Knowledge production in academia today is burgeoning and increasingly interdisciplinary in nature. Research within the humanities is no exception: it is distributed across a variety of methodic styles of research and increasingly involves interactions with fields outside the narrow confines of the university. As a result, the notion of liberal arts and humanities within Western universities is undergoing profound transformations. In Mapping Frontier Research in the Humanities, the contributors explore this transformative process. What are the implications, both for the modes of research and for the organisation of the humanities and higher education? The volume explores the intra- and extra-academic engagement of humanities researchers, their styles of research, and exemplifies their interdisciplinary character. The humanities are shaping debates about culture and identity, but how? Has neuroscience changed the humanities? What do they tell us about 'hypes' and economic 'bubbles'? What is their international agenda? Drawing on a number of case studies from the humanities, the perceived divide between classical and 'post-academic' modes of research can be captured by a republican theory of the humanities. Avoiding simple mechanical metrics, the contributors suggest a heuristic appreciation of different types of impact and styles of research. From this perspective, a more composite picture of research on human culture, language and history emerges. It goes beyond “rational agents”, and situates humanities research in more complex landscapes of collective identities, networks, and constraints that open for new forms of intellectual leadership in the 21st century.

Religion and the Philosophy of Life considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. Gavin Flood offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part one contemplates fundamental questions and assumptions: what the current state of knowledge is concerning life itself; what the philosophical issues are in that understanding; and how we can explain religion as the driving force of civilizations in the context of human development within an evolutionary perspective. It also addresses the question of the emergence of religion and presents a related study of sacrifice as fundamental to religions' views about life and its transformation. Part two offers a reading of religions in three civilizational blocks--India, China, and Europe/the Middle East--particularly as they came to formation in the medieval period. It traces the history of how these civilizations have thematised the idea of life itself. Part three then takes up the idea of a life force in part three and traces the theme of the philosophy of life through to modern times. On the one hand, the book presents a narrative account of life itself through the history of civilizations, and on the other presents an explanation of that narrative in terms of life.

The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History provides an up-to-date guide for the historian working within the growing field of animal-human history. Giving a sense of the diversity and interdisciplinary nature of the field, cutting-edge contributions explore the practices of and challenges posed by historical studies of animals and animal-human relationships. Divided into three parts, the Companion takes both a theoretical and practical approach to a field that is emerging as a prominent area of study. Animals and the Practice of History considers established practices of history, such as political history, public history and cultural memory, and how animal-human history can contribute to them. Problems and Paradigms identifies key historiographical issues to the field with contributors considering the challenges posed by topics such as agency, literature, art and emotional attachment. The final section, Themes and Provocations, looks at larger themes within the history of animal-human relationships in more depth, with contributions covering topics that include breeding, war, hunting and eating. As it is increasingly recognised that nonhuman actors have contributed to the making of history, The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History provides a timely and important contribution to the scholarship on animal-human history and surrounding debates.

Clandestine Philosophy is the first work in English entirely focused on the philosophical clandestine manuscripts that preceded and accompanied the birth of the Enlightenment.

The study of symbols has long been considered a necessary field to unravel concealed meanings in symbols and images. These methods have since established themselves as staples in various fields of psychology, anthropology, computer science, and cognitive science. Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric is a critical academic publication that examines communication through images and symbols and the methods by which researchers and scientists analyze these images and symbols. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics, such as material culture, congruity theory, and social media, this publication is geared toward academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on images, symbols, and how to analyze them.

This book consists of an edited collection of original essays of the highest academic quality by seasoned experts in their fields of cognitive science. The essays are interdisciplinary, drawing from many of the fields known collectively as “the cognitive sciences.” Topics discussed represent a significant cross-section of the most current and interesting issues in cognitive science. Specific topics include matters regarding machine learning and cognitive architecture, the nature of cognitive content, the relationship of information to cognition, the role of language and communication in cognition, the nature of embodied cognition, selective topics in visual cognition, brain connectivity, computation and simulation, social and technological issues within the cognitive sciences, and significant issues in the history of neuroscience. This book will be of interest to both professional researchers and newer students and graduate students in the fields of cognitive science—including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. The essays are in English and are designed to be as free as possible of technical jargon and therefore accessible to young scholars and to scholars who are new to the cognitive neurosciences. In addition to several entries by single authors, the book contains several interesting roundtables where researchers contribute answers to a central question presented to those in the focus group on one of the core areas listed above. This exciting approach provides a variety of perspectives from across disciplines on topics of current concern in the cognitive sciences.

CiteSpace is a freely available computer program written in Java for visualizing and analyzing literature of a scientific domain. A knowledge domain is broadly defined in order to capture the notion of a logically and cohesively organized body of knowledge. It may range from specific topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder to fields of study lacking clear-cut boundaries, such as research on terrorism or regenerative medicine. CiteSpace takes bibliographic information, especially citation information from the Web of Science, and generates interactive visualizations. Users can explore various patterns and trends uncovered from scientific publications, and develop a good understanding of scientific literature much more efficiently than they would from an unguided search through literature. The full text of many scientific publications can be accessed with a single click through the interactive visualization in CiteSpace. At the end of a session, CiteSpace can generate a summary report to summarize key information about the literature analyzed. This book is a practical guide not only on how to operate the tool but also on why the tool is designed and what implications of various patterns that require special attention. This book is written with a minimum amount of jargon. It uses everyday language to explain what people may learn from the writings of scholars of all kinds.

Drawing on the expertise of leading researchers from around the globe, this pioneering collection of essays explores how geospatial technologies are revolutionizing the discipline of literary studies. The book offers the first intensive examination of digital literary cartography, a field whose recent and rapid development has yet to be coherently analysed. This collection not only provides an authoritative account of the current state of the field, but also informs a new generation of digital humanities scholars about the critical and creative potentials of digital literary mapping. The book showcases the work of exemplary literary mapping projects and provides the reader with an overview of the tools, techniques and methods those projects employ.

Psychedelics are part of a resurgence of interest in consciousness studies, especially as altered states of consciousness are being re-examined in the context of psychedelic-assisted therapies. To date, discussions about psychedelics in modern medicine have been dominated by studies in biomedicine. However, given that cultural factors play a significant role in the subjective effects of psychedelics, psychedelics can be considered a uniquely powerful point of convergence between the cultural and biomedical. Writers and artists, alongside psychiatrists and pharmacologists, have participated in shaping ‘the psychedelic experience’ by drawing on a rich set of approaches that blend narrative, arts, and humanities concepts to explain and interpret psychedelic experiences and explore consciousness for creative purposes. Psychedelic studies, past and present, emphasize the importance of ‘set and setting’ or the context of psychedelic consumption and its paramount importance in shaping psychedelic experiences. These non-pharmacological factors rely on a different set of methods and interpretations that necessarily rely on studies conducted outside of the biomedical sciences.