This volume studies processes of creating voices of the past to analyze and to juxtapose, discussing the nature of the educational community viewed through feminist theory to reveal hidden ideas surrounding stereotypes, gender status, and power in the postcolonial era. The contributions brought together here explore the various facets of language to focus on metaphorical grammatical constructions, unique and specific with form and function. They interpret various works to capture the essence of style, as well as rhetorical function of basic structure of grammar, diction and syntax, in a literary work as message and meaning. Furthermore, the book also discusses useful pedagogical and theoretical processes used by the literary scholar concerning the power of writing for cultural change. As such, the book will appeal to those who wish to heal through writing. The proceeds of the book support the authors’ local soup kitchen and crisis centers for domestic abuse.

This volume studies processes of creating voices of the past to analyze and to juxtapose, discussing the nature of the educational community viewed through feminist theory to reveal hidden ideas surrounding stereotypes, gender status, and power in the postcolonial era. The contributions brought together here explore the various facets of language to focus on metaphorical grammatical constructions, unique and specific with form and function. They interpret various works to capture the essence of style, as well as rhetorical function of basic structure of grammar, diction and syntax, in a literary work as message and meaning. Furthermore, the book also discusses useful pedagogical and theoretical processes used by the literary scholar concerning the power of writing for cultural change. As such, the book will appeal to those who wish to heal through writing. The proceeds of the book support the authors local soup kitchen and crisis centers for domestic abuse.

This book presents critiques about African American authors and poets, as well as a composer, who have contributed towards social change, namely Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Terence Blanchard, Ann Petry, and Rita Dove. It also discusses Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American writer, and his novel The Sympathizer.

This book is about content driven lectures, panels, round tables, seminars and workshops aiming to improve learning communities and academic literature skills. It advocates teaching peace through transformative literary works; DiEdwardo gives her readers her original poetry, critiques of fiction and film, as well as an exploration of peace studies to facilitate a concentration on curiosity, solitude, and self-development through writing.

'Hermeneutics, Metacognition, and Writing' investigates the social functionality of actions as an essential criterion of study. It focuses on hermeneutics: interpretation through the lens of philosophy of metacognition. Vital contributions to the book include several chapters by Dr. Maryann P. DiEdwardo herself, which explore various facets of the central topic, including the intersectionality of hermeneutics, metacognition, and semiotics, as well as social movements. Dr. Juliet Emmanuel writes on the subject of the connections between hermeneutics, metacognition, and writing, and Jill Kroeger Kinkade presents a chapter on D.H.Lawrence, Hilda Doolittle, and Virginia Woolf’s portrayals of consciousness. Patricia Pasda discusses what links Sr. Francis of Assisi, dogs, and hermeneutics; Dr. T. Madison Peschock presents a feminist paper concerning abuse of those not wielding power. Susan Stangeland offers her expertise and scholarship in the area of Biblical Hermeneutics. This collection of critiques and case studies examines the imagined cultural landscape of specific works and associated activities such as fine art, music, poetry, and digital humanities, which aim to initiate self-monitoring as metacognition, or meta-reflection, by creating interior interpersonal space to overcome adversity. This edited volume will be of particular interest to scholars and students of textual hermeneutics as it relates to prose writing and artistic works in non-verbal media.

In Spatializing Social Justice: Literary Critiques Maryann P. DiEdwardo uses seven literary critiques and seven reflections to share her newest research about the healing power of literature. DiEdwardo argues that literacy is the lifelong intellectual process of gaining meaning from a critical interpretation of written or printed text. Literary critiques explore the writer’s mind for symbolism hidden within the words, and writers of literary critiques listen to their own voices first. In this book, DiEdwardo touches upon different types of writing and writers who aim to explore the healing process through words.

In the past four decades Native American/First Nations Literature has emerged as a literary and academic field and it is now read, taught, and theorized in many educational settings outside the United States and Canada. Native American and First Nations authors have also broadened their themes and readership by exploring transnational contexts and foreign realities, and through translation into major and minor languages, thus establishing creative networks with other literary communities around the world. However, when their texts are taught abroad, the perpetuation of Indian stereotypes, mystifications, and misconceptions is still a major issue that non-Native readers, students, and teachers continue to struggle with. To counter such distorted representations and neo/colonialist readings, this book presents a strategic selection of critical case studies that set specific texts within cross-cultural contexts wherein Native-based methodologies and key concepts are placed at the center of the reading practice. The challenging role of teachers and researchers as potential intermediaries and responsible disseminators of what Gayatri C. Spivak calls “transnational literacy” as well as the reception of Native North American works, contexts, and themes by international readers thus becomes a primary focus of attention. This volume provides a set of critical analyses and practical resources that may enable teachers outside the United States and Canada to incorporate Native American/First Nations literature and related cultural and historical texts into their teaching practices and current research interests in a creative, decolonizing, and responsible manner.

Women make up the vast majority of activists and organizers of grassroots movements fighting against environmental ills that threaten poor and people of color communities. New Perspectives on Environmental Justice is the first collection of essays that pays tribute to the enormous contributions women have made in these endeavors. The writers offer varied examples of environmental justice issues such as children's environmental health campaigns, cancer research, AIDS/HIV activism, the Environmental Genome Project, and popular culture, among many others. Each one focuses on gender and sexuality as crucial factors in women's or gay men's activism and applies environmental justice principles to related struggles for sexual justice. The contributors represent a wide variety of activist and scholarly perspectives including law, environmental studies, sociology, political science, history, medical anthropology, American studies, English, African and African American studies, women's studies, and gay and lesbian studies, offering multiple vantage points on gender, sexuality, and activism. Feminist/womanist impulses shape and sustain environmental justice movements around the world, making an understanding of gender roles and differences crucial for the success of these efforts.

The essays in this collection make a contribution to the greening of film studies and expand the scope of ecocriticism as a discipline traditionally rooted in literary studies. In addition to highlighting particular films as productive tools for raising awareness and educating us about environmental issues, Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film encourages its readers to become more ecologically minded viewers, sensitive to the ways in which films reflect, shape, reinforce, and challenge our perceptions of nature, of human/nature relations, and of environmental issues. The contributors to this volume offer in-depth analyses of a broad range of films, including fictional and documentary, Hollywood and independent, domestic and foreign, experimental and indigenous. Drawing from disciplines including film theory, ecocriticism, philosophy, rhetoric, environmental justice, and American and Indigenous studies, Framing the World offers new and original approaches to the ecocritical study of cinema. The twelve essays are gathered in four parts, focusing on ecocinema as activist cinema; the representation of environmental justice issues in Hollywood, independent, and foreign films; the representation of animals, ecosystems, and natural and human-made landscapes in live action and animation; and ecological themes in the films of two eco-auteurs, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Peter Greenaway. Willoquet-Maricondi’s introduction provides an overview of the field of ecocriticism and offers both philosophical and theoretical foundations for the ecocritical study of films. Contributors Beth Berila, St. Cloud State University * Lynne Dickson Bruckner, Chatham College * Elizabeth Henry, University of Denver * Joseph K. Heumann, Eastern Illinois University * Harri Kilpi, University of East Anglia * Jennifer Machiorlatti, Western Michigan University * Mark Minster, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology * Robin L. Murray, Eastern Illinois University * Tim Palmer, University of North Carolina, Wilmington * Cory Shaman, Arkansas Tech University * Rachel Stein, Siena College * Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, Marist College

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology. Recognizing the sociological implications of inquiries in the natural sciences, these authors renovated notions of originality through natural history while engaging with questions of the day. Classifications, hierarchies, and definitions inherent in natural history were appropriated into discussions of gender, race, and nation. Further, their concerns with authorship, authority, and novelty led them to experiment with textual hybridities and collaborative modes of originality that competed with conventional ideas of solitary genius. Exploring these authors and their work, Questioning Nature explains how these women writers' imaginative scientific writing unveiled a new genealogy for Romantic originality, both shaping the literary canon and ultimately leading to their exclusion from it.