Bryn Mawr Authors
Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning
by Alison Cook-Sather - Professor of Education
Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning invites readers to help forge a more inclusive and accessible college education by incorporating student voices via pedagogical partnerships.
Alison Cook-Sather, a pioneer of this co-creative approach, draws on more than twenty years of experience developing student-teacher partnerships in higher education to offer a wise and generous work that speaks to both students and educators. As her research underscores, a co-creative learning environment, in which relationships and communication between students and teachers are prioritized, benefits the educational experience on many levels.
Cook-Sather demonstrates how pedagogical partnerships give students the tools to advocate for their own learning while giving educators the feedback they need to improve classroom experiences. She shows how the co-creative model helps to bring about inclusive spaces and equitable teaching practices that better foster student success, especially among underrepresented and minority student populations.
Offering actionable guidance, Cook-Sather advocates enacting the following four principles to structure student voice into higher education: embracing a commitment to equity and justice; providing structure rather than prescriptions for engagement; making rather than taking up space; and developing a partnership mindset. She grounds these principles in examples of practices drawn from an undergraduate education course; a faculty development program; and cross-disciplinary, cross-constituency institutional dialogues.
This work calls for readers to reimagine the higher education structure and to cultivate an environment in which all stakeholders can work together to advance inclusivity, accessibility, and equity. As the author argues, co-creation can be a catalyst for change throughout the system.
News of the Earth
by Betty Ferber BMC '61
"Homero is one of the planet's great environmental heroes."--Jacob Scherr, Director of Global Strategy & Advocacy, Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, DC
News of the Earth chronicles Homero Aridjis's relationship with the natural world through his writings and his activism as president of the Grupo de los Cien [Group of 100], Mexico's influential environmental group composed of one hundred prominent personalities in the arts, culture, and science, which Aridjis founded in 1985. Under his leadership, the group's efforts led to a ban on the capture and commercialization of sea turtles, legislation reducing the amount of lead in gasoline, daily monitoring of air quality in Mexico City, and official designation of sanctuaries for the monarch butterfly. Aridjis waged a lifelong battle against threats to endangered ecosystems and wildlife in his country, many with global implications, including campaigns to save the gray whale, bottle-nosed dolphin, bee population, giant saguaro cactus, endangered coral reefs, and rainforests of Mexico. This book highlights these crucial battles, with detailed documentation of critical environmental victories.
Homero Aridjis, one of Latin America's foremost literary figures, is the author of forty-eight books of poetry and prose. He served as Mexico's Ambassador to Switzerland, The Netherlands, and UNESCO, and as president of PEN International. He received awards from the United Nations (Global 500 Award), the Orion Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, Global Green USA, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Betty Ferber Aridjis was born in New York and graduated from Bryn Mawr College. She served as the International Coordinator of the Grupo de los Cien (Group of 100) since its founding in 1985. Her lifelong commitment to the environment was also honored by Mikhail Gorbachev and by Global Green USA with the Green Cross Millennium Award for International Environmental Leadership. She is the translator of several books by Homero Aridjis into English.
Science of Breakable Things
by Tae Keller
Wednesday, November 29
--Publishers Weekly "A compassionate glimpse of mental illness accessible to a broad audience."
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW "Holy moly!!! This book made me feel."
--Colby Sharp, editor of The Creativity Project, teacher, and cofounder of Nerdy Book Club
Cambridge Companion to Gadamer
by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy
Estate Grown
by Mara Feeney '73
My book is a collection of short stories about how a couple of urban professionals (both BMC alumnae) purchase country land and figure out (on a very steep learning curve) how to engage in agricultural pursuits. With the help of neighbors (and despite the antics of others) they succeed in creating an organic paradise, growing their own olives, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and wine grapes. Over the course of three decades they secure a firm footing in the complex rural community and win a prestigious award for their estate-grown Zinfandel.
This feast for the senses is just the ticket for anyone who has driven through the country and wondered "Gee, what would it be like to leave the city behind, move to a place full of meadows, vineyards, orchards and forests and start growing my own food." The author's innocence optimism and perseverance invite readers to imagine themselves undertaking such an adventure and make it all seem doable. The Fiddletown Stories is escapist literature at its very finest, filled with descriptions of the unique foothills environment and the colorful characters who inhabit it.
Fashioning Celebrity
by Laura Engel BMC '90
Finding the Numinous: An Ecocritical Look at Dune and the Lord of the Rings
by Willow DiPasquale
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Program
Analyzing how the mythopoeic fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert portray the natural world
Finding the Numinous explores the premise that the environments depicted in The Lord of the Rings and the Dune saga are not only for the purpose of world-building; rather, these imagined worlds' environments are sacred spaces fundamental to understanding these texts and their authors' purposes. Willow Wilson DiPasquale applies Tolkien's three functions of fantasy--recover, escape, and consolation--to demonstrate how both authors' works are intrinsically connected to their ecocritical messages and overarching moral philosophies.
This book also compares Tolkien's Roman Catholic viewpoint with Herbert's Zen Buddhist perspective, arguing that the authors' religious beliefs and biographical, historical, and cultural influences impacted how they chose to craft their creative works and write about nature.
Applying various ecocritical positions to the text, Finding the Numinous explores descriptions of the natural landscapes in both authors' texts, as well as the relationships characters and communities have with those natural spaces. As our current society's relationships with nature are increasingly challenged and changed by various ecocrises, DiPasquale convincingly argues, these worlds offer readers various environmental models to critique, to condemn, or, in some cases, to adopt.
Gadamer's Hermeneutics
by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy
How to Be a Woman Online
by Nina Jankowicz - BMC '11
"An essential guide for women interested in standing up for a fairer, safer online world." Publisher's Weekly
"Timely." Booklist
When Nina Jankowicz's first book on online disinformation was profiled in The New Yorker, she expected attention but not an avalanche of abuse and harassment, predominantly from men, online.
Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
by Pardis Dabashi