A discussion of current practices in modern dance training

An experienced anthologist and teacher has put together an immensely powerful group of poems, all of which address a unifying theme of major interest to teens--the body.

An investigation of the embodied engagement between the playing body and the videogame: how player and game incorporate each other. Our bodies engage with videogames in complex and fascinating ways. Through an entanglement of eyes-on-screens, ears-at-speakers, and muscles-against-interfaces, we experience games with our senses. But, as Brendan Keogh argues in A Play of Bodies, this corporal engagement goes both ways; as we touch the videogame, it touches back, augmenting the very senses with which we perceive. Keogh investigates this merging of actual and virtual bodies and worlds, asking how our embodied sense of perception constitutes, and becomes constituted by, the phenomenon of videogame play. In short, how do we perceive videogames? Keogh works toward formulating a phenomenology of videogame experience, focusing on what happens in the embodied engagement between the playing body and the videogame, and anchoring his analysis in an eclectic series of games that range from mainstream to niche titles. Considering smartphone videogames, he proposes a notion of co-attentiveness to understand how players can feel present in a virtual world without forgetting that they are touching a screen in the actual world. He discusses the somatic basis of videogame play, whether games involve vigorous physical movement or quietly sitting on a couch with a controller; the sometimes overlooked visual and audible pleasures of videogame experience; and modes of temporality represented by character death, failure, and repetition. Finally, he considers two metaphorical characters: the “hacker,” representing the hegemonic, masculine gamers concerned with control and configuration; and the “cyborg,” less concerned with control than with embodiment and incorporation.

How to Do Things with Dead People studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Alice Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare's English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for producing, reproducing, and interacting with dead things—technologies such as literary doppelgängers, photography, ventriloquist puppetry, X-ray imaging, glitch art, capital punishment machines, and cloning. By situating Shakespeare's historical drama in this intermedial conversation, Dailey challenges conventional assumptions about what constitutes the context of a work of art and contests foundational models of linear temporality that inform long-standing conceptions of historical periodization and teleological order. Working from an eclectic body of theories, pictures, and machines that transcend time and media, Dailey composes a searching exploration of how the living use the dead to think back and look forward, to rule, to love, to wish and create.

"The Natural Eclectic offers a glimpse into the inspiring world of West-Coast artist, photographer and stylist Heather Ross. Through her stunning photos and philosophical explorations on beauty, nature and design, Heather shows how to bring a nature-inspired aesthetic to life. Readers who want to style their own spaces can glean from Heather's knowledge of European flea markets and her sustainable approach to foraging for both vintage and natural treasures. With the same artist's touch she brings to her much loved boutique, she shares professional styling tips on creating engaging displays and vignettes through the art of placement. Known for her serene color palette described as "where the sea meets the shore," Heather also sheds light on the subtle use of color. This book is a visual feast that will delight and inspire."--

"What is the biological urgency of moving human beings forward in history? The carnal desire for sex. In that, hormones play an important role. They're in the body like a software obliging people to perpetuate their genes. Thus, love exists as an illusion produced by the software I've mentioned. The second factor in the origins of love is, socio-cultural forces. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm talking about love as a social custom. Each culture has its own way of interpreting love. Some view virginity as something special; others don't. In some, women take the initiative to choose a spouse; in others, men do. All romantic rituals leading up to marriage fall within that category. Love is a social construct. Nevertheless, while there are distinct cultural practices, the end is always the same: to put two or three people together to perpetuate the genetic makeup." This is what a Character on this novel thinks.