Author: David Skrbina In Panpsychism in the West, the first comprehensive study of the subject, David Skrbina argues for the importance of panpsychism -- the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things -- in consideration of the nature of consciousness and mind. Panpsychism, with its conception of mind as a general phenomenon of nature, uniquely links being and mind. More than a theory of mind, it is a meta-theory -- a statement about theories of mind rather than a theory in itself. Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things. After a brief discussion of general issues surrounding philosophy of mind, Skrbina examines the panpsychist views of philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the post-structuralists.The original edition of Panpsychism in the West helped to reinvigorate a neglected and important aspect of philosophic thinking. This revised edition offers expanded and updated material that reflects the growth of panpsychism as a subdiscipline. It covers the problem of emergence of mind from a non-mental reality and the combination problem in greater detail. It offers expanded coverage of the pre-Socratics and Plato; a new section on Augustine; expanded discussions of Continental panpsychism, scientific arguments, Nietzsche, and Whitehead; and a new section on Russellian monism. With this edition, Panpsychism in the West will be continue to be the standard work on the topic.

Author: Joan Lombardi In this important work, Joan Lombardi, one of Americas foremost experts on child care, shows how our current system is not meeting the needs of America's families and describes a vision for redesigning this system to promote healthy child and youth development. Both as an expert and as a parent, the author guides the reader through the problems that face the current child care system and outlines the possible solutions. Drawing on the most recent innovations from across the country, she offers fresh ideas for improving the quality and availability of child care, both for young children and those in after school programs.From renewal of welfare reform to the administration's efforts to promote literacy, debate at both the state and federal levels about child care will continue for the foreseeable future. Joan Lombardi shows how to bridge the gap between early education and child care by taking advantage of the hours that children spend in care to encourage child and youth development and by creating a system of program and community supports to improve quality.

Author: Melissa Dabakis This project is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.When Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned the Declaration of Sentiments for the first womens rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, she unleashed a powerful force in American society. In A Sisterhood of Sculptors, Melissa Dabakis outlines the conditions under which a group of American women artists adopted this egalitarian view of society and negotiated the gendered terrain of artistic production at home and abroad. Between 1850 and 1876, a community of talented women sought creative refuge in Rome and developed successful professional careers as sculptors. Some of these women have become well known in art-historical circles: Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis, Anne Whitney, and Vinnie Ream. The reputations of others have remained, until now, buried in the historical record: Emma Stebbins, Margaret Foley, Sarah Fisher Ames, and Louisa Lander. At midcentury, they were among the first women artists to attain professional stature in the American art world while achieving international fame in Rome, London, and other cosmopolitan European cities. In their invention of modern womanhood, they served as models for a younger generation of women who adopted artistic careers in unprecedented numbers in the years following the Civil War.At its core, A Sisterhood of Sculptors is concerned with the gendered nature of creativity and expatriation. Taking guidance from feminist theory, cultural geography, and expatriate and postcolonial studies, Dabakis provides a detailed investigation of the historical phenomenon of womens artistic lives in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century. As an interdisciplinary examination of femininity and creativity, it provides models for viewing and interpreting nineteenth-century sculpture and for analyzing the gendered status of the artistic profession.

Author: James K. Voiss Is there such a thing as Christian Forgiveness? Christians speak as though there is. But what would it be? How would it differ from forgiveness as a basic human enactment? And if there is a distinctive Christian forgiveness, what might it have to say to our world today? To answer these questions, the present work traverses three distinctive intellectual landscapescontinental philosophy, Anglo-American moral philosophy, and psychologyto establish a phenomenology of forgiving before turning to contemporary Christian literature. The multilayered dialogue that ensues challenges the assumptions of contemporary approachessecular and Christianand invites the reader to rethink the meaning of Christian forgiveness.