Category: General and Theory

Peter Burke, What Is the History of Knowledge? (Cambridge: Polity Press 2016) 160 pp. $19.95 Pb, $59.95 Hb. ISBN: 9780745669830 Peter Burke is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cambridge, and has published a large number of books on cultural and intellectual history. What Is the History of Knowledge? is one of…

Alexander Pollatsek and Rebecca Treiman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015) 520 pp. £132.50 Hb. ISBN: 9780199324576 The aim of The Oxford Handbook of Reading, which is edited by Alexander Pollatsek and Rebecca Treiman and belongs to the larger Oxford Library of Psychology series, is to explore research into ‘how…

Nicolás Salazar Sutil and Sita Popat (eds.) Digital Movement: Essays in Motion Technology and Performance (London: Palgrave 2015) xx + 317 pp. £55 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-137-43040-3 The study of digital movement, as propounded by the editors of this volume, treats the space between those monadic instances (specific times or places) in which alone humans can…

Daniel Dor, The Instruction of Imagination: Language as a Social Communication Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015) 280 pp. £56 Hb. ISBN: 978-0-19-025662-3 For anyone interested in language and how it works in modern day society, Dor offers a compelling account of competing positions in discourse linguistics. This text offers a socio-linguistic perspective on the…

Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures (New York: Columbia University Press 2016) 226 pp. $29.95 Hb. ISBN 978-0-231-179962-1. Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, as the name suggests, is a comprehensive synthesis of two schools of thought previously considered at best tenuously linked, at worst mutually exclusive. Kandel…

Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, Charley Baker, Victoria Tischler and Brian Abrams, Health Humanities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilan 2015) 194pp. £15.99 EPUB & PDF, £19.99 Pb, £58.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781137282606 How can studies in the arts and humanities influence, shape and inform our cultural understanding of health and healthcare-related activities? This is the main question animating Health…

Joseph P Huston, Marcos Nadal, Francisco Mora, Luigi F Agnati and Camilo J Cela-Conde (eds) Art, Aesthetics and the Brain (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015) 545 pp. £95 Hb. ISBN: 9780199670000 In the Preface to Art, Aesthetics and the Brain its editors boldly declare that ‘art is understandable in scientific terms.’ (v) Art and aesthetics…

Erik Parens, Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing and a Habit of Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014) 216pp. £16.99 Pb, £23.49 Hb. ISBN: 9780190211745 In Shaping Our Selves, Erik Parens, senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, urges against polarization in bioethics debates and calls for a truly cooperative and constructive endeavour in contemplating…

Hubert Zapf, Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts (London: Bloomsbury 2016) ix + 301 pp.  £29 Pb, £29 EPUB .  £73 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-350-051966 In Literature as Cultural Ecology, Hubert Zapf posits the ‘mutual interdependence between culture and nature’ as a ‘fundamental dimension of literary production and creativity’ (3).  Drawing on ‘the paradigm of cultural…