How can one construct relationality with the other through the skin, when touch is inevitably mediated by memories of previous contact, accumulated sensations, and interstitial space?

Between 1850 and 1940, with the rise of managerial capitalism in the United States, the most powerful businesses ceased to be family owned, instead becoming sprawling organizations controlled by complex bureaucracies. Sentimental literature—work written specifically to convey and inspire deep feeling—does not seem to fit with a swiftly bureaucratizing society. Surprisingly, though, sentimental language persisted in American literature, even as a culture of managed systems threatened to obscure the power of individual affect. The Sentimental Touch explores the strange, enduring power of sentimental language in the face of a rapidly changing culture. Analyzing novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, and Nathanael West, the book demonstrates that sentimental language changes but remains powerful, even in works by authors who self-consciously write against the sentimental tradition. Sentimental language has an afterlife, enduring in American literature long after authors and critics declared it dead, insisting that human feeling can resist a mechanizing culture and embodying, paradoxically, the way that literary conventions themselves become mechanical and systematic.

This book explores desire through the work of a new generation of Japanese women writers, in response to the increased attention these writers have received following the release of their work in the English language. The contributions explore a wide range of theoretical approaches and psychoanalytic interpretations to "reading" a new generation of Japanese women writers’ relationships to identity, sex/gender, and desire. Through dealing with female spaces, maternal roles, gendered bodies, or resistant speech acts, the book uncovers the overarching theme of desire – desire for language, touch, and recognition. Focusing on authors who have previously been underrepresented in English-language scholarship, the book highlights the diverse nature and the important synergies of writing by women in the last few decades. Addressing experimental and nonconforming authors whose works challenge gender and culture expectation as well as Orientalist myths, this will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Asian literature, Japanese culture, and Asian studies.

A material history of haptics technology that raises new questions about the relationship between touch and media Since the rise of radio and television, we have lived in an era defined increasingly by the electronic circulation of images and sounds. But the flood of new computing technologies known as haptic interfaces—which use electricity, vibration, and force feedback to stimulate the sense of touch—offering an alternative way of mediating and experiencing reality. In Archaeologies of Touch, David Parisi offers the first full history of these increasingly vital technologies, showing how the efforts of scientists and engineers over the past three hundred years have gradually remade and redefined our sense of touch. Through lively analyses of electrical machines, videogames, sex toys, sensory substitution systems, robotics, and human–computer interfaces, Parisi shows how the materiality of touch technologies has been shaped by attempts to transform humans into more efficient processors of information. With haptics becoming ever more central to emerging virtual-reality platforms (immersive bodysuits loaded with touch-stimulating actuators), wearable computers (haptic messaging systems like the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine), and smartphones (vibrations that emulate the feel of buttons and onscreen objects), Archaeologies of Touch offers a timely and provocative engagement with the long history of touch technology that helps us confront and question the power relations underpinning the project of giving touch its own set of technical media.

After finally leaving a bad marriage, Kate Welles Brock is living on her own terms, as a businessperson, as a woman. Mysterious philanthropist Paul Florian appreciates her in a way her overbearing family and ex-husband never did, his regard as genuine as his concern for the world’s needy. Kate would find him equally easy to love–if only he weren’t so secretive about his past. 3rd of the Welles’ sisters trilogy by Lynda Ward; originally published by Harlequin Superromance

The majority of research on human perception and action examines sensors and effectors in relative isolation. What is less often considered in these research domains is that humans interact with a perceived world in which they themselves are part of the perceptual representation, as are the positions and actions (potential or ongoing) of other acti

Interuniversalism is a science-based mystical practice based upon direct experience. It is the purpose and the ultimate goal of this practice to raise our collective consciousness to heal humanity at every level, answer basic questions about creation, and help humanity walk the path to inner completion. The Higher Consciousness is the intelligence running the universe. It is possible to receive visions, knowledge, and certain abilities through connecting with the Higher Consciousness. Connection with the Higher Consciousness through Interuniversalism is very practical. The first step taken in this practice is to manifest the ability to heal. The Higher Consciousness will help prevent, control, or completely cure the physical, mental, or psychological problems of the recipients. A Practical Guide to Interuniversalism is a translation of the original version of Interuniversalism/Erfan-Halgheh. This handbook is a guide for students of this unique practice. It is also a teaching guide for those who are already masters in this tradition. For the general public, this is a book of knowledge. However, to activate the links shared in this mystical practice registration in the course is required.