Elizabeth Leane - Böcker

Reading Popular Physics is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature and implications of physics popularizations. A literary critic trained in science, Elizabeth Leane treats popular science writing as a distinct and significant genre, focusing particularly on five bestselling books: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, James Gleick's Chaos, M. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity, and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Leane situates her examination of the texts within the heated interdisciplinary exchanges known as the 'Science Wars', focusing specifically on the disputed issue of the role of language in science. Her use of literary analysis reveals how popular science books function as sites for 'disciplinary skirmishes' as she uncovers the ways in which popularizers of science influence the public. In addition to their explicit discussion of scientific concepts, Leane argues, these authors employ subtle textual strategies that encode claims about the nature and status of scientific knowledge - claims that are all the more powerful because they are unacknowledged. Her book will change the way these texts are read, offering readers a fresh perspective on this highly visible and influential genre.

Anthropocene Antarctica offers new ways of thinking about the ‘Continent for Science and Peace’ in a time of planetary environmental change. In the Anthropocene, Antarctica has become central to the Earth’s future. Ice cores taken from its interior reveal the deep environmental history of the planet and warming ocean currents are ominously destabilising the glaciers around its edges, presaging sea-level rise in decades and centuries to come. At the same time, proliferating research stations and tourist numbers challenge stereotypes of the continent as the ‘last wilderness.’ The Anthropocene brings Antarctica nearer in thought, entangled with our everyday actions. If the Anthropocene signals the end of the idea of Nature as separate from humans, then the Antarctic, long considered the material embodiment of this idea, faces a radical reframing.Understanding the southern polar region in the twenty-first century requires contributions across the disciplinary spectrum. This collection paves the way for researchers in the Environmental Humanities, Law and Social Sciences to engage critically with the Antarctic, fostering a community of scholars who can act with natural scientists to address the globally significant environmental issues that face this vitally important part of the planet.

This comprehensive analysis of literary responses to Antarctica examines the rich body of literature that the continent has provoked over the last three centuries, focussing particularly on narrative fiction. Novelists as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula Le Guin, Beryl Bainbridge and Kim Stanley Robinson have all been drawn artistically to the far south. The continent has also inspired genre fiction, including a Mills and Boon novel, a Phantom comic and a Biggles book, as well as countless lost-race romances, espionage thrillers and horror-fantasies. Antarctica in Fiction draws on these sources, as well as film, travel narratives and explorers' own creative writing. It maps the far south as a space of the imagination and argues that only by engaging with this space, in addition to the physical continent, can we understand current attitudes towards Antarctica.

This comprehensive analysis of literary responses to Antarctica examines the rich body of literature that the continent has provoked over the last three centuries, focussing particularly on narrative fiction. Novelists as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula Le Guin, Beryl Bainbridge and Kim Stanley Robinson have all been drawn artistically to the far south. The continent has also inspired genre fiction, including a Mills and Boon novel, a Phantom comic and a Biggles book, as well as countless lost-race romances, espionage thrillers and horror-fantasies. Antarctica in Fiction draws on these sources, as well as film, travel narratives and explorers' own creative writing. It maps the far south as a space of the imagination and argues that only by engaging with this space, in addition to the physical continent, can we understand current attitudes towards Antarctica.

From airport bookstores to deckchairs, as audiobooks downloaded by commuters, and on Kindles and other portable devices, twenty-first century bestsellers move in old and new ways. This Element examines the locations and mobilities of the contemporary bestseller as a multi-format commercial object. It employs paratextual, textual, and site-based analysis of the spatiality of bestsellers and considers the centrality of geography to the commercial promise of these books. Space, Place, and Bestsellers provides analysis of the spatial logic of bestseller lists, evidence-rich accounts of the physical and digital retail sites through which bestsellers flow, and new interpretations of how affixing the label 'bestseller' individual authors and titles generates industrial, social, and textual effects. Through its multi-layered analysis, this Element offers a new model for studying the spatiality of popular fiction.

Reading Popular Physics is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature and implications of physics popularizations. A literary critic trained in science, Elizabeth Leane treats popular science writing as a distinct and significant genre, focusing particularly on five bestselling books: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, James Gleick's Chaos, M. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity, and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Leane situates her examination of the texts within the heated interdisciplinary exchanges known as the 'Science Wars', focusing specifically on the disputed issue of the role of language in science. Her use of literary analysis reveals how popular science books function as sites for 'disciplinary skirmishes' as she uncovers the ways in which popularizers of science influence the public. In addition to their explicit discussion of scientific concepts, Leane argues, these authors employ subtle textual strategies that encode claims about the nature and status of scientific knowledge - claims that are all the more powerful because they are unacknowledged. Her book will change the way these texts are read, offering readers a fresh perspective on this highly visible and influential genre.

Anthropocene Antarctica offers new ways of thinking about the ‘Continent for Science and Peace’ in a time of planetary environmental change. In the Anthropocene, Antarctica has become central to the Earth’s future. Ice cores taken from its interior reveal the deep environmental history of the planet and warming ocean currents are ominously destabilising the glaciers around its edges, presaging sea-level rise in decades and centuries to come. At the same time, proliferating research stations and tourist numbers challenge stereotypes of the continent as the ‘last wilderness.’ The Anthropocene brings Antarctica nearer in thought, entangled with our everyday actions. If the Anthropocene signals the end of the idea of Nature as separate from humans, then the Antarctic, long considered the material embodiment of this idea, faces a radical reframing.Understanding the southern polar region in the twenty-first century requires contributions across the disciplinary spectrum. This collection paves the way for researchers in the Environmental Humanities, Law and Social Sciences to engage critically with the Antarctic, fostering a community of scholars who can act with natural scientists to address the globally significant environmental issues that face this vitally important part of the planet.

Considering Animals draws on the expertise of scholars trained in the biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences to investigate the complex and contradictory relationships humans have with nonhuman animals. Taking their cue from the specific 'animal moments' that punctuate these interactions, the essays engage with contemporary issues and debates central to human-animal studies: the representation of animals, the practical and ethical issues inseparable from human interactions with other species, and, perhaps most challengingly, the compelling evidence that animals are themselves considering beings. Case studies focus on issues such as animal emotion and human 'sentimentality'; the representation of animals in contemporary art and in recent films such as March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, and Grizzly Man; animals' experiences in catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina and the SARS outbreak; and the danger of overvaluing the role humans play in the earth's ecosystems. From Marc Bekoff's moving preface through to the last essay, Considering Animals foregrounds the frequent, sometimes uncanny, exchanges with other species that disturb our self-contained existences and bring into focus our troubled relationships with them. Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, this collection demonstrates that, in the face of species extinction and environmental destruction, the roles and fates of animals are too important to be left to any one academic discipline.

The Geographic South Pole is a place of paradox. It is a point around which the earth quite literally pivots; yet it has a habit of falling off the edge of our maps. An invisible spot on a high, featureless ice plateau, the Pole has no obvious material value, but is nonetheless a much sought-after location. The endpoint of exploration’s most famous ‘race’, between teams led by Robert F. Scott and Roald Amundsen, the Pole has more recently become a favoured destination of ‘extreme’ tourists. Like the whole of Antarctica, ‘90˚ South’ does not belong to any nation, but six national claims meet there, and for nearly sixty years the u.s. has occupied the site with a series of scientific stations. The Pole is a deeply political place.In South Pole Elizabeth Leane explores the important challenges that this strange place poses to humanity. What is its lure? How and why should people live there? How can artists respond to its apparent blankness? What can it teach us about our planet and ourselves? Along the way, she considers the absurdities and banalities of human engagement with the Pole.Ranging chronologically from the ancient Greeks to the present, and featuring spectacular images of the South Pole, this book offers a fascinating history of the symbolic heart of the Antarctic.To read and download some sample pages from the book please click here.

Icescapes have featured – indeed, starred – in conventional theatrical performances since at least the eighteenth century.