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This book approaches contemporary fiction as a medium for policy advocacy, one whose narrative devices both link it to, and distinguish it from, other forms of public discourse. Using the framework of political agenda setting, David A. Rochefort analyzes the rhetorical function of problem definition played by literary works when they document and characterize social issues while sounding the call for systemic reform. Focusing on a group of noteworthy realist novels by American authors over the past twenty years, this study maintains that fictional narrative is a potentially influential instrument of "empathic policy argument." The book closes by examining the agenda-setting dynamics through which a social problem novel can contribute to the process of policy change.
Jack's life is broken, his marriage estranged. After his failed suicide attempt and rescue by a compassionate stranger, he is forced to face up to the man he has become - a far cry from the man he wants to be. As he grapples with his own big questions, his son's life hangs in the balance. His wife Brenda, angry and grieving, struggles to open her heart to the man who has betrayed her more times than she can count. As Jack and Brenda's story unfolds, five trainee guardian angels discover the tough realities of life on earth and prepare to embark on their own journey - to open people's eyes to God's presence and love, and his passion to rescue, redeem, and restore. This is the story of how heaven and earth overlap. Of how God waits, patiently and earnestly, in many guises, for his sons and daughters to lift the veil of unawareness and receive his grace. Of how, out of the depths of despair, God can bring healing and hope to a couple who thought all was lost.
Our constant danger is that we have a view of God that is too small. We are living in a me-focused, treat-yourself world—a world that incessantly encourages us to focus on ourselves. But a life turned inward—rather than focused on God—brings peril and confusion. When we fail to know God properly, we become selfish and hopeless. But a renewed understanding of who God is changes that. Pastor Jonathan Griffiths shows us how God Alone can transform us at a root level. With pastoral warmth and heart, Griffiths shows us the character of God in all His beauty and goodness. Readers will gain knowledge of God’s attributes—that He is eternal, all-knowing, and all-wise. Readers discover what it means that God is omnipotent, unchanging, and omnipresent. And through this knowledge, trust, hope, and joy emerge. Confidence grows when we have a robust understanding of God’s love. This book is both a plea for the people of God to know Him intimately and, at the same time, an invitation to those who do not yet know Him—come and experience the wonderful, beautiful, powerful God revealed in Scripture.
What does Barack Obama’s re-election campaign have in common with a dusty box of black and white photographs found in a Cardiff studio? The answer is something that we are all a part of – communities. The way in which Obama’s team drove engagement with the US electorate is fabled. Online and offline, people came together to spread the campaign’s messages across the country. Less well known is how Jon Pountney, who found the Cardiff photos, reached out across the web and into the local community to try and identify the faces captured in them. Piece by piece, this community constructed a story of the photos, which in turned out to be a remarkable slice from the city’s history. In Con...
We tend to think of coal mining as predominantly a male occupation, with women confined to roles as wives and support workers. Women worked at the coal face for many years before they were banned in 1842. However, mere legislation was not going to stop them - many continued to work underground, with mine owners making little attempt to stop them due to the low wages paid to women. Some would dress and pass as men to fool visiting inspectors. For the majority though, they worked on the pit brow where they received the coal, cleaned, sorted and cut it to uniform size. Dirty, laborious work, including many accidents and deaths, done by women and girls, some as young as 10 years old. Society was...
Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope and Resilience is a photographic ethnography book that features the stories and portraits of individuals across the UK who have been impacted by social issues such as austerity, Brexit, deindustrialisation, nationalism and cuts to public services. The book captures and shares 40 untold stories of hope and resilience from a diverse range of people, many of whom feel misrepresented in the media and out of sync with the government and politicians. Each story will is told in the individual’s own words and is accompanied by a portrait from an accomplished documentary photographer.
Explores how novelists of the mid-century US South invented small towns to aesthetically undermine racial segregationInvestigates the role of writing in the civil right movementExplores neglected writersUncovers new readings of canonical textsModels a new form of critical reading based on close textual analysisInterrogates the relationship between literary production and social protestAnalysing the ubiquity of the small town in fiction of the mid-century US South, Living Jim Crow is the first extended scholarly study to explore how authors mobilised this setting as a tool for racial resistance. With innovative close readings of Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lillian Smith, Byron Herbert Reece, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and William Melvin Kelley, the book traces the relationship between activism and aesthetics during the long civil rights movement. Lennon reframes a narrative of southern literature during the period as one as one characterised by an aesthetics of protest, identifying a new mode of reading racial resistance and the US South.
The Literary Afterlife of Raymond Carver examines the cultural legacy of one of America's most renowned short story writers.
This text argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and David Foster Wallace provocatively challenge the ethos of productivity by filtering their ethical interventions through culturally stigmatised imagery of laziness.