This chapter outlines creative and body-based learning (CBL) as a pedagogical approach that puts principles of transformative pedagogy into action. CBL provides a provocation to engage with the body and creativity as instruments for learning and modes of representation. In highlighting the liberatory impact for both learners and educators, we explore how such approaches disrupt power imbalances and allow young people agency, higher-order thinking and a sense of belonging to a community of learners. In developing a theoretical base for our work, we are drawn to theories of embodiment, arts and affect.

This chapter outlines the theoretical and practical processes of teaching arts integrated curriculum through a transformational learning framework (Mezinow, 2009). A key aim is to highlight how relational knowledge built through dialogic meaning making strategies in visual art provides an approach to curriculum design where students can interrogate their standpoint. We outline pedagogical approaches under the banner of creative and body-based learning (CBL) that focus on transformational learning underpinned by standpoint theory and illustrated by vignettes of three visual art strategies.

Understanding the past requires understanding how it has been created. This is not simply about improving methodologies, but also the theoretical approaches employed and the broader socio-political framework within which they are applied. This chapter therefore delineates major developments in southern African archaeology from its nineteenth-century origins to the present, situating them with respect to the region’s wider history and the broader social and political context in which they emerged. It also considers how archaeological research was constrained by, but simultaneously challenged, structures of racial oppression during the twentieth century, differences in the experience of southern Africa’s states (including research disparities within and between them), some of the key paradigms within which archaeological research is currently conducted, and the problems encountered in making archaeology accessible to all sections of society. Another theme concerns the theoretical and methodological challenges that archaeologists face when invoking the ethnographies of southern Africa’s recent or contemporary inhabitants to help understand the past revealed by their research.

Chapter 19 examines Goethe’s relationship to philosophy, which throughout his life was one of both interest and guarded distance. It considers the transformations which philosophy as a discipline underwent during his lifetime, details Goethe’s attitudes to intellectual developments in his own time, above all the work of Kant, and devotes particular attention to Spinoza, without whose inspiration Goethe’s work is unthinkable, even if it cannot be reduced to a Spinozist position. The chapter also emphasises the singularity of Goethe’s own thought, which was forever transforming any influences that it received, becoming a source of inspiration and critical reflection for contemporary and succeeding generations of philosophers.

In the second chapter, the role of the dialogue’s Proem is treated in detail. Socrates’ first words are not those of concepts but of courtship, and Alcibiades’ pending metamorphosis is begun by means of love. The Neoplatonic reading of the dialogue’s opening section is not just a reflection on Socrates’ pederastic obsession with a beautiful young man and his attempt to seduce him away from his other lovers; it is a prolonged meditation on the nature of love and its ultimate expression in the philosophical life. Far from being a playful preface without philosophical substance, the Proem is an introduction to this introductory dialogue, an isagogic first step in a lengthy rite of philosophical transformation that begins with erotic initiation. The Neoplatonic student finds that Socrates nurtures the seeds of erotic contemplativity in Alcibiades prior to his formal questions and arguments.

This chapter meditates on how Black erotic bodies manifest in a white supremacist world. It contends that said bodies congeal through an amalgamation of fungible gender and material/discursive dispossession. These inheritances afford Black people the opportunity to conjure fugitive freedom practices, such as multiplicity, which enable Black people to harness erotic power in the pursuit of self-determined notions of pleasure and intimacy with themselves and within Black communities. To buttress my argument, I draw on the work of Akwaeke Emezi – namely, their debut novel Freshwater and an essay about their gender transition surgeries – and Audre Lorde’s classic essay, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” to illustrate how multiplicity is a freedom practiced undergirded by erotic power such that practitioners need not minimize or eliminate contradictory or complex aspects of themselves in order to access pleasure and intimacy along personal and interpersonal registers.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

Daoist philosophy takes as axiomatic that the constant transformation of things in the world is not to be deprecated, but rather celebrated as the basis for the mutual flourishing of the myriad things. This view contains both cyclical and linear conceptions of time and is predicated on a view of a porous body that does not simply occupy blank space or time, but rather is transformed by and also transforms space and time. The porosity and pliability of our cosmos suggests that we should value what is soft and weak rather than what is conventionally hard and strong. This leads to the formulation of an ethic of “plasticity” that governs our responsible engagement with our planetary context.

The term “identity” often generates questions about the “essence” of the entity being “identified.” Ascriptions of “identity” become controversial inasmuch as given behaviors or traits are viewed as favorable or unfavorable. Within the United States, the rhetorical trope “this is not who we are” has become almost pervasive upon the occurrence of a regrettable, even heinous, act. President Obama had a particular affinity for the phrase. He suggested, for example, that the vicious racism revealed in the 2015 massacre of African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina was aberrant, revealing nothing essential about American culture. The current debate within the United States about the “1619 Project” is all about constitutional and cultural identity. Its adherents argue that American identity is rooted in the white supremacy instantiated in the practice of slavery, dating back to 1619. Opponents emphasize the 1776 Declaration of Independence, with its proclamation that “all men are created equal” and “endowed” with equal “inalienable rights,” as the key marker of American identity. Slavery, which is conceded to have existed, was simply epiphenomenal; “who we are” is defined by the Declaration. Much is thought to ride on ascribing a particular identity to any given country or, more particularly, its constitution.

This chapter analyzes devotional experience, especially as it is displayed in contemporary evangelical approaches. Devotion is examined not as a singular practice but as a way of living out religion in daily life, within regular social, economic, and political structures without radical withdrawal from them. Devotional experience is marked by a deeply personal affective experience of a loving God who is seen to accept even the most evil and wretched person. This serves as a horizon of friendship that enables the devotional self to confront its faults and shortcomings. Devotional experience is marked by its intensely emotional and individual forms of expression. It accompanies people in their concrete daily lives and is experienced as suffusing and transforming daily and ordinary experiences without separating oneself from the society or the world. Devotional experience thus capitalizes on the human need for loving relationship and personal guidance in daily life.

The country the different prime ministers have led and the political system over which they have presided have been vastly different. In this chapter, we explore some of the more momentous technological, political, cultural, and social changes that impacted on the office over the 300 years. Only by appreciating these factors, which have been perhaps under-considered in the literature on the office to date, can a rounded appreciation of the office’s survival it be achieved. The sheer pace and extent of these changes makes the continuity and survival of the office of prime minister over the full 300 years, and the adaptability of the individuals involved, even more remarkable.

The invasion of Mesoamerica – set off by the arrival of Cortés and his followers – was neither peaceful nor simple. These events played out in three phases between February 10, 1519 when the expedition left Cuba and August 13, 1521 when the Mexica tlatoani, Cuauhtemoc, was captured. During the first phase, Moteuczoma and Spaniards sought to learn about each other. Each used diplomacy, Moteuczoma to repel the Spanish, Cortés to gain indigenous allies, to affect events. The second phase of the Spanish-Mexica war began with the Spanish arrival in Tenochtitlan and their imprisonment of Moteuczoma shortly thereafter. That phase ended with Spaniards forced to retreat after their disastrous assault on the Templo Mayor and slaughter of many Mexica leaders. Re-equipping and solidifying his alliances, Cortés and his fighters succeeded in defeating the Mexica in mid-August, 1521. Many kinds of transformations would follow including extensive depopulation and the introduction of new technologies and religious beliefs. Adjustments by Nahuas followed in social and legal affairs as well as in forms of identity. The idea of “Aztec” has tenaciously survived. It exists in contemporary Nahua communities, as an element of national history and culture in Mexico, and as a transnational idea.