Images Of Excellence

Grammatology of Images radically alters how we approach images. Instead of asking for the history, power, or essence of images, Sigrid Weigel addresses imaging as such. The book considers how something a-visible gets transformed into an image. Weigel scrutinizes the moment of mis-en-apparition, of making an appearance, and the process of concealment that accompanies any imaging. Weigel reinterprets Derrida’s and Freud’s concept of the trace as that which must be thought before something exists. In doing so, she illuminates the threshold between traces and iconic images, between something immaterial and its pictorial representation. Chapters alternate between general accounts of the line, the index, the effigy, and the cult-image, and case studies from the history of science, art, politics, and religion, involving faces as indicators of emotion, caricatures as effigies of defamation, and angels as embodiments of transcendental ideas. Weigel’s approach to images illuminates fascinating, unexpected correspondences between premodern and contemporary image-practices, between the history of religion and the modern sciences, and between things that are and are not understood as art.

Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory addresses these two concepts as interrelated, rather than as separate categories, and as a means for understanding past social relations at different scales. The need for this volume was realised through four main observations: the ever growing interest in space and spatiality across the social sciences; the comparative theoretical and methodological neglect of time and temporality; the lack in the existing literature of an explicit and balanced focus on both space and time; and the large amount of new information coming from prehistoric Mediterranean. It focuses on the active and interactive role of space and time in the production of any social environment, drawing equally on contemporary theory and on case-studies from Mediterranean prehistory. Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory seeks to break down the space-time continuum, often assumed rather than inferred, into space-time units and to uncover the varying and variable interrelations of space and time in prehistoric societies across the Mediterranean. The volume is a response to the dissatisfaction with traditional views of space and time in prehistory and revisits these concepts to develop a timely integrative conceptual and analytical framework for the study of space and time in archaeology.

"Churchland and Hooker have collected ten papers by prominent philosophers of science which challenge van Fraassen's thesis from a variety of realist perspectives. Together with van Fraassen's extensive reply . . . these articles provide a comprehensive picture of the current debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists."—Jeffrey Bub and David MacCallum, Foundations of Physics Letters

Recent research in business strategy suggests that corporate reputations are a valuable strategic asset for every company. Good reputations have been shown to help firms attain and sustain superior financial performance in their industry. This book outlines how high-status companies become corporate super brands, and it present managers with a framework to proactively enhance their corporation's desired reputation. While many books concentrate on advertising or corporate identity as the primary tools for reputation enhancement, this book provides a more expansive and realistic picture of what it takes to build a corporate super brand. One of its key contributions is that it emphasizes the roles of customer value and organizational culture in the reputation-building process and exposes the limitations of corporate advertising, sponsorships, and minor corporate identity change. Drawing on more than fifteen years of academic research, executive seminars, and consulting experience, Grahame Dowling suggests ways to improve the corporate reputations that different groups of stakeholders hold of your company. He also describes how to avoid many of the traps that catch unwary managers who try to improve their company's desired reputation.

Alan Skelton considers what constitutes excellence in higher education teaching, the central case study being the practice of the UK's most excellent university teachers, as judged by the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme.

Plato was the first great figure in Western philosophy to assess the value of the arts; he famously argued in the Republic that traditionally accepted forms of poetry, drama, and music are unsound, claiming they are conducive to warped ethical standards, detrimental to the psyche, and purveyors of illusions about important matters in human life. This view has been widely rejected; but Christopher Janaway here argues that Plato's hostile case is a more coherent and profound challenge to the arts than has sometimes been supposed. Denying that Plato advocates `good art' in any modern sense, Dr Janaway seeks both to understand Plato's critique in the context of his own philosophy and to locate him in today's philosophy of art, showing how issues in aesthetics arise from responses to his charges. Plato's questions about beauty, emotion, representation, ethical knowledge, artistic autonomy, and censorship are of contemporary relevance as formerly secure assumptions about the value of art and the aesthetic come under scrutiny. Images of Excellence gives a new and original view of a famous issue in the history of philosophy; it is written not only for readers working in ancient philosophy, but for all who are interested in aesthetics, art theory, and literary theory.

Given the academic benefits of assessment-driven teaching, and the growing accountability context of educational systems around the world, there is a rapidly developing need to educate teachers in effectively using assessments to promote, monitor, and report on student learning. However, assessment has historically been a neglected area in teacher education programmes, and empirical research has consistently shown assessment as an area of challenge for many teachers. While there is an increased focus across teacher education and professional literature on enhancing the assessment capacity of educators, there remains little empirical research on innovative and data-based strategies to effectively achieve this goal. The purpose of this text is to consolidate existing research on assessment education and to provoke innovative and effective approaches to educating teachers and teachers-in-training about assessment. Given the dearth of relevant research, this text also considers the matter of retention and extension of initial assessment learning into teaching careers. Combined, the articles in this text provide a foundation for novel thinking about developing teachers’ assessment capacity from pre-service to in-service contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education.