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Earthrise tells the remarkable story of the first photographs of Earth from space and the totally unexpected impact of those images. The Apollo “Earthrise” and “Blue Marble” photographs were beamed across the world some forty years ago. They had an astounding effect, Robert Poole explains, and in fact transformed thinking about the Earth and its environment in a way that echoed throughout religion, culture, and science. Gazing upon our whole planet for the first time, we saw ourselves and our place in the universe with new clarity. Poole delves into new areas of research and looks at familiar history from fresh perspectives. With intriguing anecdotes and wonderful pictures, he examin...
The inspiring and fascinating biography of the sixth man to ever walk on the Moon Of the nearly seven billion people who live on Earth, only 12 have walked on the Moon and Dr. Edgar Mitchell was one of them. Earthrise is a vibrant memoir for young adults featuring the life story of this internationally known Apollo 14 astronaut. The book focuses on Edgar's amazing journey to the Moon in 1971 and highlights the many steps he took to get there, including growing up as a farm boy on a ranch; living in Roswell, New Mexico, during the alleged UFO crash; graduating from Carnegie Mellon and MIT; being a navy combat pilot; and becoming a NASA astronaut. In engaging and suspenseful prose he details his historic flight to the Moon, describing everything from the very practical—eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom in space—to the metaphysical, such as the life-changing sensation of connectedness to the universe that he felt and that has been described, in varying degrees, by many astronauts. Extensive resources include annotated lists of websites about space, museums and organizations, films and videos, and books for further reading.
Mid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology produced new understandings and images of the planet that circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and including the extinction of humankind. Whitmarsh examines works by write...
The compelling and little-known history of satellite communications that reveals the Soviet and Eastern European roles in the development of its infrastructure. Taking its title from Hannah Arendt’s description of artificial earth satellites, No Heavenly Bodies explores the history of the first two decades of satellite communications. Christine E. Evans and Lars Lundgren trace how satellite communications infrastructure was imagined, negotiated, and built across the Earth’s surface, including across the Iron Curtain. While the United States’ and European countries’ roles in satellite communications are well documented, Evans and Lundgren delve deep into the role the Soviet Union and ...
Bangladeshi Novels in English: Cultural Contact and Migrant Subjectivity is the first comprehensive study of Bangladeshi migration and diasporas through eight seminal Bangladeshi novels in English from the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Spiral Road, Farhana H. Rahman’s The Eye of the Heart, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Manzu Islam’s Burrow, Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles, Zia H. Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, and Tahmima Anam’s The Bones of Grace. The book situates the study within the English-language literary history and linguistic ethnography of Bangladesh while unveiling the complexities of Bangladeshi Muslim migration from men, women, and children’s perspectives. It challenges the stereotyping of Bengali Muslim migrants as a failure of immigration and multiculturalism and offers a fresh view on cultural contact and the formation of migrant subjectivity at the intersections of gender, race, religion, class, culture, ethnicity, history, politics, and personality.
Routledge International Handbook of Visual Research Methods in Anthropology approaches the question of method through conceptualisations of the visual world as light, sight, images and technologies of imaging that can be analysed and described through a range of visual practices in the course of anthropological research. The aim of the book is to move beyond making a case for the importance of “the visual” via its notional arrangement as a subject and means of study in anthropology by showing how it is applied as a way of doing anthropological research through the explication of a series of examples. Employing an innovative structure for a handbook, each contribution is orientated around...
This timely, comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume advances an original argument about the complex roots and multiple politics of globality. It shows that technological innovations and decisive developments since 1945 – from the nuclear revolution to anthropogenic climate change and debates about the Anthropocene – have prompted reflections on the global condition of humanity and helped reshape political communities by making the world (appear) small, manageable and interconnected. The contributors stress how human beings have transformed both their habitat and their view of human-earth relations since 1945. Such changes have been accompanied by important shifts in political visions...
Thirty years in the making, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. In a world of Quantum science, Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona, the Poet of the Moon, on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach a new global, universal vision of life. One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another ...
Focusing on the ‘postinternet’ art of the 2010s, this volume explores the widespread impact of recent internet culture on the formal and conceptual concerns of contemporary art. The ‘postinternet’ art movement is splintered and loosely defined, both in terms of its form and its politics, and has come under significant critique for this reason. This study will provide this definition, offering a much-needed critical context for this period of artistic activity that has had and is still having a major impact on contemporary culture. The book presents a picture of what the art and culture made within and against the constraints of the online experience look, sound, and feel like. It includes works by Petra Cortright, Jon Rafman, Jordan Wolfson, DIS, Amalia Ulman, and Thomas Ruff, and presents new analyses of case studies drawn from the online worlds of the 2010s, including vaporwave, anonymous image board culture, ‘irony bros’ and ‘edgelords’, viral extreme sports stunts, and GIFs. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, and digital culture.
Artistic, literary, and technological depictions of the climate crisis and how they influence humanity’s response What does it mean to watch a disaster unfold? Does exposure to a source of dread spur people to action or lull them into fatalism and complacency? Andrew Kalaidjian takes up these and other vital questions in Spectacle Earth, a lively and wide-ranging consideration of media engagement, passivity, and virtual environments in relation to ecological crises and climate change. Kalaidjian begins by tracing the long trajectory of environmental aesthetics and natural sciences that have led up to the Anthropocene. He then looks at the lessons learned from artist and activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s before laying out the new challenges in the digital age of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and virtual reality. The result is groundbreaking, offering readers a new media literacy that goes beyond individual therapeutic experience to provide forms of expression that can lead to the sorts of solidarity and connection needed to change the planet for the better.