Culler (English and comparative literature, Cornell) begins with an historical overview of the relationship between criticism and the academy and explores what has come to characterize contemporary theory. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

films. --Book Jacket.

Culler (English and comparative literature, Cornell) begins with an historical overview of the relationship between criticism and the academy and explores what has come to characterize contemporary theory. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDALIST — BODY, MIND, SPIRIT PRACTICES “Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase . . . provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.” —Midwest Book Review In this bold new book, high-tech’s best-known strategist makes a seminal contribution to the search for meaning in a secular era. Two questions fundamental to human existence have always been the metaphysical “where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?” and the ethical “how should I behave?” Religion is no longer a source of answers for many people, and nothing has replaced it. Moore uses his signature framework-based approach to answer these questions, taking us on an intellectual roller coaster ride through physics, chemistry, biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Along the way, he builds a metaphorical ladder that leads from the big bang to the need for ethical action in our daily lives. Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.

What patterns emerge in media coverage and character depiction of Southern men and women, blacks and whites, in the years between 1954 and 1976? Allison Graham examines the ways in which the media, particularly television and film, presented Southerners during the civil rights revolution.

This book examines the forces that shape psychoactive drug use. The approach, informed by poststructuralist semiotics, culture, phenomenology and contemporary theories of affect, illuminates the connections between drugs, bodies, space, economy and crime.

Framing Consciousness in Art examines how the conscious mind enacts and processes the frame that both surrounds the work of art yet is also shown as an element inside its space. These `frames-in-frames¿ may be seen in works by Teniers, Velázquez, Vermeer, Degas, Rodin, and Cartier-Bresson and in the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Buñuel. The book also deals with framing in a variety of cultural contexts: Indian, Chinese and African, going beyond Euro-American formalist and aesthetic concerns which dominate critical theories of the frame.

The concept of framing has been pivotal in research on social interaction among anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and linguists. This collection shows how the discourse analysis of frames can be applied to a range of social contexts. Tannen provides a seminal theoretical framework for conceptualizing the relationship between frames and schemas as well as a methodology for the discourse analysis of framing in interaction. Each chapter makes a unique theoretical contribution to frames theory while showing how discourse analysis can elucidate the linguistic means by which framing is accomplished in a particular interactional setting. Applied to such a wide range of contexts as a medical examination, psychotic discourse, gender differences in sermon performance, boys' "sportscasting" their own play, teasing among friends, a comparison of Japanese and American discussion groups, and sociolinguistic interviews, the discourse analysis of framing emerges here as a fruitful new avenue for interaction analysis.

From its origins in the Midwest in the early nineteenth century, the technique of light timber framing-also known at the time as "Chicago construction"-quickly came to underwrite the territorial and ideological expansion of the United States. Softwood construction was inherently practical, as its materials were readily available and required little skill to assemble. The result was a built environment that erased typological and class distinctions: no amount of money can buy you a better 2 x 4. This fundamental sameness paradoxically underlies the American culture of individuality, unifying all superficial differences. It has been both a cause and effect of the country's high regard for novelty, in contrast with the stability that is often assumed to be essential to architecture. American Framing is a visual and textual exploration of the social, environmental, and architectural conditions and consequences of this ubiquitous form of construction. For architecture, it offers a story of an American project that is bored with tradition, eager to choose economy over technical skill, and accepting of a relaxed idea of craft in the pursuit of something useful and new-the forming of an architecture that enables architecture.

The economic crisis of 2008–2009 was a transformational event: it demonstrated that smart people aren't as smart as they and the public think. The crisis arose because a lot of highly educated people in high-impact positions— political power brokers, business leaders, and large segments of the general public—made a lot of bad decisions despite unprecedented access to data, highly sophisticated decision support systems, methodological advances in the decision sciences, and guidance from highly experienced experts. How could we get things so wrong? The answer, says J. Davidson Frame in Framing Decisions: Decision Making That Accounts for Irrationality, People, and Constraints, is that traditional processes do not account for the three critical immeasurable elements highlighted in the book's subtitle— irrationality, people, and constraints. Frame argues that decision-makers need to move beyond their single-minded focus on rational and optimal solutions as preached by the traditional paradigm. They must accommodate a decision's social space and address the realities of dissimulation, incompetence, legacy, greed, peer pressure, and conflict. In the final analysis, when making decisions of consequence, they should focus on people – both as individuals and in groups. Framing Decisions offers a new approach to decision making that gets decision-makers to put people and social context at the heart of the decision process. It offers guidance on how to make decisions in a real world filled with real people seeking real solutions to their problems.