Monthly Archives: January 2020

Engineering Success

Posted on by
Reply

Engineers are recognized for their uncanny ability to create magnificent blueprints, technical machinery, elegant plans, or complex circuits in their efforts to bring brilliant and dynamic designs to the world. At the same time, those amazing process-oriented and specific-outcomes skills don’t always transfer to their own career-planning abilities. Engineer Your Own Success is a comprehensive, easy-to-read book that provides the missing links that engineers and other technical specialists need to implement daily, allowing them to be successful in their careers, their professional development, and their personal lives. In this valuable career-building “how to” guide, discover ways to: 

      • find the right mentor and get the most of the relationship
      • obtain the credentials needed to easily reach your goals
      • become an effective communicator
      • network your way to impactful relationships
      • get and stay organized in a way that will increase productivity

In addition, find out why goal-setting is important; discover simple strategies to pass critical examinations the first time around; learn how to become a terrific public speaker and team leader.

Show me Your Best Jazz Hands

Posted on by
Reply

The history of jazz dance is best understood by thinking of it as a tree. The roots of jazz dance are African. Its trunk is vernacular, shaped by European influence, and exemplified by the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. From the vernacular have grown many and varied branches, including tap, Broadway, funk, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean, Latin, pop, club jazz, popping, B-boying, party dances, and more. Unique in its focus on history rather than technique, Jazz Dance offers the only overview of trends and developments since 1960. Editors Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver have assembled an array of seasoned practitioners and scholars who trace the numerous histories of jazz dance and examine various aspects of the field, including influences, training, race, aesthetics, international appeal, and its relationship to tap, rock, indie, black concert dance, and Latin dance. 

 

 

A History of Ballet

Posted on by
Reply

For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV, the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, Russian émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice.

“Here is a book of immense ambition—a one-volume history of ballet—and of considerable accomplishment. Jennifer Homans, whom we know primarily as The New Republic’s provocative dance critic, shows herself to be both dogged and graceful as a historian—a rare and welcome combination of qualities.” The New York Review of Books

Takes two to Tango

Posted on by
Reply

Widely regarded as the foremost existing textbook on the art of partnering. First published in 1969 in Russian by one of the world’s most respected experts on partnering, the original book was created for the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, the school that produced Pavlova and Nijinsky. This expanded edition contains new text, sketches, and photographs that describe 32 new poses and lifts, along with new information about strengthening exercises and balance points. It is adaptable to instruction based on the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Cecchetti methods, making it invaluable for teachers and dancers of all three major methodologies.

Beginning with simple exercises for young dancers, the comprehensive text guides students, teachers, and choreographers safely to complex lifts and tosses. The instruction is useful for all forms of dance, including ballet, jazz, modern dance, ballroom, and ice dancing.

Creative Approach to Modern Dance

Posted on by
Reply

An introduction to modern dance and body movement techniques, this guide begins with an overview of the history of modern dance and proceeds to a discussion of basic body movement, improvisation, and choreography. A series of clearly photographed exercises enables the dancer to execute each movement properly and to learn to use the body more effectively and expressively. Clear photos show exactly how to execute each movement. Of interest to students of dance, yoga, aerobics, and t’ai chi; also helps the modern dance viewer better understand the work of Graham, Taylor, Ailey, and other modern dance giants.

Black Youth and Neighborhood Trauma in Chicago

Posted on by
Reply

Dexter R. Voisin provides a compelling and social-justice-oriented analysis of current trends in neighbourhood violence in light of the historical and structural factors that have reproduced entrenched patterns of racial and economic inequality. Built around the powerful voices and insights of black youth in Chicago and their parents and communities, Voisin interweaves their narratives with data, research findings, and historical accounts that provide context for their experiences. He highlights the broad historical, political, economic, and racial factors that shape the construction, concentration, and narratives of violence in black neighborhoods. Voisin explores these forces and the violence they produce; the behavioral health consequences of repeated exposures to neighborhood violence; and the ways youth, families, and communities cope with such traumas. 

“Voisin writes with conviction, clarity, and conscience in connecting the dots between big ideas (racism, violence, resilience) and daily life through his personal story and those of the folks he has interviewed. America the Beautiful and Violent will help you understand how African American youth can not only survive, but thrive.” Lois Takahashi, University of Southern California

The Brain is not an Attic, much to Sherlock’s chagrin

Posted on by
Reply

From the moment we enter school as children, we are made to feel as if our brains are fixed entities, capable of learning certain things and not others, influenced exclusively by genetics. This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skill sets. These damaging—and as new science has revealed, false—assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures. Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind, she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential. Her research proves that those who achieve at the highest levels do not do so because of a genetic inclination toward any one skill but because of the kyes that she reveals in this book. Our brains are not “fixed,” but entirely capable of change, growth, adaptability, and rewiring. The truth is anyone at any age can learn anything, and the act of learning itself fundamentally changes who we are, and what we go on to achieve.

The Ethical Engineer

Posted on by
Reply

 

Both engineering and human living takes place in a messy world, one chock full of unknowns and contingencies. To begin with, a design problem raises many questions: how to make occupants of vehicles safer, settle on an interface for an x-ray machine, or create more legible road signs. In choosing any particular solution, engineers must make value choices. These texts provide the foundation of ethics for engineering. The aim of these books is to generate a strong operational ethic in the work of engineers from all disciplines. Providing numerous examples of engineers who sought to meet the highest ethical standards, risking both professional and personal retaliations. Topics that are covered include whistle-blowing, the problem of many hands, gifts, bribes, conflicts of interest, engineering and environmental ethics, privacy and computer ethics, ethical technology assessment, and the ethics of cost-benefit analysis and risk and uncertainty. Illuminating the ethical dimension of engineering practice and helping students and professionals determine engineers’ context-specific ethical responsibilities.

Big Brother is Watching

Posted on by
Reply

With little notice or fanfare, our online experience is changing dramatically as the web sites we visit are increasingly tailoring themselves to us. The race to collect as much as personal data as possible is not the defining battle for today’s  Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Mircosoft. The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization could undermine the internet’s original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas, and leave us all in an isolated, echoing world. Pariser lays out a new vision for the web, one that embraces the benefits of technology without turning a blind eye to its negative consequences, and will ensure that the Internet lives up to its transformative promise for creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.