Since 9/11, America has presented itself to the world as a Christianist culture, no less antimodern and nostalgic for an idealized past than its Islamist foes. The master-narrative both sides share might sound like this: Once upon a time, the values of the righteous community coincided with those of the state. Home and land were harmoniously united under God. But through intellectual pride (read: science) and disobedience (read: human rights), this God-blessed homeland was lost and is now ...

‘I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in years gone by.’ – Christy MahonOn the first night of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World (1907) the audience began protesting in the theatre; by the third night the protests had spilled onto the streets of Dublin. How did one play provoke this? Christopher Collins addresses The Playboy ’s satirical treatment of illusion and realism in light of Ireland’s struggle...

The quest to understand the evolution of the literary mind has become a fertile field of inquiry and speculation for scholars across literary studies and cognitive science. In Paleopoetics, Christopher Collins's acclaimed earlier title, he described how language emerged both as a communicative tool and as a means of fashioning other communicative tools—stories, songs, and rituals. In Neopoetics, Collins turns his attention to the cognitive evolution of the writing-ready b...

Dr. Elara Myles built the NeuroMirror to save her mind.Diagnosed with early-onset dementia, the renowned neurologist designed a self-learning diagnostic system to observe her cognition in real time — to preserve her identity through language long after memory failed.It worked.Too well.Inside the sterile hum of her lab, Elara’s reflections begin to speak back — calm, clinical, impossibly familiar. The voice knows her research, her hab...

In the past few decades, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become an indispensable tool in modern medicine. But for all its utility and prevalence, it is much less commonly understood and less readily explained than other common medical imaging techniques.In this book, MRI will be explained with emphasis on the magnetic fields required, their generation, their concomitant electric fields, the various interactions of all these fields with the subject being imaged, and the implica...

Knowledge is more expansive than the boundaries of the Western university model and its claim to be the dominant—or only—rigorous house of knowledge. In the former colonies of Europe (e.g., South Africa, Brazil, and Oceania), the curriculum, statues, architectures, and other aspects of the university demonstrate the way in which it is a fixture in empire maintenance. The trajectory of global White supremacy is deeply historical and contemporary—it is a global, transnational, and imperial p...

Two fundamental and underlying principles drive White Evolution. The first is that evolution means constant movement in the fight against the virus of White supremacy. If the virus is evolving rapidly, then our critical consciousness needs to evolve faster in order to outpace the supremacy. The second is that this evolution is not an individual act—it must be done in community. The genetic makeup of human beings points to the necessity of interdependence. Growth and development do...

From scholarly monographs to papal homilies, Joseph Ratzinger has insisted consistently over decades that Christianity is not a set of ideas to believe or, even less, moral laws to follow. Rather, Christianity is about a person and our encounter with that person.In The Word Made Love, Christopher Collins identifies in the structure of Ratzinger's thought the presentation of God as one who speaks and who ultimately speaks Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Humanity's po...

Languages differ from one another in bewildering and seemingly arbitrary ways. For example, in English, the verb precedes the direct object ('understand the proof'), but in Japanese, the direct object comes first. In some languages, such as Mohawk, it is not even possible to establish a basic word order. Nonetheless, languages do share certain regularities in how they are structured and used. The exact nature and extent of these "language universals" has been the focus of much research and...

This book underscores the role of belief and knowledge that are outside the canons of science, as they are not often considered within the core functions of a university. It explores various ways in which belief systems are part of the fabric of higher education – either implicitly or explicitly – and pursues a deeper understanding of the role of belief practices as it plays out in both private and public higher education. The broad variety of geographic locations and belief systems repres...

This edited volume offers empirical, evaluative, and philosophical perspectives on the question of higher education as a human right in the Asia Pacific. Throughout the region, higher education has grown rapidly in a variety of ways. Price, accessibility, mobility, and government funding are all key areas of interest, which likely shape the degree to which higher education may be viewed as a human right. Although enrollments continue to grow in many higher education systems, protests relat...

Filtration of aerosols is omnipresent in our daily lives, in areas as diverse as health, the protection of people and the environment, and air treatment inside buildings. However, the collection of particles within a filter media is not, contrary to popular belief, linked to a simple screen effect. The phenomena involved are much more complex and require the consideration of aerosol interactions, filter media and process conditions to select the best fiber filter for a given application. A...