Contemporary computing technologies have thoroughly embedded themselves in every aspect of modern life -- conducting commerce, maintaining and extending our networks of friends, and mobilizing political movements all occur through a growing collection of devices and services designed to keep and hold our attention. Yet what happens when our attention needs to be more local, collective, and focu…
The book presents a critical evaluation of current approaches related to the use of digital games in education. The author identifies two competing paradigms: that of games-to-teach and games-to-learn. Arguing in favor of the latter, the author advances the case for approaching game-based learning through the theoretical lens of performance, rooted in play and dialog, to unlock the power of dig…
Reflection on the nature of hallucination has relevance for many traditional philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, perception, and our knowledge of the world. In recent years, neuroimaging techniques and scientific findings on the nature of hallucination, combined with interest in new philosophical theories of perception such as disjunctivism, have brought the topic of halluc…
The Australian National University has always been a university with a difference. Conceived in the mid–1940s to serve Australia’s post-war needs for advanced research and postgraduate training, it quickly embraced the ideals and traditions of Oxford and Cambridge. Undergraduate teaching was introduced in 1960, following amalgamation with Canberra University College. The University continue…
This book owes its title to a simple idea: words are special because they can provide a label for nothing when they merge with some other category. An exemplification of this special power of words is introduced by the familiar head-complement configurations. For example, the structure that is created when a verb and a direct object DP are merged receives a label from the verb, namely it is a V…
Literacy research has focused increasingly on the social, cultural, and material remaking of human communication. Such research has generated new knowledge about the diverse and interconnected modes and media through which people can and do make meaning and opened up definitions of literacy to include image, gaze, gesture, print, speech, and music. And yet, despite all of the attention to multi…
How to confront, embrace, and learn from the unavoidable failures of creative practice; with case studies that range from winemaking to animation. Failure is an inevitable part of any creative practice. As game designers, John Sharp and Colleen Macklin have grappled with crises of creativity, false starts, and bad outcomes. Their tool for coping with the many varieties of failure: iteration, th…
"Costandi explains the neuroscience behind how we view our selves and our bodies, drawing from neurological studies on our sense of agency and free will, the neural correlates of mental representations, mirror neurons, and how the brain perceives timing and sensory consequences. He explores case studies of amputees with phantom limb syndrome, people with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (who ha…
The land and those who live in intimate terms with it are the focus of Koller’s plays. In The Seed Savers, farmers face pressure to purchase genetically modified seed; a protagonist refuses to sell untilled land for development in Cowboy Boots and a Corsage; a dying woman sees a lake as her final resting place in Abby’s Place; and in The Early Worm Club, Millie realizes a deep sense of belo…