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Critical Theory and Science Fiction
Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory. Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readi...
Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville
This book offers (in the first six chapters) critical readings of six novels by China Miéville, which are followed (in the seventh chapter) by a theoretical meditation on some of the conceptual issues raised by and engaged in the Miéville oeuvre. There comes a moment in The City & the City, though it is not necessarily the same moment for every reader, when you realise that Beszel and Ul Qoma are not separate realms but the same space divided. Likewise, art and idea are often subject to absurd partition, but then along comes an author such as China Miéville who shows them to be, in truth, indissoluble. So argues Freedman's inordinately readable and just as rigorous account of Miéville's ...
Identity and Ritual
Fairacres Publications 188 In two thought-provoking essays Canon Griffiths reminds us that our identity as Christians is expressed through our language and focussed by the patterns of liturgical ritual that are in turn reflected in the architecture of the Christian church. Christian identity is particularly evident in the Eucharist and in our historical urge to keep watch in prayer, the practice of ‘vigil’, which plays such a prominent role in contemporary culture. By understanding our identity and our use of rituals we are able to step outside the constraints of time and proclaim that we are ready to respond to God when He reaches out to us.In two thought-provoking essays Canon Griffith...
Interpreting Cultures
This book focuses on how we perceive, know and interpret culture across disciplinary boundaries. The study combines theoretical and critical contexts for close readings in culture through discussions of literature, philosophy, history, psychology and visual arts by and about men and women in Europe, the Americas and beyond.
Dancing the Tao
Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development takes an original approach to Ursula K. Le Guin’s work – speculative fiction, poetry and children’s literature – by considering her Taoist upbringing and then looking through the lens of moral development theorists such as Carol Gilligan and Mary Field Belenky, and psychologists such as Lenore Terr and Jennifer J. Freyd. It is the most comprehensive approach to Le Guin’s moral thinking to date. A particular emphasis is put on Le Guin’s depiction of physical and sexual child abuse and its long term aftereffects such as post traumatic stress disorder. The focus throughout the book is on how morality develops through self-awareness and voice, how moral decisions are made and how Le Guin challenges readers to reconsider their own moral thinking. This book covers all of Le Guin’s major works such as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, the Earthsea Series, Always Coming Home, The Telling and Lavinia, and it also looks in depth at work that is rarely discussed such as Le Guin’s early work, her poetry, and her picture books.
Future West
What is the future of the American West? This book look at works of utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic science fiction to show how narratives of the past and future powerfully shape our understanding of the present-day West.
Surveying the American Tropics
A collection of essays from distinguished international scholars that explore the idea of a literary geography of the American Tropics.
Architecture and Science-Fiction Film
The home is one of our most enduring human paradoxes and is brought to light tellingly in science-fiction (SF) writing and film. However, while similarities and crossovers between architecture and SF have proliferated throughout the past century, the home is often overshadowed by the spectacle of 'otherness'. The study of the familiar (home) within the alien (SF) creates a unique cultural lens through which to reflect on our current architectural condition. SF has always been linked with alienation; however, the conditions of such alienation, and hence notions of home, have evidently changed. There is often a perceived comprehension of the familiar that atrophies the inquisitive and interpretive processes commonly activated when confronting the unfamiliar. Thus, by utilizing the estranging qualities of SF to look at a concept inherently linked to its perceived opposite - the home - a unique critical analysis with particular relevance for contemporary architecture is made possible.
The Age of Nixon
The fundamental argument this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant electoral success that he enjoyed for most of his career and in his ultimate defeat during the Watergate scandal; and, second and even more important, that these connections are symptomatic of many of the most important currents in American life. The book is not just a work of political history or political biography but a study of cultural power: that is, a study in the ways that culture shapes our politics and frames our sense of possibilities and values. In its application of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and other theoretical tools to the study of American electoral politics, and in a way designed for the general as well as for the academic reader, it is a new kind of book. ,
Science Fiction and The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science, warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result, science fiction film has unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction Film and the Abolition of Man, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book: how sci-fi portrays "Men without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man."
