Results by title
57 books match the query 'Understanding' and 26 start with u
Understanding and Managing Power Quality Issues
Sincy George
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2026
The increasing complexity of today's power systems, and the growing numbers of power electronic devices that are being introduced, adds to the risk of power quality problems caused by harmonics. Non-linear loads into power systems, non-sinusoidal and distorted current waveforms, and voltage distortion have become more common, and these phenomena can lead to power losses and damage to equipment.
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Understanding and Teaching American Slavery
Edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, Foreword by Ira Berlin
University of Wisconsin Press, 2016
Perhaps no topic in U.S. history is as emotionally fraught as the nation’s centuries-long entanglement with slavery. How can teachers get students to understand the racist underpinnings of that institution—and to acknowledge its legacies in contemporary America? How can they overcome students’ shame, anger, guilt, or denial? How can they incorporate into the classroom important primary sources that may contain obsolete and racist terms, images, and ideas? This book, designed for college and high school teachers, is a critical resource for understanding and teaching this challenging topic in all its complexity.
Opening with Ira Berlin’s reflections on ten elements that are essential to include in any course on this topic, Understanding and Teaching American Slavery offers practical advice for teaching specific content, utilizing sources, and getting students to think critically. Contributors address, among other topics, slavery and the nation’s founders, the diverse experiences of the enslaved, slavery’s role in the Civil War, and the relationship between slavery and the northern economy. Other chapters offer ideas for teaching through slave narratives, runaway ads, spirituals, films, and material culture. Taken together, the essays in the volume help instructors tackle problems, discover opportunities, and guide students in grappling with the ugliest truths of America’s past.
Opening with Ira Berlin’s reflections on ten elements that are essential to include in any course on this topic, Understanding and Teaching American Slavery offers practical advice for teaching specific content, utilizing sources, and getting students to think critically. Contributors address, among other topics, slavery and the nation’s founders, the diverse experiences of the enslaved, slavery’s role in the Civil War, and the relationship between slavery and the northern economy. Other chapters offer ideas for teaching through slave narratives, runaway ads, spirituals, films, and material culture. Taken together, the essays in the volume help instructors tackle problems, discover opportunities, and guide students in grappling with the ugliest truths of America’s past.
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Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History since Reagan
Kimber M. Quinney Amy L. Sayward
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History since Reagan is designed for teachers looking for new perspectives on teaching the recent past, the period of US history often given the least attention in classrooms. Less of a traditional textbook than a pedagogical Swiss Army knife, the volume offers a diversity of voices and approaches to teaching a field that, by its very nature, invites vigorous debate and puts generational differences in stark relief. Older history is likely to feel removed from the lived experiences of both teachers and students, allowing for a certain dispassion of perspective. By contrast, contemporary history creates unique challenges, as individual teachers and students may think they know “what really happened” by virtue of their personal experiences.
The volume addresses a wide swath of topics, from social movements around identity and representation to the Supreme Court, law enforcement, migration, climate change, and international relations. Emphasizing critical thinking and primary-source analysis, it will aid teachers in creating an invigorating and democratizing classroom experience. Intended for use in both secondary and postsecondary classrooms, the book’s structure allows for a variety of applications and invites a broad audience.
The volume addresses a wide swath of topics, from social movements around identity and representation to the Supreme Court, law enforcement, migration, climate change, and international relations. Emphasizing critical thinking and primary-source analysis, it will aid teachers in creating an invigorating and democratizing classroom experience. Intended for use in both secondary and postsecondary classrooms, the book’s structure allows for a variety of applications and invites a broad audience.
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Understanding and Teaching Modern Latin America
Edited by Sharika D. Crawford and Kari E. Zimmerman
University of Wisconsin Press, 2026
Understanding and Teaching Modern Latin America combines engaging, clearly written overviews of key themes with fresh and well-tested classroom approaches for teaching today’s students about a complex historical subject. This volume comprises an introduction and sixteen chapters divided into three parts, including a reflection from a senior professor about the ways in which teaching Latin American history have changed over the past few decades, as public calls to internationalize high school and college students have led to the growth of world history courses. Chapters explore a wide range of themes—including slavery, revolution, race, labor, gender, and the environment. This volume also offers innovative and practical teaching strategies, from using maps to incorporating food, to enrich any K–16 curriculum. By presenting multiple viewpoints, this book functions as a springboard for instructors hoping to encourage students to negotiate the various contradictions in historical study.
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Understanding and Teaching Native American History
Edited by Kristofer Ray and Brady DeSanti
University of Wisconsin Press, 2023
Understanding and Teaching Native American History is a timely and urgently needed remedy to a long-standing gap in history instruction. While the past three decades have seen burgeoning scholarship in Indigenous studies, comparatively little of that has trickled into classrooms. This volume is designed to help teachers effectively integrate Indigenous history and culture into their lessons, providing richly researched content and resources across the chronological and geographical landscape of what is now known as North America.
Despite the availability of new scholarship, many teachers struggle with contextualizing Indigenous history and experience. Native peoples frequently find themselves relegated to historical descriptions, merely a foil to the European settlers who are the protagonists in the dominant North American narrative. This book offers a way forward, an alternative framing of the story that highlights the ongoing integral role of Native peoples via broad coverage in a variety of topics including the historical, political, and cultural.
With its scope and clarity of vision, suggestions for navigating sensitive topics, and a multitude of innovative approaches authored by contributors from multidisciplinary backgrounds, Understanding and Teaching Native American History will also find use in methods and other graduate courses. Nearly a decade in the conception and making, this is a groundbreaking source for both beginning and veteran instructors.
Despite the availability of new scholarship, many teachers struggle with contextualizing Indigenous history and experience. Native peoples frequently find themselves relegated to historical descriptions, merely a foil to the European settlers who are the protagonists in the dominant North American narrative. This book offers a way forward, an alternative framing of the story that highlights the ongoing integral role of Native peoples via broad coverage in a variety of topics including the historical, political, and cultural.
With its scope and clarity of vision, suggestions for navigating sensitive topics, and a multitude of innovative approaches authored by contributors from multidisciplinary backgrounds, Understanding and Teaching Native American History will also find use in methods and other graduate courses. Nearly a decade in the conception and making, this is a groundbreaking source for both beginning and veteran instructors.
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Understanding and Teaching Religion in US History
Edited by Karen J. Johnson and Jonathan M. Yeager
University of Wisconsin Press, 2024
Religion is deeply embedded in American history, and one cannot understand American history’s broad dynamics without accounting for it. Without detailing the history of religions, teachers cannot properly explain key themes in US survey courses, such as politics, social dynamics, immigration and colonization, gender, race, or class. From early Native American beliefs and practices, to European explorations of the New World, to the most recent presidential elections, religion has been a significant feature of the American story. In Understanding and Teaching Religion in US History, a diverse group of eminent historians and history teachers provide a practical tool for teachers looking to improve history instruction at the upper-level secondary and undergraduate level.
This book offers a breadth of voices and approaches to teaching this crucial part of US history. Religion can be a delicate topic, especially in public education, and many students and teachers bring strongly held views and identities to their understanding of the past. The editors and contributors aim to help the reader see religion in fresh ways, to present sources and perspectives that may be unfamiliar, and to suggest practical interventions in the classroom that teachers can use immediately.
This book offers a breadth of voices and approaches to teaching this crucial part of US history. Religion can be a delicate topic, especially in public education, and many students and teachers bring strongly held views and identities to their understanding of the past. The editors and contributors aim to help the reader see religion in fresh ways, to present sources and perspectives that may be unfamiliar, and to suggest practical interventions in the classroom that teachers can use immediately.
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Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
Edited by Leila J. Rupp and Susan K. Freeman
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
Taking into account recent historic changes, this second edition updates the essays on the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, the Right, and trans history. Authors of several other essays have taken the opportunity to add new material and references where warranted.
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Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions
Edited by Ben Marsh and Mike Rapport
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
To learn about the "Age of Revolutions" in Europe and the Americas is to engage with the emergence of the modern world. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nations were founded, old empires collapsed, and new ones arose. Struggles for emancipation—whether from royal authority, colonial rule, slavery, or patriarchy—inspired both hopes and fears. This book, designed for university and secondary school teachers, provides up-to-date content and perspectives, classroom-tested techniques, innovative ideas, and an exciting variety of pathways to introduce students to this complex era of history.
The volume includes chapters on sources and methods for stimulating student debate and learning, including Tom Paine's Common Sense, the Haitian Declaration of Independence, and other key documents; role-playing games; visual arts and culture; and music, including opera and popular songs. Other chapters delve into specific themes, including revolution and riot, revolutionary terror, enlightenment, gender, slavery, nationalism, environment and climate, and the roles of politically excluded groups. Collectively, the contributions ensure a broad Atlantic scope, discussing the revolutions in Britain's North American colonies, Haiti, and Latin America, and European revolutions including France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
The volume includes chapters on sources and methods for stimulating student debate and learning, including Tom Paine's Common Sense, the Haitian Declaration of Independence, and other key documents; role-playing games; visual arts and culture; and music, including opera and popular songs. Other chapters delve into specific themes, including revolution and riot, revolutionary terror, enlightenment, gender, slavery, nationalism, environment and climate, and the roles of politically excluded groups. Collectively, the contributions ensure a broad Atlantic scope, discussing the revolutions in Britain's North American colonies, Haiti, and Latin America, and European revolutions including France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
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Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
Hasan Kwame Jeffries
University of Wisconsin Press, 2019
The civil rights movement transformed the United States in such fundamental ways that exploring it in the classroom can pose real challenges for instructors and students alike. Speaking to the critical pedagogical need to teach civil rights history accurately and effectively, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on iconic leaders of the 1950s and 1960s to examine the broadly configured origins, evolution, and outcomes of African Americans' struggle for freedom. Essays provide strategies for teaching famous and forgotten civil rights people and places, suggestions for using music and movies, frameworks for teaching self-defense and activism outside the South, a curriculum guide for examining the Black Panther Party, and more.
Books in the popular Harvey Goldberg Series provide high school and introductory college-level instructors with ample resources and strategies for better engaging students in critical, thought-provoking topics. By allowing for the implementation of a more nuanced curriculum, this is history instruction at its best. Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement will transform how the United States civil rights movement is taught.
Books in the popular Harvey Goldberg Series provide high school and introductory college-level instructors with ample resources and strategies for better engaging students in critical, thought-provoking topics. By allowing for the implementation of a more nuanced curriculum, this is history instruction at its best. Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement will transform how the United States civil rights movement is taught.
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Understanding and Teaching the Cold War
Edited by Matthew Masur
University of Wisconsin Press, 2016
For nearly a half century, from 1945 to 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union maneuvered to achieve global hegemony. Each forged political alliances, doled out foreign aid, mounted cultural campaigns, and launched covert operations. The Cold War also deeply affected the domestic politics, cultures, and economic policies of the two superpowers, their client states, and other nations throughout the world.
Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important history meaningful to students.
The volume opens with Matthew Masur’s overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as longtime scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda, fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement the teaching ideas suggested in this book.
Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important history meaningful to students.
The volume opens with Matthew Masur’s overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as longtime scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda, fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement the teaching ideas suggested in this book.
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Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust
Edited by Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope. Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust provides a starting point for teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials—from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews—the contributors demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts.
Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.
Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.
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Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East
Edited by Omnia El Shakry
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Many students learn about the Middle East through a sprinkling of information and generalizations deriving largely from media treatments of current events. This scattershot approach can propagate bias and misconceptions that inhibit students’ abilities to examine this vitally important part of the world. Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East moves away from the Orientalist frameworks that have dominated the West’s understanding of the region, offering a range of fresh interpretations and approaches for teachers. The volume brings together experts on the rich intellectual, cultural, social, and political history of the Middle East, providing necessary historical context to familiarize teachers with the latest scholarship. Each chapter includes easy- to-explore sources to supplement any curriculum, focusing on valuable and controversial themes that may prove pedagogically challenging, including colonization and decolonization, the 1979 Iranian revolution, and the US-led “war on terror.” By presenting multiple viewpoints, the book will function as a springboard for instructors hoping to encourage students to negotiate the various contradictions in historical study.
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Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War
Edited by John Day Tully, Matthew Masur, and Brad Austin
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Just as the Vietnam War presented the United States with a series of challenges, it presents a unique challenge to teachers at all levels. The war had a deep and lasting impact on American culture, politics, and foreign policy. Still fraught with controversy, this crucial chapter of the American experience is as rich in teachable moments as it is riddled with potential pitfalls—especially for students a generation or more removed from the events themselves.
Addressing this challenge, Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War offers a wealth of resources for teachers at the secondary and university levels. An introductory section features essays by eminent Vietnam War scholars George Herring and Marilyn Young, who reflect on teaching developments since their first pioneering classes on the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. A methods section includes essays that address specific methods and materials and discuss the use of music and film, the White House tapes, oral histories, the Internet, and other multimedia to infuse fresh and innovative dimensions to teaching the war. A topical section offers essays that highlight creative and effective ways to teach important topics, drawing on recently available primary sources and exploring the war's most critical aspects—the Cold War, decolonization, Vietnamese perspectives, the French in Vietnam, the role of the Hmong, and the Tet Offensive. Every essay in the volume offers classroom-tested pedagogical strategies and detailed practical advice.
Taken as a whole, Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War will help teachers at all levels navigate through cultural touchstones, myths, political debates, and the myriad trouble spots enmeshed within the national memory of one of the most significant moments in American history.
Honorable Mention, Franklin Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials, Association for Asian Studies and the Committee for Teaching about Asia
Honorable Mention, Franklin Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials, Association for Asian Studies and the Committee for Teaching about Asia
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Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice
Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and ChroniclingAdler, Nanci
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Since the 1980s, an array of legal and non-legal practices—labeled Transitional Justice—has been developed to support post-repressive, post-authoritarian, and post-conflict societies in dealing with their traumatic past. In Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice, the contributors analyze the processes, products, and efficacy of a number of transitional justice mechanisms and look at how genocide, mass political violence, and historical injustices are being institutionally addressed. They invite readers to speculate on what (else) the transcripts produced by these institutions tell us about the past and the present, calling attention to the influence of implicit history conveyed in the narratives that have gained an audience through international criminal tribunals, trials, and truth commissions. Nanci Adler has gathered leading specialists to scrutinize the responses to and effects of violent pasts that provide new perspectives for understanding and applying transitional justice mechanisms in an effort to stop the recycling of old repressions into new ones.
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Understanding the Arizona Constitution
Toni McClory
University of Arizona Press, 2010
Arizona became the nation’s 48th state in 1912 and since that time the Arizona constitution has served as the template by which the state is governed. Toni McClory’s Understanding the Arizona Constitution has offered insight into the inner workings and interpretations of the document—and the government that it established—for almost a decade.
Since the book’s first publication, significant constitutional changes have occurred, some even altering the very structure of state government itself. There have been dramatic veto battles, protracted budget wars, and other interbranch conflicts that have generated landmark constitutional rulings from the state courts. The new edition of this handy reference addresses many of the latest issues, including legislative term limits, Arizona’s new redistricting system, educational issues, like the controversial school voucher program, and the influence of special-interest money in the legislature. A total of 63 propositions have reached the ballot, spawning heated controversies over same-sex marriage, immigration, and other hot-button social issues.
This book is the definitive guide to Arizona government and serves as a solid introductory text for classes on the Arizona Constitution. Extensive endnotes make it a useful reference for professionals within the government. Finally, it serves as a tool for any engaged citizen looking for information about online government resources, administrative rules, and voter rights. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book belongs on every Arizonan’s bookshelf.
Since the book’s first publication, significant constitutional changes have occurred, some even altering the very structure of state government itself. There have been dramatic veto battles, protracted budget wars, and other interbranch conflicts that have generated landmark constitutional rulings from the state courts. The new edition of this handy reference addresses many of the latest issues, including legislative term limits, Arizona’s new redistricting system, educational issues, like the controversial school voucher program, and the influence of special-interest money in the legislature. A total of 63 propositions have reached the ballot, spawning heated controversies over same-sex marriage, immigration, and other hot-button social issues.
This book is the definitive guide to Arizona government and serves as a solid introductory text for classes on the Arizona Constitution. Extensive endnotes make it a useful reference for professionals within the government. Finally, it serves as a tool for any engaged citizen looking for information about online government resources, administrative rules, and voter rights. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book belongs on every Arizonan’s bookshelf.
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Understanding the Arizona Constitution
Toni McClory
University of Arizona Press, 2001
An authoritative guide to Arizona government— written in plain language!
How do laws make their way through the state legislature?
What are the specific powers of the governor?
How do the courts make public policy?
Can citizens change the constitution?A leading lawyer and college educator who was an assistant attorney general through six governors, Toni McClory has written a definitive guide to Arizona government that is as comprehensive as it is easy to understand. It provides a thorough explanation of the state's constitution and shows the impact that its unique features have had on the everyday operation of the state's political system.Thoroughly up to date and clearly written, this book belongs on every Arizonan's shelf. Much of the information it contains is based on original research compiled by the author from primary sources and draws on her direct experience with government processes, officials, and events.• For concerned citizens, it offers topics of special interest to voters—including facts about initiatives and referenda and a chapter on local government—and contains references to online government resources.
• For lawyers and business people, it makes available a brief yet sophisticated synopsis of state government along with a wealth of citations and supporting detail.
• For students and teachers, it offers an exceptionally readable introductory text that relies heavily on primary sources and features "pro and con" passages-examining both sides of important issues-that are designed to stimulate critical thinking.From administrative rules to water law, Understanding the Arizona Constitution is your complete guide to the inner workings of the state. It is an essential reference for today's citizens and tomorrow's leaders.
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Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States
Cherbo, Joni Maya
Rutgers University Press, 2008
The arts and creative sector is one of the nation's broadest, most important, and least understood social and economic assets, encompassing both nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, for-profit creative companies, such as advertising agencies, film producers, and commercial publishers, and community-based artistic activities. The thirteen essays in this timely book demonstrate why interest in the arts and creative sector has accelerated in recent years, and the myriad ways that the arts are crucial to the social and national agenda and the critical issues and policies that relate to their practice. Leading experts in the field show, for example, how arts and cultural policies are used to enhance urban revitalization, to encourage civic engagement, to foster new forms of historic preservation, to define national identity, to advance economic development, and to regulate international trade in cultural goods and services.
Illuminating key issues and reflecting the rapid growth of the field of arts and cultural policy, this book will be of interest to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to arts educators and management professionals, government agency and foundation officials, and researchers and academics in the cultural policy field.
Illuminating key issues and reflecting the rapid growth of the field of arts and cultural policy, this book will be of interest to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to arts educators and management professionals, government agency and foundation officials, and researchers and academics in the cultural policy field.
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Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion
Modernist Visions and the Invisible IndianBy Nicholas P. Higgins
University of Texas Press, 2004
To many observers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico appeared to be a modern nation-state at last assuming an international role through its participation in NAFTA and the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development). Then came the Zapatista revolt on New Year's Day 1994. Wearing ski masks and demanding not power but a new understanding of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos and his followers launched what may be the first "post" or "counter" modern revolution, one that challenges the very concept of the modern nation-state and its vision of a fully assimilated citizenry.
This book offers a new way of understanding the Zapatista conflict as a counteraction to the forces of modernity and globalization that have rendered indigenous peoples virtually invisible throughout the world. Placing the conflict within a broad sociopolitical and historical context, Nicholas Higgins traces the relations between Maya Indians and the Mexican state from the conquest to the present—which reveals a centuries-long contest over the Maya people's identity and place within Mexico. His incisive analysis of this contest clearly explains how the notions of "modernity" and even of "the state" require the assimilation of indigenous peoples. With this understanding, Higgins argues, the Zapatista uprising becomes neither surprising nor unpredictable, but rather the inevitable outcome of a modernizing program that suppressed the identity and aspirations of the Maya peoples.
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Understanding the Courses We Teach
Local Perspectives on English Language TeachingJohn Murphy and Patricia Byrd, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Understanding the Courses We Teach is a collection of pieces by teachers about actual teaching situations. This volume provides current and prospective ESL teachers with the opportunity to examine experienced teachers' ways of addressing locally situated issues of teaching and learning within ESL and EFL classrooms. By focusing on individual teachers' discussions of instructional plans, decisions, and experiences in specific courses, this collection complements other training and development resources, such as methods-course textbooks.
Individual chapters are rich in descriptive details and resonate with the contributor-teachers' personal investment in teaching. John Murphy and Patricia Byrd have arranged these chapters in four thematic clusters, the first dealing with general purposes instruction, including workplace literacy, community-based ESL, and courses designed for rich recent immigrants; the second with the teaching of English as a foreign language; the third with university credit-bearing courses focused on the teaching of English for academic purposes; and the fourth with noncredit university-affiliated courses offered through intensive English programs.
The contributors represent a variety of educational settings and many different countries and include many of the most well-known researchers in the field.
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Individual chapters are rich in descriptive details and resonate with the contributor-teachers' personal investment in teaching. John Murphy and Patricia Byrd have arranged these chapters in four thematic clusters, the first dealing with general purposes instruction, including workplace literacy, community-based ESL, and courses designed for rich recent immigrants; the second with the teaching of English as a foreign language; the third with university credit-bearing courses focused on the teaching of English for academic purposes; and the fourth with noncredit university-affiliated courses offered through intensive English programs.
The contributors represent a variety of educational settings and many different countries and include many of the most well-known researchers in the field.
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Understanding the Diaconate
Historical, Theological, and Sociological FoundationsW. Shawn McKnight
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
What is a deacon? More than fifty years since the restoration of the permanent diaconate by the Second Vatican Council, the office of deacon is still in need of greater specificity about its purpose and place within the mission and organizational structure of the Church. While the Church is more than a social reality, the Church nonetheless has a social reality. Our understanding of the diaconate therefore benefits from a theological discussion of the divine element of the Church and a sociological examination of the human element. Understanding the Diaconate adds the resources of sociology and anthropology to the theological sources of scripture, liturgy, patristic era texts, theologians, and magisterial teachings to conclude that the deacon can be understood as “social intermediary and symbol of communitas” who serves the participation of the laity in the life and mission of the Church. This research proposes the deacon as a servant of the bond of communion within the Church (facilitating the relationship between the bishop/priest and his people), and between the People of God and the individual in need. Thus authentic diaconal ministry includes a vast array of many concrete contexts of pastoral importance where one does more than simply serve at Mass.
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Understanding the Language of Science
By Steven Darian
University of Texas Press, 2003
2004 — A Choice Outstanding Academic Book
From astronomy to zoology, the practice of science proceeds from scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to classroom teachers and professional scientists.
In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor. He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine patterns—defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing, quantifying, and comparing—and shows how they interact in practice. He also traces how these thought modes developed historically from Pythagoras through Newton.
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Understanding the Little Rock Crisis
An Exercise in Remembrance and ReconciliationElizabeth Jacoway
University of Arkansas Press, 1999
In the fall of 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit nine black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School. In the fall of 1997, the "Little Rock Nine" returned to Central High, this time escorted by President Bill Clinton. In the forty years that had intervened, the United States witnessed substantial changes in American race relations, but the city of Little Rock had not overcome its legacy of strife. The two-year crisis, once over, left behind confusion and misunderstanding. Racial and class-based mistrust lingers in the city of Little Rock, and, nationally and internationally, perceptions of Arkansas are still tied to the decades-old images of hatred and strife that marked the Little Rock crisis. In 1997, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock sponsored a gathering of scholars who traced the origins and addressed the legacy of the Central High crisis. Elizabeth Jacoway and C. Fred Williams commissioned a series of original and insightful papers that discussed economic, constitutional, historical, and personal aspects of the crisis and of segregation. Jacoway and Williams have collected the best of these papers, by such authors as Sheldon Hackney, Joel Williamson, and James Cobb and offer them here in the hope of enhancing understanding of, and creating a dialogue about, this defining moment in American history. This collection of accessible and provocative essays on a signal event in civil rights in this nation will resonate broadly and appeal to a diverse audience.
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Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent
Augustine, Anselm, Boethius and DanteRobert McMahon
Catholic University of America Press, 2006
Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meanings in these works. Clearly written in nontechnical language, its account of their literary structures and of the hidden meanings they generate will inform nonspecialist and specialist alike.
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Understanding the National Debt
What Every American Needs to KnowCarl Lane
Westholme Publishing, 0
The staggering United States debt has a direct impact on every American, yet few are aware of where the debt came from and how it affects their lives
The United States has a debt problem—we owe more than $18 trillion while our gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in America, is only $17.5 trillion. To pay down the debt, some recommend austerity, cutting federal expenditures. Others suggest increasing taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans. In Understanding the National Debt: What Every American Needs to Know, economic historian Carl Lane urges that the national debt must be addressed in ways beyond program cuts or tax increase alternatives, but change can only occur when more Americans understand what constitutes our debt and the problems it causes. The gross national debt is composed of two elements: the public debt and “intragovernment holdings.” The public debt consists of bonds, bills, and notes purchased by individuals, banks, insurance companies, hedge and retirement funds, foreign governments, and university endowments. Intragovernment holdings refers to money that the U.S. Treasury borrows from other parts of the government, principally Social Security and Medicare. This accounts for approximately a quarter of the gross national debt, but that is money that we owe to ourselves, not another entity. The more the government borrows, the less is available for private sector investment, creating a “squeeze” effect that inhibits economic growth. The most burdensome problem is the interest due each year on the debt. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar less for other purposes. Those elements of the federal budget which are termed “discretionary” suffer. The mandatory elements of the budget—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on the debt—must be provided for, but defense and national security, education, energy, infrastructure repair and development, and other needs wind up with less. By understanding the national debt we have an opportunity to address our real debt challenge—its principal and interest.
The United States has a debt problem—we owe more than $18 trillion while our gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in America, is only $17.5 trillion. To pay down the debt, some recommend austerity, cutting federal expenditures. Others suggest increasing taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans. In Understanding the National Debt: What Every American Needs to Know, economic historian Carl Lane urges that the national debt must be addressed in ways beyond program cuts or tax increase alternatives, but change can only occur when more Americans understand what constitutes our debt and the problems it causes. The gross national debt is composed of two elements: the public debt and “intragovernment holdings.” The public debt consists of bonds, bills, and notes purchased by individuals, banks, insurance companies, hedge and retirement funds, foreign governments, and university endowments. Intragovernment holdings refers to money that the U.S. Treasury borrows from other parts of the government, principally Social Security and Medicare. This accounts for approximately a quarter of the gross national debt, but that is money that we owe to ourselves, not another entity. The more the government borrows, the less is available for private sector investment, creating a “squeeze” effect that inhibits economic growth. The most burdensome problem is the interest due each year on the debt. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar less for other purposes. Those elements of the federal budget which are termed “discretionary” suffer. The mandatory elements of the budget—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on the debt—must be provided for, but defense and national security, education, energy, infrastructure repair and development, and other needs wind up with less. By understanding the national debt we have an opportunity to address our real debt challenge—its principal and interest.
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Understanding the Religious Priesthood
History, Controversy, TheologyChristian, OSB Raab
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
Most contemporary theologies of Holy Orders consider priesthood mainly in its diocesan context and most contemporary theologies of religious life do not consider how ordained ministry functions when it is internal rather than external to religious life. Understanding the Religious Priesthood provides a history and theology of religious priesthood that contributes to our understanding of this vocation’s identity and mission. It uncovers what religious priesthood shares with diocesan priesthood and non-ordained religious life and what makes it different from both those other vocations.
Christian Raab begins by tracing the history of religious priesthood from its origins in the early Church to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. He demonstrates that religious priests often faced questions about how to reconcile their two callings, but that they also provided answers in their theologies and spiritualities of priesthood and religious life. Meanwhile, they made key contributions to the Church’s life and mission. Raab then investigates the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on priesthood and religious life. Observing that the Council presented priesthood according to a diocesan typology and presented religious life without sacerdotal associations, he argues that the lack of imagery of religious priesthood contributed to a post-conciliar vocational identity crisis among religious priests. He then seeks to remedy this lacuna by appealing to the biblical images for religious priesthood Hans Urs von Balthasar offered in his theology of vocations. Raab argues that Balthasar’s imagery is a promising way forward for understanding the identity and mission of religious priesthood. In a final part, Raab provides a substantial theological articulation of religious priesthood which illuminates its liturgical signification, ecclesial mediation and mission, and ministerial identity. Here he draws not only from Balthasar but also from Pope John Paul II, Yves Congar, Jean-Marie Tillard, Brian Daley, and Guy Mansini to construct his profile.
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Understanding the Somalia Conflagration
Identity, Political Islam and PeacebuildingAfyare Abdi Elmi
Pluto Press, 2010
Somalia has been devastated by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion and years of civil war, and it has long been without a central government. Against this background of violence, Somali academic Afyare Abdi Elmi, attempts to explain the multiple dimensions of the conflict and find a peace-building consensus.
Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort.
This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.
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