The Imagination Gap

The Imagination Gap PDF

Author: Brian Reich

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2017-03-24

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1787142078

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Imagination Gap helps leaders in every sector apply their imagination effectively to explore new, creative approaches to survive and thrive. Examples from a range of industries and settings, from Broadway to Silicon Valley, with simple steps and exercises, help you stop thinking the way you "should" and start making extraordinary things happen.

The Dark Fantastic

The Dark Fantastic PDF

Author: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1479806072

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Reveals the diversity crisis in children's and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world. In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

The Imagination Gap

The Imagination Gap PDF

Author: Brian Reich

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2017-03-24

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 178714206X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Imagination Gap helps leaders in every sector apply their imagination effectively to explore new, creative approaches to survive and thrive. Examples from a range of industries and settings, from Broadway to Silicon Valley, with simple steps and exercises, help you stop thinking the way you "should" and start making extraordinary things happen.

Imagination and Meaning in Calvin and Hobbes

Imagination and Meaning in Calvin and Hobbes PDF

Author: Jamey Heit

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0786490314

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From 1985 to 1995, the syndicated comic strip Calvin and Hobbes followed the antics of a precocious six-year-old boy and his sardonic stuffed tiger. At the height of its popularity, the strip ran in more than 2,400 newspapers and generated a fan base that continues to run in the millions. This critical analysis of Calvin and Hobbes explores Calvin's world and its deep reservoir of meanings. Close readings of individual strips highlight the profundity of Calvin's world with respect to a number of life's big questions, including the things that one values, friendship, God, death, and other struggles in life. By engaging with Calvin and Hobbes as more than "just" a comic strip, this work demonstrates how the imagination remains an invaluable resource for making sense of the world. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Imagination Machine

The Imagination Machine PDF

Author: Martin Reeves

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1647820871

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A guide for mining the imagination to find powerful new ways to succeed. We need imagination now more than ever—to find new opportunities, rethink our businesses, and discover paths to growth. Yet too many companies have lost their ability to imagine. What is this mysterious capacity? How does imagination work? And how can organizations keep it alive and harness it in a systematic way? The Imagination Machine answers these questions and more. Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute and Jack Fuller, an expert in neuroscience, provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a process for creating ideas and bringing them to life: The Seduction: How to open yourself up to surprises The Idea: How to generate new ideas The Collision: How to rethink your idea based on real-world feedback The Epidemic: How to spread an evolving idea to others The New Ordinary: How to turn your novel idea into an accepted reality The Encore: How to repeat the process—again and again. Imagination is one of the least understood but most crucial ingredients of success. It's what makes the difference between an incremental change and the kinds of pivots and paradigm shifts that are essential to transformation—especially during a crisis. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools at your disposal.

The Republic of Imagination

The Republic of Imagination PDF

Author: Azar Nafisi

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-10-21

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0698170334

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A New York Times bestseller The author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with the next chapter of her life in books—a passionate and deeply moving hymn to America Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her multimillion-copy bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics of English and American literature to her eager students in Iran. In this electrifying follow-up, she argues that fiction is just as threatened—and just as invaluable—in America today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination. Nafisi invites committed readers everywhere to join her as citizens of what she calls the Republic of Imagination, a country with no borders and few restrictions, where the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.

Imagination + Technology

Imagination + Technology PDF

Author: Phil Turner

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-17

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 3030373487

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Imagination is highly valued and sought-after, yet elusive and ill-defined. Definitions range from narrowly cognitive accounts to those which endow imagination with world-making powers. Imagination underpins our ability to speculate about the future and to re-experience the past. The everyday functioning of society relies on being able to imagine the perspectives of others; and our sense of who we are depends on the stories our imaginations create. Our soaring imaginations have taken us to the moon and allowed Einstein to race a light beam. Unsurprisingly, imagination underlies every aspect of human-computer interaction, from the earliest conceptual sketches, through the realistic possibilities portrayed variously in well-known tools as scenarios and storyboards, through to the wilder shores of design fictions. Yet, curiously, imagination is very rarely addressed directly in the design and HCI literature (and is wholly missing from virtual reality). This book addresses this gap in our accounts of how we imagine, conceptualise, design and use digital technologies. Drawing on many years of practical and academic experience in human computer-interaction, together with a wide range of material from psychology, design, cognitive science and HCI, seasoned with a little philosophy and anthropology, Imagination + Technology first considers imagination itself and the principal farthings of a new account. Later chapters discuss the role of imagination in the design, aesthetics, use and experience of digital technologies before the concluding chapter focusses on the provocative nature of imagination. The book will be stimulating reading for anyone working in the field of interactive technology and related areas, whether academics, students or practitioners.

Heaven in the American Imagination

Heaven in the American Imagination PDF

Author: Gary Scott Smith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780199830701

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.

The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It

The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It PDF

Author: Mary Ann Sieghart

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0393867765

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An incisive, intersectional look at the mother of all gender biases: a resistance to women’s authority and power. Every woman has a story of being underestimated, ignored, challenged, or patronized in the workplace. Maybe she tried to speak up in a meeting, only to be talked over by male colleagues. Or a client addressed her male subordinate instead of her. These stories remain true even for women at the top of their fields; in the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, female justices are interrupted four times more often than their male colleagues—and 96 percent of the time by men. Despite the progress we’ve made toward equality, we still fail, more often than we might realize, to take women as seriously as men. In The Authority Gap, journalist Mary Ann Sieghart provides a startling perspective on the gender bias at work in our everyday lives and reflected in the world around us, whether in pop culture, media, school classrooms, or politics. With precision and insight, Sieghart marshals a wealth of data from a variety of disciplines—including psychology, sociology, political science, and business—and talks to pioneering women like Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, renowned classicist Mary Beard, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and Hillary Clinton. She speaks with women from a range of backgrounds to explore how gender bias intersects with race and class biases. Eye-opening and galvanizing, The Authority Gap teaches us how we as individuals, partners, parents, and coworkers can together work to narrow the gap. Sieghart exposes unconscious bias in this fresh feminist take on how to address and counteract systemic sexism in ways that benefit us all: men as well as women.

The Gap

The Gap PDF

Author: Thomas Suddendorf

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0465069843

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

There exists an undeniable chasm between the capacities of humans and those of animals. Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, whereas even our closest animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their dwindling habitats. Yet despite longstanding debates, the nature of this apparent gap has remained unclear. What exactly is the difference between our minds and theirs? In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of the mental qualities that separate humans from other animals, as well as how these differences arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes, children, and human evolution, he surveys the abilities most often cited as uniquely human -- language, intelligence, morality, culture, theory of mind, and mental time travel -- and finds that two traits account for most of the ways in which our minds appear so distinct: Namely, our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on scenarios, and our insatiable drive to link our minds together. These two traits explain how our species was able to amplify qualities that we inherited in parallel with our animal counterparts; transforming animal communication into language, memory into mental time travel, sociality into mind reading, problem solving into abstract reasoning, traditions into culture, and empathy into morality. Suddendorf concludes with the provocative suggestion that our unrivalled status may be our own creation -- and that the gap is growing wider not so much because we are becoming smarter but because we are killing off our closest intelligent animal relatives. Weaving together the latest findings in animal behavior, child development, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, this book will change the way we think about our place in nature. A major argument for reconsidering what makes us human, The Gap is essential reading for anyone interested in our evolutionary origins and our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom.