Here is a reading on the Muslim physician Ibn al-Nafis who was the first doctor to map the human pulmonary system. This vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet accompanies it.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Here is a reading on Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes: he was a Muslim philosopher who commented extensively on Aristotle. He is prominently featured in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens. This reading comprehension worksheet accompanies the reading.
See above for related materials.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“A novel (1986) by the Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (b. 1954), about a Japanese artist looking back on his life after the Second World War.
‘The floating world’ is a Japanese euphemism for the entertainment districts of Japanese cities, scenes from which were depicted in the genre titled Ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’), a type of painting particularly popular during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) in Japan. Subjects included courtesans, actors, scenes from plays and erotica. A well-known work of fiction from the period is Ukiyo Monogatari (c. 1661; ‘tales of the floating world’) by the Samurai turned novelist Asai Ryoi.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged asian-pacific history, fiction/literature, readings/research
“Sun-dried mud (usually clay) and straw bricks used for building construction. Used since pre-Roman times in Sumerian and Babylonian Architecture. adobe has been employed throughout the non-European world, including the U.S. Southwest, and in some European buildings.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Satrap is not exactly a word that turns up very often in the English language. Still, a couple of years ago when I was regularly teaching freshman global studies classes here in New York City, it appeared in various primary documents, and even in textbooks.
So, I developed this context clues worksheet on the noun satrap. The hyperlink above takes you to the Wikipedia page for the word; for the sake of brevity, here is the definition of the noun from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition:
1 : the governor of a province in ancient Persia 2 a : RULER b : a subordinate official : HENCHMAN (Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (Kindle Locations 314939-314941). Merriam-Webster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.)
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“The Kitab Alf Laylah wa-Laylah—‘The Book of the Thousand and One Nights’—has inspired countless films, musicals, and novels. The original tales are breathtakingly inventive, vulgar, and discursive, full of cliff-hanger action, scented with sex, royalty, and magic. Western scholars have been arguing over their origin, composition, and textual tradition for some 300 years, a debate animated by the schism between an eighteenth-century French translation of a Syrian manuscript and a later English translation of an Egyptian one. It seems clear that there is an ancient Persian, Indian, and Mesopotamian collection of stories at the core of ‘the Nights,’ which came together as a coherent whole in Arabic in ninth-century Baghdad, was then embroidered by Iraqi storytellers, and further embellished by tales added from the streets, cafes, and imaginations of the medieval cities of Egypt, North Africa, and Syria.
Long known as ‘The Thousand Nights,’ the collection did not become ‘A Thousand and One’ until the twelfth century. Curiously, too, many of the celebrated adventures such as ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ and ‘Aladdin and his Lamp’ were added at the very last ‘textual’ moment by the first French translator (Antoine Galland), sourced from a Maronite story-teller in Aleppo.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
“The classic form of Japanese poetry, fixed centuries ago, as five lines with 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables. It reduces, through the strict limits of its form, all poetic raw materials to the concentrated essence of one static event, image, mood, etc. An example by Saigo Hoshi:
Now indeed I know
That when we said “remember”
And we swore it so,
It was in “we will forget”
That our thoughts most truly met.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged asian-pacific history, poetry, readings/research
On the final day of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month for 2018, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mao Zedong (aka Mao Tse-Tung).
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
[N.B., please, that this Indian novelist is also known as Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay.]
“Indian novelist. One of Bengal’s finest novelists, Banerjee is largely concerned in his writings with the decay of the landlord class, and his sympathies lie with the oppressed peasantry. Most highly esteemed of his many books are Rai kamal (1934; tr The Eternal Locust, 1945) and Ganadevata (tr Temple Pavilion, 1969).”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged asian-pacific history, fiction/literature, readings/research
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Ganges River. Any study of or discussion of India or Indian culture would by definition require, I would think, knowledge of this river that is sacred to Hindus.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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