I’ve taught Philosophy graduate students at the same time as assisting in kindergartens when my kids were in community co-op schools... staging both classes the same way. Proud to be named Elon University’s 2002 Teacher of the Year, I have led classes “on the edge” ranging from “Millennial Imagination” and “Life in the Universe” (students just called it “Aliens”) to a Philosophy of Education course taught with a totally different pedagogy – embodying a different philosophy – every single session. I also work in environmental philosophy and am deeply involved in designing and building Common Ground Ecovillage in central North Carolina.
Inspired by Paolo Freire’s classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Brazilian dramatist and activist Augusto Boal makes active participants of audiences, staging oppressive interactions and then repeatedly re-staging them as “spect-actors” step up to intervene and remake the interaction. Anyone can join! A stunning synergy of empowering revolutionary theater and improvisational role-playing that has not even begun to be adapted to classrooms. You figure out why. Then figure out how to adapt and bring it on now.
"Boal and his work are marvelous examples of the post-modern situation-its problems and its opportunities. Twice exiled, Boal is 'at home' now wherever he finds himself to be. He makes a skeptical, comic, inquisitive and finally optimistic theatre involving spectators and performers in the search for community and integrity. This is a good book to be used even more than to be read." - Richard Schechner
"Augusto Boal's achievement is so remarkable, so original and so groundbreaking that I have no hesitation in describing the book as the most important theoretical work in the theatre in modern times - a…
I am a historian and journalist. I lived in Italy for over twenty years, immersing myself in the culture of that country—in every form. I decided to write Calcio after becoming aware of the centrality of football to Italian culture and politics, and around the time of the rise of a football entrepreneur to political power—Silvio Berlusconi. The book took me three years, led me to visit numerous cities, stadiums, and regions, and interview dozens of journalists, experts, and players. It was a love letterand a warning—dedicated to ‘my father who loves football, and my son, who hates it.'
How do you explain a football-mad country? Which has produced the greatest players, the most extraordinary teams, and a whole way of playing the game itself. Bellos dives deep into the Brazilian passion for football, ranging far and wide in an engaging style that is open to all experiences and tells us more about Brazil than many dry, academic studies ever could. I would never have written my own book if I hadn’t read this.
The Brazilian football team is one of the modern wonders of the world. At its best it exudes a skill, flamboyance and romantic pull like nothing else on earth. Football is how the world sees Brazil and how Brazilians see themselves. The game symbolises racial harmony, flamboyance, youth, innovation and skill, and yet football is also a microcosm of Latin America's largest country and contains all of its contradictions. Travelling extensively from the Uruguayan border to the northeastern backlands, from the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to the Amazon jungle-Bellos shows how Brazil changed football and…
I loved this book because of Johnathan’s fighting spirit.
Many war stories are about the fighting – the soldiers’ stories. This story is about the thoughts and life of a boy who was a child at the start of World War ll. He tells of how his father goes off to war. He suffers through the blitz and losing his home. He is forced to live with other relatives, and eventually to go away from his family to another part of the country.
It is interesting reading about a boy’s understanding and confusion about catastrophic events, and how these events shape his behavior, before eventually arriving at a more peaceful outlook on life.
Raised in a proud Jewish home, I was instilled with an appreciation for my cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, I am utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, I became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE,The Hollywood Reporter,Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment. I currently reside in Philadelphia with my wife, Leora, and adorable Cavapoo, Archie.
In someone else’s hands, the tale of a global Nazi conspiracy to restore the Third Reich to its former glory by cloning Adolf Hitler would probably come off as utter insanity. But Levin makes you believe every word of it, funneling the story through the eyes of Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann (based on Simon Wiesenthal) and infamous doctor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Josef Mengele.
In this classic thriller, Ira Levin imagines Dr Josef Mengele's nightmarish plot to restore the Third Reich. Alive and hiding in South America, thirty years after the end of the Second World War, Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a sinister project - the creation of the Fourth Reich. Ageing Nazi hunter Yakov Lieberman is informed of the plot but before he hears the evidence, his source is killed . . .
Spanning continents and inspired by true events, what follows is one of Levin's most masterful tales, both timeless and chillingly plausible.
I’m a writer and a Spanish teacher. Creative and a little crazy. I love teaching people who arrive in my city (Madrid) to live for a while. I love writing fiction, specially novels, but also poetry and little stories. Sometimes I mix both skills and create texts as the one below. I dream about winning the lottery but I never buy tickets, and I also love to sing with my guitar when I’m alone. Pleased to meet you.
I would never recommend this book to a student who doesn’t have a good level of Spanish, and who doesn’t have enough confidence. Nevertheless, it’s perfect for intermediate to high level students, who are already well trained, to go deep in their acknowledgement and mend mistakes.
Reading this book can even help you discover mistakes that you didn’t know you were doing and polish aspects of the use of the Spanish language that you ignored. It’s oriented to the difficulties of English speakers, but you can find other versions for speakers of other languages (German, Italian, Brazilian).
Another very good aspect of this little book is its price. Really affordable for its good quality content.
Este libro recopila los errores que con más frecuencia cometen los angloparlantes que quieren aprender español y sugiere una solución. En él se expone el error, se dan claves y fórmulas para corregirlo, y se proponen una serie de ejercicios para consolidar el aprendizaje. Al final del libro hay una sección con las soluciones de todos los ejercicios.
When I was twelve, my family moved to Brazil for a year because of my father’s work. I’ve been fascinated by the country and it has been always been the focal point of my research. Initially, my focus was how neighborhood associations in Rio’s favelas took advantage of new political opportunities during the transition to democracy in the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, however, the neighborhoods had all been occupied by heavily armed and occasionally violent drug gangs. Since then, I've tried to figure out the dynamics of this process, from the involved actors’ points of view. Including the voices of participants in drug gang life and those, like Bruno, who bring drugs to market.
Based on meticulous and ground-breaking research, this book examines the roles played by children and adolescents in the drug trade in Rio de Janeiro. The author and his team interviewed twenty-five young men involved with the drug trade, plus various other local actors. The testimonies reveal that the participation of children and adolescents is a function of a thriving drug market, the absence of alternative opportunities, and the corrupt and repressive nature of local security forces. I know of no other book with such unparalleled access to child combatants in Rio’s favelas.
I’m a Brazilian economist working in Paris and dedicated to historical scholarship. I have always been deeply impressed by the political weight carried by economic arguments across Latin America. Debates on economic policy are typically contentious everywhere, but in Latin America, your alignment with different traditions of political economy can go a long way to determine your intellectual and political identity. At the same time, our condition as peripheral societies – and hence net importers of ideas from abroad – raises perennial questions about the meaning of a truly Latin American political economy. I hope this list will be a useful entry point for people similarly interested in these problems.
Kathryn Sikkink brings a political science approach to the study of developmentalism as a policy framework in postwar Latin America.
Rather than rationalizing the ideology of development as the expression of interest group politics, the book interrogates the channels through which ideas find their way into institutional settings, and thence into political action. Contrasting the historical experiences of Brazil and Argentina, Sikkink shows how the same intellectual premises may lead to disparate results when put to work within different national settings.
Ideas do matter, but if they are to succeed, they need to find a hospitable institutional environment – which sheds light on both the possibilities and challenges faced by Latin American nations seeking to shape their own destiny.
In Ideas and Institutions, Kathryn Sikkink illuminates a key question in contemporary political economy: What power do ideas wield in the world of politics and policy? Sikkink traces the effects of one enormously influential set of ideas, developmentalism, on the two largest economies in Latin America, Brazil and Argentina.
Introduced under the intellectual leadership of Raul Prebisch at the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America, developmentalism was embraced as national policy in many postwar developing economies. Drawing upon extensive archival research and interviews, Sikkink explores the adoption, implementation, and consolidation of the developmentalist model of economic policy in Brazil and…
I grew up in Tanzania, where I discovered the importance of learning first-hand from ordinary people about their lives by accompanying my mother, who was an anthropologist, when she carried out participant observation among coastal people. Much later in my own research, I could see how essential it was to interact with people face-to-face and learn about their aspirations, joys, fears, daily struggles, and creative ways of coping with the challenges of an economy in free fall. I learned to look beyond the “economic data” to more fully appreciate the humanity of the people involved. All of these books I selected are by people who learned about the real urban economy in this way.
Drawing on her first-hand experience of living in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Perlman powerfully upends many existing myths about the urban poor as marginal in this classic work.
This book, which inspired me to look beyond the economic models at how people actually live, shows how shantytown dwellers are integrated into society, but in a way that exploits and oppresses them economically and politically.
They are not socially and culturally marginal, but rather they are stigmatized and excluded from a closed social system that is radically unequal.
They are socially well-organized and cohesive; they aspire to educate their children and improve the quality of their homes; they work hard and take pride in a job well done. They are aware of and involved in those aspects of politics that affect their lives.
My work over the past four decades has been to promote women’s rights, end violence against women, promote social justice, and positively transform the lives of men. I’ve worked extensively with the United Nations; presidents, prime ministers, and governments; companies and unions; NGOs and educators in fifty countries. I continue to be inspired by the many incredible people I get to meet. In addition to my talks to communities, companies, and universities, my activism, and my books on this subject, I also write fiction, most recently my mystery The Last Exit.
Turning to a novel, here’s a story of a man who visits this fictional museum and sees the mementos and reads the letters of lost love. Far too many are to or by men who have caused others harm. This is not a grim story. It’s about the space that opens up for men to find a truer path to their hearts.
Tyler is in therapy. Katia and Goran are in love. On a summer trip to Zagreb, the couple discover an unusual museum that displays mementos of broken relationships. Inside, Goran stumbles upon an exhibit that seems to be addressed to him, from a girl he met in a Sarajevo refugee camp at age fourteen. What follows is a whirlwind summer of reconnecting with lost pasts: Goran confronts the youth he lost during the Yugoslav Wars, Katia heads to Brazil to find her roots, and Afghanistan veteran Tyler pours out his soul. Set against alternating backdrops of violent circumstances, this novel…
I grew up in Michigan where I was outdoors in the woods most of the time, running around with my imaginary friends. I built an entire world in my imagination where girls and women were powerful and ruled the world. I wrote stories about that world, and I’ve never stopped writing or reading myths, folklore, and fairy tales. Stories are the best way to bring the mythic and hidden realms of our existence out into the open. When I catch a glimpse of other worlds through storytelling, it always feels healing. It gives me hope that there is more to our existence than what we ordinarily see.
The author went on a journey to discover all she could about the pink dolphins (the botos) of Brazil, but she soon found herself immersed in the folklore and myth of this very real animal. She learns that people who live with the botos believe the dolphins are shapeshifters who live human-like lives in an amazing underwater world—the Encante—where everything in life is better. Even so, they come out of the water as human beings to visit our world and interact with the locals. They can only be recognized by the hats they wear to cover the blowholes in the tops of their heads. I love the feeling this book gives that we are constantly walking with the enchanted.
By the acclaimed author of The Soul of an Octopus and the bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig.
When Sy Montgomery ventured into the Amazon to unlock the mysteries of the littleknown pink dolphins, she found ancient whales that plied the Amazon River at dawn and dusk, swam through treetops in flooded forests, and performed underwater ballets with their flexible bodies. But she soon found out that to know the botos, as the dolphins are locally called, you must also know the people who live among them.
And so in Journey of the Pink Dolphins, Montgomery-part naturalist, part poet, part…
