Fluctuating Life

Fluctuating Life is a book of sixty (60) poems by Joshua Spencer, depicting, symbolically, the struggles, triumphs and jubilation of the author. Joshua Spencer, a teacher with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), highlights the challenges, triumphs and jubilation, experienced throughout his life's existence, both in the Caribbean and North America. The work is perforated throughout with symbols, metaphors, personifications, similes, and so on. Joshua Spencer eloquently and touchingly entraps, captivates and motivates his audience's thought processes, to share in his challenges of love, perceived discrimination, economic deprivation and his will in overcoming a serious illness experienced. These poems, a direct experience of his winding life ́s journey, serve as great motivational tools for all who have encountered, or are currently facing numerous struggles and setbacks in life. You will learn how to triumph, how to be resilient! It is also a terrific vehicle of education for adolescents, young adults, and the inexperienced of society. Students of Literature and History will gain significantly from reading and studying from Fluctuating Life as will scholars and individuals of varying backgrounds and cultures.

This book forges a synthesis between the discipline of behavioural ecology and what is known of the social behaviour and population dynamics of cyclic populations of vertebrates, with particular discussion of the cyclic voles and lemmings. Areas of uncertainty, and those which show promise are identified, and tests of competing hypotheses are suggested. Finally, the relevance of social dynamics to population growth and decline are examined, and a hypothesis on the role of aggressiveness in expanding populations is presented.

This book concerns various modes of being transnational among a diasporic population—Armenians in Germany—by drawing parallels between the first and second generation migrants. It puts forth the questions as to whether or not, and which kind of transactional activity/ties/practices survive over generations, and to what extent transnational engagements influence self-identification and the sense of belonging. It also examines how various modes of transnationalism, in turn, impact the sense of belonging. The book fleshes out new perspectives and interpretations of transnationalism, by revealing specific aspects of border-spanning ties, and by showing that connections to the country of origin do not necessarily need to be sustained or intensive in order to survive. They can, instead, fluctuate depending on various factors but still have the “right” to be called transnational.

What was the role of art in the context of rapidly changing political alliances of the early modern period? The interdisciplinary contributions to this volume explore this question from the perspectives of "War and Peace," "Jesuits and Diplomacy," "Negotiating with Faith," and "Court and Diplomatic Celebrations". Special attention is paid to those art genres that were suitable for easy distribution due to their reproducibility, such as medals and prints. But also paintings, tombs and ephemeral festivities like fireworks served the manifestation of claims to power. The exemplary analyses provide a broad view of the political dimensions of early modern transcultural artistic exchange in Europe and beyond.

This volume fluctuates between conceptualizations of movement; either movements that buildings in the medieval Mediterranean facilitated, or the movements of the users and audiences of architecture. From medieval Anatolia to Southern France and the Genoese colony of Pera across Constantinople, The Fluctuating Sea investigates how the relationship between movement and the experiences of a multiplicity of users with different social backgrounds can provide a new perspective on architectural history. The book acknowledges the shared characteristics of medieval Mediterranean architecture, but it also argues that for the majority of people inhabiting the fragmented microecologies of the Mediterranean, architecture was a highly localized phenomenon. It is the connectivity of such localized experiences that The Fluctuating Sea uncovers. The Fluctuating Sea is a valuable source for students and scholars of the medieval Mediterranean and architectural history.