What such a move meant, in society as well as literature, becomes clear in the astonishing range of fiction, poetry, conduct books, letters, and historical and sociological documents Spacks surveys. Here we see how the idea of boredom - as a point of reference or focus of opposition, as a means of characterization, repudiation, or definition, as social indictment or personal grievance - condenses a wide range of crucial meanings and attitudes. From the gendering of boredom (how women's lives came to embody both the threat of boredom and its overthrow) to canon issues (how "boring" becomes "interesting" with a sympathetic reader), the implications of the subject steadily enlarge.
Veteran children's entertainer Tommy Donbavand gives tips on keeping children entertained, whether it's a single child or an entire playscheme. The book is full of activities that will keep parents from tearing their hair out.
Everyone wants to get rid of something - bad luck, emotional pain, illness, weight, guilt, clutter, dependency, bad habits, or just the blues. Denny Sargent helps lighten your emotional, physical and mental load with simple exercises and rituals.
In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom--what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers--spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Durer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. "Boredom: A Lively History "is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.
Through comparative historical research, this book offers a novel theory explaining the emergence of boredom in modernity. Presenting a Durkheimian topology of cross-cultural boredom, it grounds the sociological cause of boredom in anomie and the perception of time, compares its development through case studies in Anglo and Russian society, and explains its minimal presence outside of the West. By way of illustrative examples, it includes archetypes of boredom in literature, art, film, and music, with a focus on the death of traditional art, and boredom in politics, including strategies enacted by Queer intellectuals. The author argues that boredom often results from the absence of a strong commitment to engaging with society, and extends Durkheim’s theory of suicide to boredom in order to consider whether an imbalance between social regulation and integration results in boredom. The first book to scientifically explain the historical emergence and epidemic of boredom while engaging with cutting edge political debates, Towards a General Theory of Boredom will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social theory, social psychology, and sociology.
What happens when our need for constant newness minimizes our interest in prayer, learning and the mysteries of nature? An intriguing look at spiritual boredom and what the absence of inspiration means to the present and future of the Jewish tradition.
The history of China, as any history, is a story of and in translation. Translating Early Modern China tells the story of translation in China to and from non-European languages and Latin between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and primarily in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Each chapter finds a particular translator resurrected from the past to tell the story of a text that helped shape the history of translation in China. In Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Latin, and more, these texts helped to make the Chinese language what it was at different points in its history. This volume explores what the form of an academic history book might look like by playing with fictioning as part of the historian's craft. The book's many stories—of glossaries and official Ming translation bureaus, of bilingual Ming Chinese-Mongolian language primers, of the first Latin grammar of Manchu, of a Qing Manchu conversation manual, of a collection of Manchu poems by a Qing translator—serve as case studies that open out into questions of language and translation in China's past, of the use of fiction as a historian's tool, and of the ways that translation creates language.
“Technologies have been shaping [our] emotional culture for more than a century, argue computer scientist Luke Fernandez and historian Susan Matt in this original study. Marshalling archival sources and interviews, they trace how norms (say, around loneliness) have shifted with technological change.” —Nature “A powerful story of how new forms of technology are continually integrated into the human experience...Anyone interested in seeing the digital age through a new perspective should be pleased with this rich account.” —Publishers Weekly Facebook makes us lonely. Selfies breed narcissism. On Twitter, hostility reigns. Pundits and psychologists warn that digital technologies substantially alter our emotional states, but in this lively look at our evolving feelings about technology since the advent of the telegraph, we learn that the gadgets we use don’t just affect how we feel—they can profoundly change our sense of self. When we say we’re bored, we don’t mean the same thing as a Victorian dandy. Could it be that political punditry has helped shape a new kind of anger? Luke Fernandez and Susan J. Matt take us back in time to consider how our feelings of loneliness, vanity, and anger have evolved in tandem with new technologies.
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Helping Kids Live Mindfully: A Grab Bag of Classroom Activities for Middle School Students helps students enhance their lives by using Mindfulness on a daily basis in school and at home. It gives them the tools to cope with anger, frustration, and stress, while helping them learn how to talk and listen to get positive results. The book aims to help students maximize their school experience academically and socially. It's a fact that many school districts using Mindfulness programs find that teaching their students Mindfulness techniques can greatly enhance school climate and cut down on discipline problems so students can be free to learn and flourish in the classroom. Additionally, this book helps teachers reach curricular goals in many subject areas by providing small group, entire class, and individual activities. Finally, this book encourages parents and extended family members to participate in the program with their children to help them use Mindfulness in many different situations they encounter daily, such as getting along better with family members, dealing with disappointment, and using technology wisely.
