Mediating Nature considers how technology acts as a mediating device in the construction and circulation of images that inform how we see and know nature. Scholarship in environmental communication has focused almost exclusively on verbal rather than visual rhetoric, and this book engages ecocritical and ecocompositional inquiry to shift focus onto the making of images. Contributors to this dynamic collection focus their efforts on the intersections of digital media and environmental/ecological thinking. Part of the book’s larger argument is that analysis of mediations of nature must develop more critical tools of analysis toward the very mediating technologies that produce such media. That is, to truly understand mediations of nature, one needs to understand the creation and production of those mediations, right down to the algorithms, circuit boards, and power sources that drive mediating technologies. Ultimately, Mediating Nature contends that ecological literacy and environmental politics are inseparable from digital literacies and visual rhetorics. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the fields of Ecocriticism, Ecocomposition, Media Ecology, Visual Rehtoric, and Digital Literacy Studies.

The Romantic era in England and Germany saw a sudden renewal of prophetic modes of writing. Biblical prophecy and, to a lesser extent, classical oracle again became viable models for poetry and even for journalistic prose. Notably, this development arose out of the new-found freedom of biblical interpretation that began in the mid-eighteenth century, as the Bible was increasingly seen to be a literary and mythical text. Taking Walter Benjamin’s thinking about history as a point of departure, the author shows how the model for Romantic prophecy emerges less as a prediction of the future than as a call to change in the present, even as it quotes, at key turns, texts from the past. After surveying developments in eighteenth-century biblical hermeneutics, as well as the numerous instances of prophetic eruption in Romantic poetry, the book culminates in close readings of works by Blake, Hölderlin, and Coleridge. Each of these writers interpreted the Bible in strong, variously radical and conservative ways, and each reworked prophetic texts in often startling fashion. The author’s reading of Blake focuses on the complex temporal and rhetorical dynamics at work in a prophetic tradition, with attention paid to the key mediating figure of Milton. The chapter on Hölderlin investigates the truth-claim of poetry and the consequences of Hölderlin’s insight into the necessarily figural character of poetry. The analysis of Coleridge correlates his theory of allegory and symbol with his theory and practice of political writing, which often relies on mobilizing prophetic authority. Together, the readings force us to reexamine the claims and practices of Romantic poets and thinkers and their ideas and ideologies, not without engendering some allegorical resonance with issues in our own time.

This book is a hands-on description of the application of the methods developed by Professor Reuven Feuerstein to remediate and elaborate the skills and functions of young children who are experiencing a variety of learning disabilities and delays, based on his theories of structural cognitive modifiability (SCM) and the application of mediated learning experience (MLE). The lead author is an experienced educational therapist who has worked with a variety of children, initially in the Feuerstein Institute (formerly the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential [ICELP]) in Jerusalem, Israel. This experience under the supervision of Professor Feuerstein and his staff is the basis for the content of this book. Her case studies have been elaborated to illustrate examples of the creative potential in the application of the methodology incorporating mediated learning experience (MLE) into learning activities designed to be effective with a variety of learning dysfunctions. The chapter format highlights important insights in identifying difficulties and resolving them. This book describes how MLE can be used to formulate insightful and creative interventions that make a difference through the structural cognitive modifiability of very low-functioning children. After initial chapters establish the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the Feuerstein approach, the subsequent chapters present interventions provided for children presenting a variety of learning difficulties. The book will be appropriate for several potential audiences: (1) teachers and parents who interact with special-needs children and who are seeking effective interventions to improve educational performance, (2) clinicians seeking a broadening of their therapeutic repertoires, and (3) scholars who are familiar with or wishing to gain understanding of the implementation of structural cognitive modifiability (SCM) and mediated learning experience (MLE) that was formulated and elaborated by Professor Feuerstein.

This volume explores the diversity of distributed eyes and other unusual visual systems in nature. It compares the unique themes of optics, neural processing, and behavioral control that emerge from these visual systems with more-canonical eyes. This volume attempts to answer a number of questions about distributed visual systems. What are distributed visual systems good for, how do they function, and why have they arisen independently in so many phyla? Why are eye designs and visual system arrangements much more diverse in invertebrates? Each chapter includes an overview of the visual systems that exist in their group of animals, relates vision to ecology, and takes a comparative approach.

Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century offers new interpretations of figures emerging from representations of terrorism and counterterrorism: the male hero, female agent, religious leader, victim/perpetrator, and survivor. This collection of essays by a broad array of international scholars reflects the altered image-making processes that have developed from George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” Building on current literature on media and terrorism, this volume analyzes the most recent technological developments that have impacted the way we experience terrorism: online videos, social media, cartoons, media feeds, and drones. The authors address different time periods, different terrorist groups, and explore the way filmmakers and television producers from the USA, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East are documenting modern wars in popular culture.

Originally published in 1938, this book presents a discussion regarding the nature of auditory and visual sensation. The text focuses mainly on the nature of the perceptual process. As Rawdon-Smith notes in the preface, 'I wish to be concerned more with the mechanism whereby our sensations arise than with what our sense organs can do.' Illustrative figures and a detailed bibliography are also contained. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in sensory perception and the history of science.