Life Form

Gigante offers a way to read ostensibly difficult poetry and reflects on the natural-philosophical idea of organic form and the discipline of literary studies.

Des Chene considers the work of scholastic writers such as Suarez and the Coimbrans, who provided thorough and sometimes profound studies of Aristotle's definitions of the soul and of life."--BOOK JACKET.

"The Romantic period in literature coincided with two of the most significant transformations in modern history: the Industrial Revolution and, with it, the inflection point of the Anthropocene. Literary critics have shown that much of Romantic poetry expresses an uncanny insight into both of these transformations, including the human and ecological costs of what we now call a carbon-based economy. But was art really capable of making sense of the emerging crisis-or of changing the future? In a superbly nuanced work of literary criticism, Anahid Nersessian shows that poets began to disqualify themselves from explaining the train of consequences that industry set in motion. Their form of knowledge-if knowledge it be-was of an order different from science or economics, and could not bear the burden of accounting for environmental calamity. Romanticism, Nersessian argues, is of the Anthropocene but not about it, and she cautions against investing its poetry with a straightforwardly testimonial power. In doing so, she models an approach to criticism that reads within what Charles Olson calls "the shapeful," emphasizing the role of rhetorical figures in fashioning the posture a poem takes on a historical question. While focusing on the Romantics, Nersessian also ranges back to the seventeenth century (e.g., the poetry of Andrew Marvell) and forward to examples of contemporary poetry and conceptual art (e.g., Derek Jarman's poetry, and installations by Agnes Denes and Helen Mirra). Within literary studies, this is a widely anticipated book by one of the most brilliant critics of her generation"--

An author begins a letter-exchanging relationship with an American soldier stationed in Iraq who excessively overeats to deal with the horrific violence around him.

Rudolf Raff is recognized as a pioneer in evolutionary developmental biology. In their 1983 book, Embryos, Genes, and Evolution, Raff and co-author Thomas Kaufman proposed a synthesis of developmental and evolutionary biology. In The Shape of Life, Raff analyzes the rise of this new experimental discipline and lays out new research questions, hypotheses, and approaches to guide its development. Raff uses the evolution of animal body plans to exemplify the interplay between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary patterns. Animal body plans emerged half a billion years ago. Evolution within these body plans during this span of time has resulted in the tremendous diversity of living animal forms. Raff argues for an integrated approach to the study of the intertwined roles of development and evolution involving phylogenetic, comparative, and functional biology. This new synthesis will interest not only scientists working in these areas, but also paleontologists, zoologists, morphologists, molecular biologists, and geneticists.

Foster presents a spellbinding odyssey of a planet miraculously like Earth. Until close observation shows that on this world, nothing is as it seems. Welcome to Xica, where nine scientists from Earth have established first contact with a humanoid civilization. Now all they have to do is live to tell about it. From the author of Greenthieves.

Introduction -- Defining the public interest in the US and European patent systems -- Confronting the questions of life-form patentability -- Commodification, animal dignity, and patent-system publics -- Forging new patent politics through the human embryonic stem cell debates -- Human genes, plants, and the distributive implications of patents -- Conclusion