What Images Really Tell Us


Book Description

The author delivers an account of how to use the images to deliver the intended meaning.




What the Bible Really Tells Us


Book Description

Provides the general public and undergraduates with an introductory level text in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.




What Do Pictures Want?


Book Description

Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm. What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike. “A treasury of episodes—generally overlooked by art history and visual studies—that turn on images that ‘walk by themselves’ and exert their own power over the living.”—Norman Bryson, Artforum




What the Bible Really Tells Us


Book Description

So many of us grow up being constantly reminded about an all-forgiving, merciful, and beneficent deity. All throughout life, it can even be drummed into us that we cannot live happy, purposeful lives without a heavenly father who protects us and grants our wishes through prayer. And if things dont go according to plan, then we are simply told that God works in mysterious ways! But what if we have more questions? What if these things we are being told, taught, and even sold just dont live up to expectation? What the Bible Really Tells Us looks to the very source of many of these doctrines and teachings about divinity and human naturethe Judeo-Christian Biblein order to unveil some of the reasons why the same questions about God, his nature, and biblical history often reveal different (and sometimes inconsistent or even contradictory) answers. Exploring issues related to Gods nature such as his character, qualities, and attributes, as well as investigating biblical events and figures like Adam and Eve and creation, Noah and the flood, and Abraham and his chosen lineage. It asks us not only to think critically about the factual discrepancies and oddities but also to question why this biblical Godor gods, as it may beis in fact so similar to ourselves. The Bible was written thousands and thousands of years ago, but everybody has been conditioned and told to believe it regardless of the factsand sometimes even regardless of the often contradictory and inconsistent passages in the Bible itself! Faced with an idiosyncratic God and an incongruous book, we can study What the Bible Really Tells Us and confront a challenging thought: Did God create us, or did we create him?




Look Both Ways


Book Description

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--




Gringolandia


Book Description

Mexico's views of the United States have been characterized as stridently anti-American, but recent policy changes in Mexico-culminating with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-mark a fundamental transformation in the relationship. This thoughtful and original work answers questions about the impact of these policy shifts on Mexican nationalism and perceptions of the United States. Have popular and elite views changed? Has the government's anti-American rhetoric become anachronistic? What has been the effect on Mexican national identity? As the only developing country to have entered into a free trade agreement with a developed country, Mexico offers a unique and invaluable case study of the impact of globalization on a nation and its national identity. Exploring Mexico's experience also allows us to consider how other countries perceive the United States, especially in the post-9/11 climate. Analyzing the diversity of Mexican views of the United States, Gringolandia contributes a rich and nuanced dimension to our understanding of contemporary Mexico and Mexicans' feelings about the vital cross-border relationship.




The Creation Chronicles The Dragon Within


Book Description

Deep within the mortal world of Eiddoril, war rages and the blood of innocents flows freely. Once protected by the four elements-Earth, Fire, Water and Air-Eiddoril was a peaceful, beautiful land. Now, after three hundred years of being ravaged by an evil lord and abandoned by their creators, the people and land of Eiddoril are dying. In the kingdom of Gareth, an orphan girl is raised as one of the royal family. But when she begins to have vivid nightmares it leads her to question where she really came from. Her questions lead her to Fitch, an old magic user, who helps her discover a shocking truth. Karah is not human, but instead part of a long-forgotten race. Desiring answers, she sets out to uncover the secrets of her past, and defeat the enemy wreaking havoc across the land. In this fantasy tale, Karah must somehow find the strength to fulfill a destiny that has been forced upon her and discover the dragon within. She cannot fail. The future of creation depends on her....




Skepticism and the Veil of Perception


Book Description

Since Descartes, one of the central questions of Western philosophy has been that of how we know that the objects we seem to perceive are real. Philosophical skeptics claim that we know no such thing. Representationalists claim that we can gain such knowledge only by inference, by showing that the hypothesis of a real world is the best explanation for the kind of sensations and mental images we experience. Both accept the doctrine of a 'veil of perception:' that perception can only give us direct awareness of images or representations of objects, not the external objects themselves. In contrast, Huemer develops a theory of perceptual awareness in which perception gives us direct awareness of real objects, not mental representations, and we have non-inferential knowledge of the properties of these objects. Further, Huemer confronts the four main arguments for philosophical skepticism, showing that they are powerless against this kind of theory of perceptual knowledge.




The Dragon Within


Book Description

Deep within the mortal world of Eiddoril, war rages and the blood of innocents flows freely. Once ruled by the four elements-Earth, Fire, Water and Air-Eiddoril was a peaceful, beautiful land. Now, after three hundred years of being ravaged by an evil lord and abandoned by their true gods, the people and land of Eiddoril are dying. In the kingdom of Gareth, an orphan girl is raised as one of the royal family. But when she begins to have vivid nightmares of a past that is not hers, she cannot help but wonder if she is somehow a part of that past. But how? Her questions lead her to Fitch, an old magic user, who helps her discover a shocking truth. Karah is not human, but instead part of a long-forgotten race charged with the responsibility of saving her realm. Armed with a desire to seek the truth, Karah sets out on a dangerous quest to defeat a deadly enemy. In this fantasy tale, Karah must somehow find the strength to fulfill a destiny that has the potential to forever silence the dragon within. She cannot fail. The future of the world depends on her.




Images of Aging


Book Description

We all have a finite life-span. We are born, we get old and we die. Given the universiality of the ageing process, it is remarkable that there is almost a complete absence of study of culture and self-image of the middle aged and old. Images of Ageing: Cultural Representations of Later Life changes this. The contributors discuss images of ageing which have come to circulate in the advanced industrial societies today. They address themes such as: body and self image in everyday interaction; experience and identity on old age; advertising and consumer culture images of the elderly; images of ageing used by Government agencies in health education campaigns; the diversity of historical representations of the elderly; gender images of ageing; images of senility and second childhood; images of health, illness and death.