Essays examining the compiler and contents of two of the most important and significant extant late medieval manuscript collections.

Reading Sideways explores the pivotal role that various art forms played in American literary fiction in direct relation to the politics of gender and sexuality in works of modern American literature. It tracks the crosswise circulation of aesthetic ideas in fiction and argues that at stake in the aesthetic turn of these works was not only the theorization of aesthetic experience but also an engagement with political arguments and debates about available modes of sociability and sexual expression. To track these engagements, its author, Dana Seitler, performs a method she calls “lateral reading,” a mode of interpretation that moves horizontally through various historical entanglements and across the fields of the arts to make sense of—and see in a new light—their connections, challenges, and productive frictions. Each chapter takes a different art form as its object: sculpture, portraiture, homecraft, and opera. These art forms appear in some of the major works of literature of the period central to negotiations of gender, race, and sexuality, including those by Henry James, Davis, Willa Cather, Du Bois, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman. But the literary texts that each chapter of this book takes as its motivation not only include a specific art form or object as central to its politics, they also build an alternative aesthetic vocabulary through which they seek to alter, challenge, or participate in the making of social and sexual life. By cultivating a counter-aesthetics of the unfinished, the uncertain, the small, the low, and the allusive, these fictions recognize other ways of knowing and being than those oriented toward reductively gendered accounts of beauty, classed imperatives established by the norms of taste, or apolitical treatises of sexual disinterestedness. And within them—and through “reading sideways”—we can witness the coming-into-legibility of a set of diffuse practices that provide a pivot point for engaging the political methods of minoritized subjects at the turn of the twentieth century.

With contributions from content teachers, this insightful book discusses instructional approaches, student activities, and textbooks that can motivate reluctant learners to become active readers.

31 Uncommon Questions That Reveal Your Hidden Passions (That You Are Not Aware Of) You are just 31 uncommon questions away from having a crystal clear idea of some of your hidden passions - that you don’t know you have. Want to discover your passions to make a career change or start a business? Want your work to be more fulfilling and exciting? Or, you just want to enjoy your daily life more and use some of your free time to have more fun? If you answered “Yes!” to any of the above questions, then you need to know how to find your passions. Most people know what their passions are. Or, they just take a quick personality test or a quiz by a career expert, and they know their passions. Other people - like me (and you?) - don’t get anywhere with such tests and quizzes. They struggle with finding their passions for years. Regardless of whether you’ve always been struggling with identifying with what you are passionate about. Or, whether you don’t consider yourself a person full of passion, or whether you’ve lost some of your passions as you went through some major life challenges and transitions, this book is going to help you. Specifically, with the help of this book, you will: • Remove the 5 biggest obstacles that prevent you from finding your passions • Learn why making a list of your “interests” or “things you love to do” didn’t work to find your passions • Have a clear idea what some of your passions are that you have not been aware of • Know what to do if your passions aren’t “profitable” or “productive” • Get started with integrating your newly discovered passions into your life even if you have no time You are just 31 uncommon questions away from having a crystal clear idea of some of your hidden passions - that you don’t know you have.