Murmurations

For the first time since he'd left the island he thought of the starlings massed at dusk in the winter trees behind the children's home. He remembered the rustle of their wings when they twisted in skeins over the fields, or swelled and contracted high above the cliffs, dark wave after dark wave, lifting and falling in a kind of dance. Sister Lucy had said it was a murmuration. He was still quite young, and he had thought the birds were showing him a sign, that there was something written in their fluid patterns. Lives merge and diverge; they soar and plunge, or come to rest in impenetrable silence. Erris Cleary's absence haunts the pages of this exquisite novella, a woman who complicates other lives yet confers unexpected blessings. Fly far, be free, urges Erris. Who can know why she smashes mirrors? Who can say why she does not heed her own advice? Among the sudden shifts and swings, the swerving flight paths taken, something hidden must be uncovered, something dark and rotten, even evil, which has masqueraded as normality. In the end it will be a writer's task to reclaim Erris, to bear witness, to sound in fiction the one true note that will crack the silence.

A Murmuration of Starlings elegizes the martyrs of the civil rights movement, whose names are inscribed on the stone table of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Individually, Jake Adam York’s poems are elegies for individuals; collectively, they consider the violence of a racist culture and the determination to resist that racism. York follows Sun Ra, a Birmingham jazz musician whose response to racial violence was to secede from planet Earth, considers the testimony in the trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant for the murder of Emmet Till in 1955, and recreates events of Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Throughout the collection, an invasion of starlings imagesthe racial hatred and bloodshed. While the 1950s spawned violence, the movement in the early 1960s transformed the language of brutality and turned the violence against the violent, says York. So, the starlings, first produced by violence, become instruments of resistance. York’s collection responds to and participates inrecent movements to find and punish the perpetrators of the crimes that defined the civil rights movement. A Murmuration of Starlings participates in the search for justice, satisfaction, and closure.

This book presents the facet theoretical framework as a tool for facilitating the conception of complex animal behaviour research and the design of research procedures through employing mapping sentences. Using the facet theoretical framework, this book takes a holistic view of bird behaviour. Components of bird behavior are identified and then reassembled to facilitate an understanding of the behaviour in the context of its natural occurrence. This provides new insight on both the parts of the behaviour and how these interact as a whole. The multi-faceted approach to designing, evaluating and understanding bird behavior presented offers a template that is adaptable for investigating a wide variety of avian species and different forms of behaviour. Behavioural biologists, animal and comparative psychologists, other natural and behavioural scientists, as well as students of these disciplines will find this book to be an interesting and enlightening read.

A flock of birds, even a skein of geese perhaps -- but a cete of badgers, or a grist of bees? The collective nouns of animals and birds have long inspired and intrigued us. Many have their roots in medieval times, in particular applied to those creatures hunted by man, and subject to the etiquette of their proper group names. Author Steve Palin has beautifully illustrated and given the background to about fifty different animals and birds with interesting collective nouns -- and listed 420 of them in his glossary. This elegant little book will appeal to all those with a fascination for the English language, those who want the answers for quizzes and crossword puzzles, and those with an interest in animals and birds.

1954. Something's happening in the idyllic town of Amorea--Mike hears voices and sees shadows and flocks of birds invisible to everyone else. And no matter what, Mike must protect the man he loves.

Embodied cognition is one of the foremost areas of study and research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science. The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and essential reading for any student and scholar of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Extensively revised and enlarged for this second edition, the Handbook comprises 42 chapters by an international team of expert contributors and is divided into ten parts: Historical Underpinnings Perspectives on Embodied Cognition Embodied Cognition and Predictive Processing Perception Language Reasoning and Education Virtual Reality Social and Moral Cognition and Emotion Action and Memory Reflections on Embodied Cognition The early chapters of the Handbook cover empirical and philosophical foundations of embodied cognition, focusing on Gibsonian and phenomenological approaches. Subsequent chapters cover additional, important themes common to work in embodied cognition, including embedded, extended, and enactive cognition as well as chapters on empirical research in perception, language, reasoning, social and moral cognition, emotion, consciousness, memory, and learning and development. For the second edition many existing chapters have been revised and seven new chapters added on: AI and robotics, predictive processing, second-language learning, animal cognition, sport psychology, sense of self, and critiques of embodied cognition, bringing the Handbook fully up to date with current research and debate.

Murmuration is a year's worth of emotions, anxious thoughts and panic attacks, each one a beating wing in the mind of the author. Fans are saying: "Beautiful inside and out", "Lovingly designed", "One of the best poetry books I've read so far." Murmuration is an attempt to create something beautiful from this chaos; to make sense of the things we dare not breathe to life. Focusing on loss, heartbreak, mental health, and the impact of isolation on a tired mind, these poems are the starlings that gather above the water. These pages are the hope that we can learn to heal; that the future can survive the past.

What is Structural Injustice? is the first edited collection to bring together the voices of leading structural injustice scholars to provide an overview of this profoundly important concept. The volume features specially selected original and essential works on structural injustice, providing a range of disciplinary, ontological, and epistemological perspectives on what structural injustice is, and includes feminist and post-colonial theories to interrogate how structural injustice exacerbates and reproduces existing inequalities and relations of power. This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.