Bodies In Motion

Like the sweet heat of a palate-pleasing curry or the brilliant radiance of bougainvillea, the short stories in Mary Anne Mohanraj's Bodies in Motion will delight the senses and sensibilities. Her tales follow two generations of two families living on the cusp of disparate worlds, America and Sri Lanka -- their lives and ties shaped, strengthened, devastated, and altered by the emigrant-immigrant ebb and flow. Through stunning, effervescent prose, intimate moments are beautifully distilled, revealing the tug-of-war between generations and gender in stories sensual and honest, chronicling love, ambition, and the spiritual and sexual quests of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons.

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year Masterful essays that illuminate not only how we die but also how we live. Thomas Lynch, poet, funeral director, and author of the highly praised The Undertaking, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award, continues to examine the relations between the "literary and mortuary arts."

This volume presents a new perspective on socially coordinated embodied activity. It brings together scholars from linguistics, interactional sociology, neuropsychology and brain research. It assembles empirical studies of the interaction in sports that draw on recent developments in ethnomethodological conversation analysis, the sociology of practice, interactional linguistics, and cognitive studies. Thinking beyond the individual body, the chapters investigate microscopically the materiality and reflexivity of skilled bodies in motion in different sports ranging from individuals jointly rock-climbing and distance-running to team sports such as rugby and basketball. Combining theoretical elements from phenomenology and cognitive studies, the volume emphasizes the temporal extension and merging of bodies towards an acting plural body and the situated embeddedness of dynamically interacting bodies in an environment that encompasses organized spaces, objects or other bodies. It thus offers a number of case studies in advanced research in embodied interaction that coalesce in a comprehensive picture of the ways human bodies merge in joint action.

An anatomical exploration of the human body, accessibly written with 162 full-color illustrations for physical therapists, dancers, yoga teachers, and students This comprehensive guide demonstrates the functions and evolution of specific body systems, explaining how they cooperate to form an upright, intelligent, tool-making marvel, capable of great technological and artistic achievement. Enhanced with 162 beautifully rendered full-color illustrations, the book opens with an introduction to the origins of movement and a journey through time and evolution—from fish to amphibian, quadruped to primate—showing how humans became the preeminent moving beings on the planet. Further examining our upright support system, the book describes the purpose of: • The extensors, flexors, and spine • The importance of the shoulder girdle as a support structure for the arm • The hands and upper limbs • The pelvic girdle • The feet and lower limbs • Breathing • The larynx and throat musculature • The spiral musculature of the trunk It is our upright posture that makes it possible for us to move in an infinite variety of ways, to manipulate objects, to form speech, and to perform the complex rotational movements that underlie many of our most sophisticated skills. These systems, Dimon argues persuasively, have helped us build, invent, create art, explore the world, and imbue life with a contemplative, spiritual dimension that would otherwise not exist.

The Material Subject emphasises how bodily and material cultures combine to make and transform subjects dynamically. The book is based on the French Matière à Penser (MaP) school of thought, which draws upon the ideas of Mauss, Schilder, Foucault and Bourdieu, among others, to enhance the anthropological study of embodiment, practices, techniques, materiality and power. Through theoretical sophistication and empirical field research, case studies from Europe, Africa and Asia bring MaP’s ideas into dialogue with other strands of material culture studies in the English-speaking world. These studies mediate different scales of engagement through a sensori-motor, affective and cognitive focus on practices of making and doing. Examples range from the precarity of professional divers in French public works to the gendered subjectivity of female carpet weavers in Morocco, from the ways Swiss watchmakers transmit craft knowledge to how Hindu devotees in India make efficacious use of altars, and from the enskilment of Paiwan indigenous people in Taiwan to the prestige of women’s wild silk wrappers in Burkina Faso. The chapters are organised according to domains of practice, defined as 'matter of' work and technology, heritage, politics, religion and knowledge. Scholars and students with an interest in material culture will gain valuable access to global research, rooted in a specific intellectual tradition.

The 4,789 photographs in this definitive selection show the human figure — models almost all undraped — engaged in over 160 different types of action: running, climbing stairs, etc.

In Joseph Mills seventh collection of poems, Bodies in Motion, he shows us how dance not only frees and feeds the body but shows us how we are all dancing our way through life.

Sport literature is never just about sport. The genre’s potential to explore the human condition, including aspects of violence, gender, and the body, has sparked the interest of writers, readers, and scholars. Over the last decade, a proliferation of sport literature courses across the continent is evidence of the sophisticated and evolving body of work developing in this area. Writing the Body in Motion offers introductory essays on the most commonly taught Canadian sport literature texts. The contributions sketch the state of current scholarship, highlight recurring themes and patterns, and offer close readings of key works. Organized chronologically by source text, ranging from Shoeless Joe (1982) to Indian Horse (2012), the essays offer a variety of ways to read, consider, teach, and write about sport literature.