This book argues for a new anthropology of the moving image, bringing together an important range of essays on time-based media in the contemporary arts and anthropology. It builds on recent attempts to develop more experimental formats and engages with debates on epistemologies of ethnography, relational aesthetics, materiality, sensory ethnography, and observational and participatory cinema. Arnd Schneider critically revisits Baudrillard’s idea of the simulacrum and the hyperreal, engages with new media theory, and elaborates on the potential of the Writing Culture critique for moving image practices bordering art and anthropology. This important work will be essential reading for anybody working across the fields of visual anthropology, film and media studies and visual studies.

Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was the first serious treatment of video, computers, and holography as cinematic technologies. Long considered the bible for media artists, Youngblood’s insider account of 1960s counterculture and the birth of cybernetics remains a mainstay reference in today’s hypermediated digital world. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author that offers conceptual tools for understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of our present world. A unique eyewitness account of burgeoning experimental film and the birth of video art in the late 1960s, this far- ranging study traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. Vast in scope, its prescient formulations include “the paleocybernetic age,” “intermedia,” the “artist as design scientist,” the “artist as ecologist,” “synaesthetics and kinesthetics,” and “the technosphere: man/machine symbiosis.” Outstanding works are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists of the period, such as Nam June Paik, Jordan Belson, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, Les Levine, and Frank Gillette. An inspiring Introduction by the celebrated polymath and designer R. Buckminster Fuller—a perfectly cut gem of countercultural thinking in itself—places Youngblood’s radical observations in comprehensive perspective. Providing an unparalleled historical documentation, Expanded Cinema clarifies a chapter of countercultural history that is still not fully represented in the arthistorical record half a century later. The book will also inspire the current generation of artists working in ever-newer expansions of the cinematic environment and will prove invaluable to all who are concerned with the technologies that are reshaping the nature of human communication.

In 1955 John D. W. Watts presented the faculty lectures at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon. Amos and prophetic studies have not been the same since. Three years later, in 1958, Vision and Prophecy in Amos appeared as an instant must in studies on Amos and on biblical prophecy in general. Watts' form-critical analysis of the visions of Amos became an immediate classic in its field. Long out of print, this new edition of Vision and Prophecy is available for all students and scholars of biblical prophecy. Moreover, Watts has added new material on Amos. He explores Amos forty years later both in terms of its literary whole and in the context of the Book of the Twelve.

A Harvard neurobiologist explains how vision works, citing the scientific origins of artistic genius and providing coverage of such topics as optical illusions and the correlation between learning disabilities and artistic skill.

Thomas Sowell’s “extraordinary” explication of the competing visions of human nature lie at the heart of our political conflicts (New York Times) Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conflicts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern. In this classic work, Thomas Sowell analyzes this pattern. He describes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the "constrained" vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the "unconstrained" vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. A Conflict of Visions offers a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes circle around the disparity between both outlooks.

A woman artist struggles to successfully raise her children during desperate times. A recreation of the stories Sheila Buchanan Buell told to her daughter the author, Patsy Buell Stierna.