Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their testability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers.

Art as a Tool for Creating Change

Short Description:
Students present their reflections on the politics and practice of making. Individually, each essay and letter addressed to a historical artist is full of valuable information and great insights. Collectively, these are also an honest and valuable document of the moment: Us, wrestling with the realignment of past, present, and future of why and how to make objects, how to find freedom within tradition, and how to reimagine a more conscientious making practice for ourselves and a more meaningful life for our objects.

Long Description:
Twenty students from a wide variety of majors, including the sciences, humanities, health and medicine, as well as engineering, architecture, and design comprised our vibrant and engaged learning community. We started the quarter by imaginary visits to two important art schools, the German Bauhaus (1919-1933) and the Black Mountain College, located near Asheville, North Carolina (1933-1957). The students co-created participatory collaborative exercises based on the experiential learning principles developed by and practiced at these schools.

Throughout the course, we considered craft and art not as nouns, but as verbs, related the practiced maker’s hand to the process aided by technological tools, and focused on the language of the materials, and the personal, cultural, historical narratives that they help to reveal. We contemplated how individual threads hold the fabric together and transform that, and how individual narratives coalesce into larger histories that signify and hold together communities. We strived to explore and understand both the historical past and the innovative present and future by specifically focusing on needlework (sewing, embroidery, and quilts) during the 1920 and ‘30s (women suffrage movement), the 1970s and ‘80s (second wave of feminism, LGBTQ rights and HIV/AIDS crisis), and in the present. We also considered how new technologies, such as parametric design and 3D printing, introduce new paradigms for solving problems, designing, producing, and using objects. Of course, the effect of technology was inescapable for us in the class too, as it was for billions around the world during this global pandemic.

We made two projects. One, using needlework techniques and textile processes to tell a personal story of Waiting, and a second one, using Computer Aided Design (CAD) to create a Time Capsule which would be opened one hundred years from now. Throughout the quarter, the students researched a Bauhaus or Black Mountain College artist they had picked with the goal of reflecting on the artist’s work, biography, creative process, and ideas about making by drawing parallels to those of their own.

Word Count: 50553

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Making and Being offers a framework for teaching art that emphasizes contemplation, collaboration, and political economy. Authors Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard, two visual arts educators and members of the collective BFAMFAPhD*, share ideas and teaching strategies that they have adapted to spaces of learning which range widely, from self-organized workshops for professional artists to Foundations BFA and MFA thesis classes. This hands-on guide includes activities, worksheets, and assignments and is a critical resource for artists and art educators today. Making and Being is a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content (click on links below to download worksheets, activities, and chapters as PDFs and editable Google Docs).

This textbook was developed to meet two distinct yet related needs. The more basic goal was to respond to the paucity of teaching materials suited to the needs of U.S. learners of Malayalam, particularly at the university level. Though some materials had previously been produced both in India and in the US, including three sets of materials co-written by the author, none were at all suited to the needs and purposes of American university students. Some of the author is earlier materials were ad hoc in nature, while the 510-page course written for Peace Corps volunteers concentrated on language for daily social interactions only. Both the Peace Corps materials and most of the materials written in India were written in Roman
transcription, thus making no serious attempt to teach the Malayalam script or the skills of reading or writing.

The Malayalam ·materials produced in India by various scholars or teach~rs were not readily available in the West, and were moreqver designed for Indian learners for whom formal explanations of the grammar and culture are largely unnecessary, since many of the grammar and discourse conventions are similar or identical to those found in their own mother tongues. Thus the texts available at that time lacked much of what was essential to the Western learner of the language. A couple more sets of teaching materials have come out in: the intervening 20 years, and some may now be ordered via the Internet. A partial list of these materials appears in the prologue following lesson Twenty-five in this text. These books are, in
general, designed to prepare the learner to handle everyday living situations in Malayalam, and as such can be useful adjuncts once the present volume has been thoroughly studied.

This text was conceived and designed to go beyond social conversation to prepare the Western learner to use the language as a research tool. To meet this goal the skills pf literacy in Malayalam are essential, but this is only a beginning. It is also necessary to have some familiarity with the formal style of the language, used in most types of written matter and in platform and other types of formal speaking. This is still a need uniquely met by this text. The irony is that our student audience has grown and diversified, so that the textbook for the Malayalam classes here at Texas must serve two rather different types of students. There are still a number of graduate students who seek out Malayalam as a research tool for their academic work. fu the past dozen years or so the Malayalam classes are being taken by increasing numbers of second generation Malayalis who have either been born in North America or spent most of their lives here. They are normally undergraduates whose goals do not include doing academic research in Kerala. They are mainly interested in being able to communicate better with relatives in Kerala and their interest in literacy extends mainly to being able to
write letters to grandparents or other non-English-speaking relatives. The majority of lessons containing conversations with friends and family members in the book can still serve their purposes well.

The second need to be met by this textbook was that of a reference grammar which could be used by linguists to glean accurate information about various aspects of the Malayalam language such as its phonology, syntax (grammar), 'semantics, and discourse. This type of reference grammar could serve both specialists in other Dravidian languages, as well as general linguists examining a specific feature in many unrelated languages.

This book explores the philosophical views on the meaning of love. The text explores a variety of topics used to define love, including attraction, relationship satisfaction, emotional, and ethical considerations. The author takes a rational, logical, analytic, and scrutinizing look at experiences and other forms of literature on the subject of love.

This is a modular open textbook designed for entrepreneurial journalism, media innovation, and related courses. This book has been updated for Fall 2018. Let us know if you have adopted this book in your classroom!

Description:

Original text written by Leonor López de Córdoba (c.1362-1430)

Spanish modernized by María-Milagros Rivera Garretas

Guided-reading edition prepared by Christopher C. Oechler

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’
Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual’s reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about ‘oughts’ and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming.
Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest.

A complete curriculum for introductory Russian organized around the experiences of four American students spending an academic year in the Russian Federation. Web-based textbook and paper-based classroom activities and homework (available as downloadable pdf and print-on-demand). Teacher materials also available on request. Winner of the 2016 Access to Language Education Award from the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium and the 2017 Best Book in Pedgogy from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.

Reviews
Russian Language Journal 67 (2017): 77-80.
Slavic and East European Journal 61.4 (Winter 2017): 938-940.
Language Learning and Technology 21.1 (February 2017): 46-51.
Canadian Slavonic Papers 58.4 (2016): 448-449.

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you British Literature I: From the Middle Ages to Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century. Featuring over 50 authors and full texts of their works, this anthology follows the shift of monarchic to parliamentarian rule in Britain, and the heroic epic to the more egalitarian novel as genre.

Features:

Original introductions to The Middle Ages; The Sixteenth Century: The Tudor Age; The Seventeenth Century: The Age of Revolution; and Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century
Over 100 historical images
Instructional Design, including Reading and Review Questions and Key Terms
Forthcoming ancillary with open-enabled pedagogy, allowing readers to contribute to the project
This textbook is an Open Access Resource. It can be reused, remixed, and reedited freely without seeking permission.

Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.

This work is based on the work of Walter Ott & Alex Dunn

Short Description:
This is a textbook (or better, a workbook) in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. The introductory chapter, Minilogic and Glossary, are designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions.

Long Description:
Description from original book author Walter Ott

This is a textbook (or better, a workbook) in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. And I have added an introductory chapter (Chapter 0 – Minilogic and Glossary), designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions.

The immediate goal is to encourage students to grapple with the ideas rather than passing their eyes over the texts. This makes for a better classroom experience and permits higher-level discussions.

Another goal is to encourage collaboration among instructors, as they revise and post their own versions of the book.

You’re invited to use the book in your courses.

This version of the Modern Philosophy textbook was created on August 28, 2013 as part of the BC Open Textbook project.

Word Count: 180248

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

This is a textbook (or better, a workbook) in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. And I have added an introductory chapter (Chapter 0 – Minilogic and Glossary), designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions. The immediate goal is to encourage students to grapple with the ideas rather than passing their eyes over the texts. This makes for a better classroom experience and permits higher-level discussions. Another goal is to encourage collaboration among instructors, as they revise and post their own versions of the book.

This text covers basic elements and vocabulary of music; appreciation and understanding of diverse styles of music past and present; developing listening skills. Includes opportunities for experiencing music (recorded and/or live).
I. Music Fundamentals
II. History of Western Music before 1600
III. History of Western Music after 1600
IV. Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries
V. Listening to Genres
VI. Music of Louisiana, the Americas, and the World

This collection is the first of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

This collection is the second of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

Welcome to Music 1300, Music: Its Language History, and Culture. The course has a number of interrelated objectives:
1. To introduce you to works representative of a variety of music traditions.These include the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Agesthrough the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent).
2. To enable you to speak and write about the features of the music you study,employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre,and form used by musicians.
3. To explore with you the historic, social, and cultural contexts and the role of class, ethnicity, and gender in the creation and performance of music,including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral andnotated transmission.
4. To acquaint you with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices fromdifferent cultures, found sounds, electronically generated sounds; basic principlesthat determine pitch and timbre.
5. To examine the influence of technology, mass media, globalization, and transnationalcurrents on the music of today.
The chapters in this reader contain definitions and explanations of musical terms and concepts,short essays on subjects related to music as a creative performing art, biographical sketchesof major figures in music, and historical and cultural background information on music fromdifferent periods and places.

Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online four–semester college music theory textbook. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. In my opinion, this led to students having difficulty with creating melodies, since the training they are given is typically to write a “melody” in quarter notes in the soprano voice of part writing exercises. When the assignments in those texts ask students to do more than this, the majority of the students struggle to create a melody with continuity and with appropriate placement of harmonies within a phrase because the text had not prepared them to do so.

Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online college music theory textbook that is meant to take the student from the basics of reading and writing pitches and rhythms through twelve–tone technique and minimalism over the course of four semesters. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. Whenever possible, examples from popular music and music from film and musical theater are included to illustrate melodic and harmonic concepts, usually within the context of the phrase. Practice exercises (with answers), homework exercises, and practice tests are included.

Music is a mobile art. When people move to faraway places, whether by choice or by force, they bring their music along. Music creates a meaningful point of contact for individuals and for groups; it can encourage curiosity and foster understanding; and it can preserve a sense of identity and comfort in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. As music crosses cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries, it continually changes. While human mobility and mediation have always shaped music-making, our current era of digital connectedness introduces new creative opportunities and inspiration even as it extends concerns about issues such as copyright infringement and cultural appropriation.