In this follow-up to They Were All Together in One Place? (2009) and Reading Biblical Texts Together (2022), biblical scholars from different racial/ethnic minoritized communities move beyond defining and pursing cross-cultural interpretation to investigating how spatial-geographical and temporal-historical locations affect the purposes and practices of minoritized biblical criticism today. Through an examination of a range of contemporary issues from HIV/AIDS to US immigration policy, contributors establish that how and why they engage the Bible are the result of the intersection of social and cultural factors. Contributors Cheryl B. Anderson, Hector Avalos†, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Yii-Jan Lin, Vanessa Lovelace, Francisco Lozada Jr., Roger S. Nam, Aliou Cissé Niang, Hugh R. Page Jr., Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Fernando F. Segovia, Abraham Smith, and Vincent L. Wimbush demonstrate that interpretations carry broader implications for society and that scholars have ethical and political responsibilities to their communities and to the world.

A masterclass in attentive reading that opens up brilliant insights into two of George Eliot's novels Can reading Adam Bede and Middlemarch be justified in this time of climate change, financial meltdown and ineffective politicians? J. Hillis Miller shows how, to be read for today, they must be read slowly, closely and carefully, with much attention to linguistic detail and especially to figures of speech. By relating mistakes like Dorothea's about Casaubon to current affairs, Miller's 'readings for today' can help us to come to terms with our human, social and political situation and even inspire us to act to ameliorate it.

While teachers cannot travel back in time to visit their students at earlier ages, they can draw on the rich sets of experiences and knowledge that students bring to classrooms. In her latest book, Catherine Compton-Lilly examines the literacy practices and school trajectories of eight middle school students and their families. Through a unique longitudinal lens—the author has studied these same students from first grade—we see how students from a low-income, inner-city community grow and develop academically, revealing critical insights for teachers about literacy development, identity construction, and school achievement. Based on interviews, reading assessments, and writing samples,Reading Timeadvocates for educators to: Provide opportunities for students to develop long-term relationships with teachers and administrators. Allow children and parents to share their stories to identify obstacles that students encounter as they move through school. Collaborate and learn from students’ former teachers, as well as inform their future teachers. Develop portfolio systems and longitudinal records that highlight children’s emerging interests, abilities, and potential for the future. Catherine Compton-Lillyis an associate professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has taught in the public school system for 18 years. Her books includeReading Families,Re-reading Families, andBedtime Stories and Book Reports. “The analysis here runs deeper than other contemporary critiques of accountability regimes and standardization, inviting us instead to consider how time, schooling, and literacy have always been co-constructed....Reading Timefeatures compelling examples of literacy practices that traverse generations, which could only be understood through interviews and observations extending over time.” —Kevin Leander, Vanderbilt University

A collection of 11 articles from the September 2021 edition of La Civiltà Cattolica, the highly respected and oldest Catholic journal published from Rome. “Peace and union are the most necessary of all things for men who live in common, and nothing serves so well to establish and maintain these as the forbearing charity whereby we put up with one another’s defects” St Robert Bellarmine. As timely as ever! This month Giancarlo Pani reviews Bellarmine’s life and works. When Karol Wojtyla was elected, few would have imagined that the new pontiff was about to bring a renewal to the Social Doctrine of the Church. However, there were clear indications in his earlier life of the direction he would take, Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi tells us in John Paul II and the Social Doctrine of the Church. From the archive we have Bartolomeo Sorge’s speech on the relationship between the Gospel and modern culture to the “Cultural and Literary Challenges in Italy 50 Years after the Second Vatican Council Conference” in November, 2012. In Considerations on Power and International Aid Relations, Michael Kelly, publisher of La Civilta Cattolica, English edition and his friend and colleague Daniel Solymári from the Order of Malta, who is active in the resettlement of refugees, detail how aid is an element of politics, whose original scope was born out of the interaction between nations and right up to the present it occurs significantly among states and political institutions.

Is there too much emphasis on guided reading in primary classrooms? It's a question that many educators, like kindergarten teacher and literacy coach Cathy Mere, are starting to ask. Guided reading provides opportunities to teach students the strategies they need to learn how to read increasingly challenging texts, but Cathy found that she needed to find other ways to help students gain independence. While maintaining guided reading as an important piece of their reading program, teachers need to offer students opportunities during the day to develop as readers, to learn to choose books, to find favorite genres and authors, and to talk about their reading. In More Than Guided Reading, Cathy shares her journey as she moved from focusing on guided reading as the center of her reading program to placing children at the heart of literacy learning--not only providing more time for students to discover their reading lives, but also shaping instruction to meet the needs of the diverse learners in her classroom. By changing the structure of the day, Cathy found she was better able to adjust the support she was providing students, allowing time for whole-class focus lessons, conferences, and opportunities to share ideas, as well as reading from self-selected texts using the strategies, skills, and understandings acquired in reader's workshop. The focus lesson is the centerpiece of the workshop. It is often tied to a read-aloud and connected to learning from the previous day, helping to build skills, extend thinking, and develop independence over time. This thoroughly practical text offers numerous sample lessons, questions for conferences, and ideas for revamping guided reading groups. It will help teachers tweak the mix of instructional components in their reading workshops, and provoke school-wide conversations about the place of guided reading in a complete literacy curriculum.

Strengthen reading skills with 180 Days of Reading, 2nd Edition, a workbook of effective and engaging daily practice activities. This easy-to-use third grade workbook is great for at-home learning or classroom instruction. Watch students learn to read and write more confidently with these standards-based learning activities. The 2nd Edition of this activity book incorporates thematic units and a combination of fiction, nonfiction, and nontraditional texts. The new edition also reinforces the connection between reading and writing by having students write about what they read. Parents appreciate the grade-appropriate reading passages and meaningful topics that children will love. The daily reading practice is ideal for homeschool, to reinforce learning at school, or to prevent learning loss over summer. Teachers rely on these workbooks to save them valuable time and address learning gaps.

Neuroscience has made considerable progress in figuring out how the brain works. We know much about the molecular-genetic and biochemical underpinnings of sensory and motor functions. Recent neuroimaging work has opened the door to investigating the neural underpinnings of higher-order cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, and even free will. In these types of investigations, researchers apply specific stimuli to induce neural activity in the brain and look for the function in question. However, there may be more to the brain and its neuronal states than the changes in activity we induce by applying particular external stimuli. In Volume 2 of Unlocking the Brain, Georg Northoff addresses consciousness by hypothesizing about the relationship between particular neuronal mechanisms and the various phenomenal features of consciousness. Northoff puts consciousness in the context of the resting state of the brain thereby delivering a new point of view to the debate that permits very interesting insights into the nature of consciousness. Moreover, he describes and discusses detailed findings from different branches of neuroscience including single cell data, animal data, human imaging data, and psychiatric findings. This yields a unique and novel picture of the brain, and will have a major and lasting impact on neuroscientists working in neuroscience, psychiatry, and related fields.

How did eighteenth-century readers find and make time to read? Books have always posed a problem of time for readers. Becoming widely available in the eighteenth century—when working hours increased and lighter and quicker forms of reading (newspapers, magazines, broadsheets) surged in popularity—the material form of the codex book invited readers to situate themselves creatively in time. Drawing on letters, diaries, reading logs, and a range of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels, Christina Lupton’s Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century concretely describes how book-readers of the past carved up, expanded, and anticipated time. Placing canonical works by Elizabeth Inchbald, Henry Fielding, Amelia Opie, and Samuel Richardson alongside those of lesser-known authors and readers, Lupton approaches books as objects that are good at attracting particular forms of attention and paths of return. In contrast to the digital interfaces of our own moment and the ephemeral newspapers and pamphlets read in the 1700s, books are rarely seen as shaping or keeping modern time. However, as Lupton demonstrates, books are often put down and picked up, they are leafed through as well as read sequentially, and they are handed on as objects designed to bridge temporal distances. In showing how discourse itself engages with these material practices, Lupton argues that reading is something to be studied textually as well as historically. Applying modern theorists such as Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour, and Bernard Stiegler, Lupton offers a rare phenomenological approach to the study of a concrete historical field. This compelling book stands out for the combination of archival research, smart theoretical inquiry, and autobiographical reflection it brings into play.