This article considers the theoretical and practice-based evidence for the therapeutic effects of the shared reading of literature (poetry, fiction, plays, short stories) in prison communities. Taking as its starting point recent research and practice relating to the successful intervention ('Get into Reading') pioneered by UK charity The Reader Organisation, the article situates the components of this model in the context of established theories of reader response, as well as new research on reading and the brain. Yet its focus is always shared reading in practice and, through specific examples and testimony from prisoners and those who read with them (including health professionals), the article demonstrates the vital relation of this intervention to current recommendations in respect of the mental health needs of prisoners. It also offers a possible model for future interdisciplinary research in this field.

J.G. Ballard's early novels The Drowned World (1962) and The Crystal World (1966) take a climatological approach to apocalyptic dystopia. This has led survey studies of climate fiction to identify these novels as founding texts of the genre. Yet Ballard wrote in an era before global warming had been identified by climate scientists, and his fiction is as much psychological and ontological as it is physiological. Ballard both adheres to and deviates from the global warming narrative now accepted by contemporary climatology, working within and beyond the SF subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction. This paper assesses the extent to which these dystopian narratives can be understood as climate fiction and explores the debt that more recent cli-fi may owe to Ballard.

Henry stood groaning in front of the pigeonholes, holding out a letter in one hand in passable imitation of Hamlet. ‘Good news from your agent?’ asked Dr Bee. ‘Agent, what agent?’ said Henry. ‘My agent is a secret agent. She doesn’t reveal her existence to me or mine to any publisher. No, there’s this letter saying Rollo said to get in touch with me and thanking me for arranging lunch and I can’t read the signature. Can’t remember arranging any lunch’.

A social warrant is a collectively sanctioned understanding of obligations and entitlements that has the force of law, even though it is rarely written down. Social warrants author and authorize new ways of knowing and new ways of being; they challenge and transform what is permitted and what is forbidden. The social warrant of the Fourteenth Amendment opened the door to equality for many more people than the slaves and their descendants. Yet the triumph of abolition democracy did not destroy the regime of white male propertied power. Social warrants do not only succeed one another, they answer one another, contest one another, and constrain one another. The social warrant of white male Protestant propertied power in the United States is not simply the mal-distribution of rights, resources, and recognition, but also a systemic structured advantage, a way of life and a world view. Most important at this particular moment of danger, the social warrant of white male Protestant propertied power perpetuates itself through state sponsorship of spectacle, sensation, and sentiment connected to the war on terrorism.

This article examines interpretations of the ideal media corporation by analysing corporate social responsibility engagement and communication of the largest media organisations in the world between 2000 and 2009. The study found that CSR engagement and communication are relatively limited and narrow among these firms, hence it is not surprising that public trust about them is low and perceptions of these organisations as 'demons' to society are widespread. Although CSR communication of multinational media companies has increased during the last decade, this was from a very low level of reporting and likely to have been mainly the result of organisations in the sector responding to a general trend in the corporate world towards a greater emphasis on CSR. The article argues that the increase in CSR communication arguably is part of a PR effort to improve the companies' image rather than a genuine transformation of the organisations to try to live up to the expectations of the ideal media corporation.