The Body of Writing: An Erotics of Contemporary American Fiction examines four postmodern texts whose authors play with the material conventions of "the book": Joseph McElroy's Plus (1977), Carole Maso's AVA (1993), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's DICTEE (1982), and Steve Tomasula's VAS (2003). By demonstrating how each of these works calls for an affirmative engagement with literature, Flore Chevaillier explores a centrally important issue in the criticism of contemporary fiction. Critics have claimed that experimental literature, in its disruption of conventional story-telling and language uses, resists literary and social customs. While this account is accurate, it stresses what experimental texts respond to more than what they offer. This book proposes a counter-view to this emphasis on the strictly privative character of innovative fictions by examining experimental works' positive ideas and affects, as well as readers' engagement in the formal pleasure of experimentations with image, print, sound, page, orthography, and syntax. Elaborating an erotics of recent innovative literature implies that we engage in the formal pleasure of its experimentations with signifying techniques and with the materiality of their medium. Such engagement provokes a fusion of the reader's senses and the textual material, which invites a redefinition of corporeality as a kind of textual practice.

This unique encyclopedia explores the historical and contemporary controversies between science and religion. It is designed to offer multicultural and multi-religious views, and provide wide-ranging perspectives. Science, Religion, and Society covers all aspects of the religion and science dichotomy, from humanities to social sciences to natural sciences, and includes articles by theologians, religion scholars, physicians, scientists, historians, and psychologists, among others.

How should we think about religion, science, and their relationship in modern society? Some religious groups oppose evolution; some atheists claim science is on their side. Others reconcile their beliefs with science, or consider science and faith to deal with fundamentally different aspects of human life. What indeed is religion: belief or trust in God’s existence? How do we distinguish sense from superstition? What does science have to say on such issues? Willem B. Drees considers contemporary discussions of these issues in Europe and North America, using examples from Christianity and religious naturalism, and reflections on Islam and Tibetan Buddhism. He argues that the scientific understanding leaves open certain ultimate questions, and thus allows for belief in a creator, but also for religious naturalism or serious agnosticism. By analysing the place of values in a world of facts, and the quest for meaningful stories in a material world, Religion and Science in Context offers an original and self-critical analysis of the field, its assumptions and functions, and ends with a vision of its possible future.

Science and Magic in the Modern World is a unique text that explores the role of magical thinking in everyday life. It provides an excellent psychological look at the subconscious belief in magic in both popular culture and society, as well as experimental research that considers human consciousness as a derivative of belief in the supernatural, thus showing that our feelings, emotions, attitudes and other psychological processes follow the laws of magic. This book synthesises the science of ‘natural’ phenomena and the magic of the ‘supernatural’ to present an interesting look at the juxtaposition of the inner and outer selves. Fusing research into psychological disorders, subconscious feelings, as well as the rising presence of artificial intelligence, this book demonstrates how an engagement with magical thinking can enhance one’s creativity and cognitive skills. Science and Magic in the Modern World is an invaluable resource for those studying consciousness, as well as those looking at the effect of magical thinking on religion, politics, science and society.

The past quarter-century has seen an explosion of interest in the history of science and religion. But all too often the scholars writing it have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Christian experience, with only passing reference to other traditions of both science and faith. At a time when religious ignorance and misunderstanding have lethal consequences, such provincialism must be avoided and, in this pioneering effort to explore the historical relations of what we now call "science" and "religion," the authors go beyond the Abrahamic traditions to examine the way nature has been understood and manipulated in regions as diverse as ancient China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Science and Religion around the World also provides authoritative discussions of science in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- as well as an exploration of the relationship between science and the loss of religious beliefs. The narratives included in this book demonstrate the value of plural perspectives and of the importance of location for the construction and perception of science-religion relations.

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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.