will also be of immense interest to language scholars, program directors, teachers, and administrators in both second language acquisition and cognitive psychology.

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Thinking in the Dark

Cinema, Theory, Practice

Pomerance, Murray

Rutgers University Press, 2015

Today’s film scholars draw from a dizzying range of theoretical perspectives—they’re just as likely to cite philosopher Gilles Deleuze as they are to quote classic film theorist André Bazin. To students first encountering them, these theoretical lenses for viewing film can seem exhilarating, but also overwhelming.

Thinking in the Dark introduces readers to twenty-one key theorists whose work has made a great impact on film scholarship today, including Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, and Judith Butler. Rather than just discussing each theorist’s ideas in the abstract, the book shows how those concepts might be applied when interpreting specific films by including an analysis of both a classic film and a contemporary one. It thus demonstrates how theory can help us better appreciate films from all eras and genres: from Hugo to Vertigo, from City Lights to Sunset Blvd., and from Young Mr. Lincoln to A.I. and Wall-E.

The volume’s contributors are all experts on their chosen theorist’s work and, furthermore, are skilled at explaining that thinker’s key ideas and terms to readers who are not yet familiar with them. Thinking in the Dark is not only a valuable resource for teachers and students of film, it’s also a fun read, one that teaches us all how to view familiar films through new eyes.

Theorists examined in this volume are: Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, Roland Barthes, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Michel Chion, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Douchet, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Epstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Vachel Lindsay, Christian Metz, Hugo Münsterberg, V. F. Perkins, Jacques Rancière, and Jean Rouch.

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Time Warps, String Edits, and Macromolecules

The Theory and Practice of Sequence Comparision

David Sankoff and Joseph Kruskal

CSLI, 1983

Time Warps, String Edits and Macromolecules is a young classic in computational science. The computational perspective is that of sequence processing, in particular the problem of recognizing related sequences. The book is the first, and still best compilation of papers explaining how to measure distance between sequences, and how to compute that measure effectively. This is called string distance, Levenshtein distance, or edit distance. The book contains lucid explanations of the basic techniques; well-annotated examples of applications; mathematical analysis of its computational (algorithmic) complexity; and extensive discussion of the variants needed for weighted measures, timed sequences (songs), applications to continuous data, comparison of multiple sequences and extensions to tree-structures. This theory finds applications in molecular biology, speech recognition, analysis of bird song and error correcting in computer software.

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Transforming the Personal, Political, Historical and Sacred in Theory and Practice

Personal, Political, Historical, and Sacred

Manfred Halpern

University of Scranton Press, 2009

The eminent political scientist Manfred Halpern (1924–2001) viewed politics as belonging to each of us, as part of the nature of being human. In A Comprehensive Philosophy of Transformation, his magnum opus, Halpern elucidates the interconnected “four faces of our being”: the political, personal, historical, and sacred. This momentous volume identifies several modes of political activity, warns against the dangers of leaving politics to professional politicians, and urges us to build networks of compassion that include everyone in a just society. Overall, Halpern calls for a transformative politics achieved through enhanced participation and understanding.

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Women and Welfare

Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe

Hirschmann, Nancy J

Rutgers University Press, 2001

The social welfare state is believed by many to be one of the great achievements of Western democracy in the twentieth century. It institutionalized for the first time a collective commitment to improving individual life chances and social well-being. However, as we move into a new century, the social welfare state everywhere has come under increasing pressure, raising serious doubts about its survival.

Featuring essays by experts from a variety of fields, including law, comparative politics, sociology, economics, cultural studies, philosophy, and political theory, Women and Welfare represents an interdisciplinary, multimethodological and multicultural feminist approach to recent changes in the welfare system of Western industrialized nations. The broad perspective, from the philosophical to the quantitative, provides an excellent overview of the subject and the most recent scholarly literature. The volume offers a crosscultural analysis of welfare “reform” in the 1990s, visions of what a “woman-friendly” welfare state requires, and an examination of theoretical and policy questions feminists and concerned others should be asking.

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