Reading And Writing Ourselves Into Being

This text is a study of literacy based upon a set of correspondence, the Osborne Family Papers, 1812–1968, housed in the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University. A collection of some 358 boxes, it is particularly well suited for a study on literacy. In addition to the voluminous public and private correspondence of prison reformer Thomas Mott Osborne (1859–1926), a vast and rich store of the family’s literacy "works" have been carefully preserved. In addition to hundreds of letters, many between and among the women of the family, it also abounds with other literacy documents of interest such as ledgers, account books, travelogues, verse, diaries, and notes. Unusually and quite valuably, even scraps of children’s writing have been preserved, making possible studies regarding emergent literacy practices of the times.

WINNER - Prix du livre d’Ottawa 2016 WINNER - Prix Jean-Éthier-Blais 2015 WINNER - Prix Gabrielle-Roy 2014 FINALIST - Prix littéraire Trillium 2015 From the founding of New France to the present day, Quebec women have had to negotiate societal expectations placed on their gender. Tracing the evolution of life writing by Quebec women, Patricia Smart presents a feminist analysis of women’s struggles for autonomy and agency in a society that has continually emphasized the traditional roles of wife and mother. Writing Herself into Being examines published autobiographies and autobiographical fiction, as well as the annals of religious communities, letters, and a number of published and unpublished diaries by girls and women, to reveal a greater range of women’s experiences than proscribed, generalized roles. Through close readings of these texts Smart uncovers the authors’ perspectives on events such as the 1837 Rebellion, the Montreal cholera epidemic of 1848, convent school education, the struggle for women’s rights in the early twentieth century, and the Quiet Revolution. Drawing attention to the individuality of each writer while situating her within the social and ideological context of her era, this book further explores the ways women and girls reacted to, and often rebelled against, the constraints imposed on them by both Church and state. Written in a clear and compelling narrative style that brings women’s voices to life, Writing Herself into Being – the author’s own translation of her award-winning French-language book De Marie de l’Incarnation à Nelly Arcan: Se dire, se faire par l’écriture intime (Boréal, 2014) – offers a new and gendered view of various periods in Quebec history.

Collects 23 essays, research studies, and personal narratives on topics connected with teaching composition, topics and "voices" rarely found in scholarly journals or at professional conferences. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A middle-aged, independent, has it-all woman survives a nearly fatal road traffic accident in March 2004. She then begins a tortuous journey of physical, mental and emotional healing. Stripped of all her friends and family, she is left to overcome these challenges on her own. Yet, all hope is not lost. She finds healing in the most unlikely place, the Physiotherapy department of a local hospital, through simple people doing simple acts of kindness. As the physical landscape changes from winter to spring, she slowly renews herself from deep within while desperately clinging to her most prized possession: her independence.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

We inhabit a textually super-saturated and increasingly literate world. This volume encourages readers to consider the diverse methodologies used by historians of reading globally, and indicates how future research might take up the challenge of recording and interpreting the practices of readers in an increasingly digitized society.

In nineteenth-century America, Gillian Silverman contends, reading—and particularly book reading—precipitated intense fantasies of communion. In handling a book, the reader imagined touching and being touched by the people affiliated with that book's narrative world—an author, a character, a fellow reader. This experience often led to a sense of consubstantiality, a fantasy that the reader, the material book, and the imagined other were momentarily merged. Such a fantasy challenges psychological conceptions of discrete subjectivity along with the very notion of corporeal integrity—the idea that we are detached, skin-bound, and autonomously functioning entities. It forces us to envision readers not as liberal subjects, pursuing reading as a means toward privacy, interiority, and individuation, but rather as communal beings inseparable from objects in our psychic and phenomenal world. While theorists have long emphasized the way reading can promote a sense of abstract belonging, Bodies and Books emphasizes the intense somatic bonds that nineteenth-century subjects experienced while reading. Silverman bridges the gap between the cognitive and material effects of reading, arguing that the two worked in tandem, enabling readers to feel deep communion with objects (both human and nonhuman) in the external world. Drawing on the letters and diaries of nineteenth-century readers along with literary works by Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Susan Warner, and others, Silverman explores the book as a technology of intimacy and ponders what nineteenth-century readers might be able to teach us two centuries later.

In spite of No Child Left Behind and the support provided by Response To Intervention, significant numbers of students continue to struggle with literacy. This text addresses learning-related needs of individual students in addition to interventions for the challenges they face. Struggling readers represent many different ethnicities, socio-economic levels, languages, and dialects in any combination and possess an even wider variety of social, cultural, motivational, literacy, and real world experiences. Through the presentation of case studies, this book considers these factors and their influence on literacy development and suggests ways to adapt research-based instructional strategies and approaches, as well as classroom practices to address them. It also includes related recommended resources. The text appeals to the concerns of classroom teachers, reading specialists, and faculty in teacher education programs, as well as anyone looking for practical, research-based ways to further the literacy development of individuals who struggle to read.