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This trans-historical collection explores analogue performance technologies from Ancient Greece to pre-Second World War. From ancient mechanical elephants to early modern automata, Enlightenment electrical experiments to Victorian spectral illusions, this volume offers an original examination of the precursors of contemporary digital performance.
The automaton, known today as the robot, can be seen as a metaphor for the historical period in which it is explored. Chapters include examinations of Iconoclasm's fear that art might surpass nature, the Cartesian mind/body divide, automata as objects of courtly desire, the uncanny Olympia, and the revolutionary Robots in post-WWI drama.
*** A stylish addition to the current craze for indoor greenery, this is as much about how you use plants as an integral part of contemporary decor as how to keep them alive and well. - The Sunday Times Houseplants are hot, and creative interior planting is becoming increasingly easy to achieve. The new wave of unusual and dramatic indoor plants is as much about décor and statement as greenery. Used aesthetically, as a focal point and sculptural element in interior design, indoor gardening is not just about possessing or growing a plant, but about using it as an accessory combined with other objects to create a particular style and mood. In this much-needed book, now reissued with a new cover and updated source directory, Ian and Kara show you how to transform your home with plants and tells you which plants will work best where and how to care for them. From strikingly geometric terrariums to pretty hanging baskets, practical herb pots and colourful window displays, this book is packed full of exciting and gorgeous ideas. Specially commissioned photography by Nick Pope throughout proves that bringing the outdoors in really is the best form of interior design.
For most of the eighteenth century, automata were deemed a celebration of human ingenuity, feats of science and reason. Among the Romantics, however, they prompted a contradictory apprehension about mechanization and contrivance: such science and engineering threatened the spiritual nature of life, the source of compassion in human society. A deep dread of puppets and the machinery that propels them consequently surfaced in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century literature. Romantic Automata is a collection of essays examining the rise of this cultural suspicion of mechanical imitations of life. Recent scholarship in post-humanism, post-colonialism, disability studies, post-modern feminism, eco-criticism, and radical Orientalism has significantly affected the critical discourse on this topic. In engaging with the work and thought of Coleridge, Poe, Hoffmann, Mary Shelley, and other Romantic luminaries, the contributors to this collection open new methodological approaches to understanding human interaction with technology that strives to simulate, supplement, or supplant organic life. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
"Gas Mask Nation explores Japanese daily life during the widespread culture of civil defense that emerged through fifteen years of war, beginning with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and only ending with Japan's decisive defeat in WWII. This fifteen-year period involved intense social mobilization and the militarization of citizens. As in nearly every war since the invention of the airplane, surveillance, secrecy, and physical safety became visual symbols of national preparedness and anxiety. Everybody was vulnerable, always. And everybody had a role to play. Prevailing scholarship tends to portray the war years in Japan as a landscape of privation where consumer and popular culture we...
From film and television theory to intertextuality, poststructuralism to queer theory, postcolonialism to meme theory, a host of contemporary theories in the humanities have engaged with adaptation studies. Yet theorizing adaptation has been deemed problematic in the humanities' theoretical and disciplinary wars, been charged with political incorrectness by both conservative and radical scholars, and declared outdated and painfully behind the times compared to other disciplines. And even separate from these problems of theorization is adaptation's subject matter - with many film adaptations of literature widely and simply declared "bad." In this thorough and groundbreaking study, author Kami...
This book critically assesses the artistry of contemporary directors. Its discussion includes the work of Declan Donnellan, Thomas Ostermeier, Deborah Warner, Simon Stone and Krzysztof Warlikowski. Alongside the work of wider theorists (Patrice Pavis and Erika Fischer-Lichte), it uses neuroaesthetic theory (Semir Zeki) and cognitive and creative process models to offer an original means to discuss the performance event, emotion, brain structures and concepts, and the actor’s body in performance. It offers first-hand observation of rehearsals led by Katie Mitchell, Ivo van Hove, Carrie Cracknell and the Steppenwolf Theatre. It also explores devising in relation to the work of Simon McBurney and contemporary groups, and scenography in relation to the work of Dmitry Krymov, Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage. The Director and Directing argues that the director creates a type of knowledge, ‘reward’ and ‘resonant experience’ (G. Gabrielle Starr) through instinctive and expert choices.
"Challenging the binary categories of "new play" and "production" dramaturgy, this book offers both a theoretical model for understanding adaptation for the stage and a practical guide for dramaturgs and others involved in the creation of theatrical adaptations"--
Bringing together a multidisciplinary group of scholars, this collection examines the Victorians' profound fascination with automata.
This book focuses on how we understand COVID-19—medically, socially, and rhetorically. Given the expectation that other flu pandemics will occur, it stresses the importance of examining how the public response is shaped in the face of global health emergencies. It considers questions such as how can pandemic language both limit and expand our understanding of disease as biomedical, social, and experiential? In what ways can health communication be improved through the study and application of rhetoric and the health humanities? COVID Communication fills a gap in the pandemic literature by promoting interdisciplinary analysis of communication methods, realized through a health humanities ap...