Though the progress of technology continually pushes life toward virtual existence, the last decade has witnessed a renewed focus on materiality. Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman bears witness to the attention paid by literary theorists, digital humanists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and designers to the crafted environment, the manner in which artifacts mediate human relations, and the constitution of a world in which the boundary between humans and things has seemingly imploded. The chapters reflect on questions about the extent to which we ought to view humans and nonhuman artifacts as having equal capacity for agency and life, and the ways in which technological mediation challenges the central tenets of humanism and anthropocentrism. Contemporary theories of human-object relations presage the arrival of the posthuman, which is no longer a futuristic or science-fictional concept but rather one descriptive of the present, and indeed, the past. Discussions of the posthuman already have a long history in fields like literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as advances in design and technology result in increasingly engaging artifacts that mediate more and more aspects of everyday life, it becomes necessary to engage in a systematic, interdisciplinary, critical examination of the intersection of the domains of design, technological mediation, and the posthuman. Thus, this collection brings diverse disciplines together to foster a dialogue on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

Though the progress of technology continually pushes life towards virtual existence, the last decade has witnessed a renewed focus on materiality. Radical Interface: Transdisciplinary Interventions on Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman bears witness to literary theorists', digital humanists', rhetoricians', philosophers', and designers' attention to the crafted environment, the manner in which artifacts mediate human relations, and the constitution of a world in which the boundary between humans and things has seemingly imploded. The essays reflect on questions about the extent to which we ought to view humans and nonhuman artifacts as having equal capacity for agency and life, and the ways in which technological mediation challenges the central tenets of humanism and anthropocentrism. Contemporary theories of human-object relations presage the arrival of the posthuman, which is no longer a futuristic or science-fictional concept but rather one descriptive of the present, and indeed, the past. Discussions of the posthuman already have a long history in fields like literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as advances in design and technology result in increasingly engaging artifacts that mediate more and more aspects of everyday life, it becomes necessary to engage in a systematic, interdisciplinary, critical examination of the intersection of the domains of design, technological mediation, and the posthuman. Radical Interface thus brings diverse disciplines together to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

This volume offers concrete answers to the question of how we can use imagery to enrich the teaching of reading and writing. The chapters are organized according to two guiding principles. First, each addresses specific aspects of the inextricable integration of imagery and language in the teaching of reading and writing. Imagery is not privileged over language; the fusion of the two is emphasized. Second, each focuses on a particular kind of imagery--mental, graphic, or verbal--describing teaching/learning strategies based on the deployment of that kind of imagery in the classroom.
There is currently a renewed acknowledgment of the importance of imagery in meaning. The rapid spread of the World Wide Web, computer interfacing, and virtual reality further highlights the need to attend to the influence of imagery in a networked world. In response to these shifts in scholarly and cultural perspectives, NCTE has established a committee on visual literacy, and an emphasis on visual literacy has been incorporated into the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts. This book contributes significantly toward filling the need for explicit and specific theory-based methods teachers can use to integrate imagery into their pedagogy. Accessible and lively chapters include classroom activities and student-generated examples. "Language and Image in the Reading-Writing Classroom" is an excellent text for preservice and in-service pedagogy courses and an important resource for practicing teachers, researchers, and professionals in the field.

This volume offers concrete answers to the question of how we can use imagery to enrich the teaching of reading and writing. The chapters are organized according to two guiding principles. First, each addresses specific aspects of the inextricable integration of imagery and language in the teaching of reading and writing. Imagery is not privileged over language; the fusion of the two is emphasized. Second, each focuses on a particular kind of imagery--mental, graphic, or verbal--describing teaching/learning strategies based on the deployment of that kind of imagery in the classroom.
There is currently a renewed acknowledgment of the importance of imagery in meaning. The rapid spread of the World Wide Web, computer interfacing, and virtual reality further highlights the need to attend to the influence of imagery in a networked world. In response to these shifts in scholarly and cultural perspectives, NCTE has established a committee on visual literacy, and an emphasis on visual literacy has been incorporated into the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts. This book contributes significantly toward filling the need for explicit and specific theory-based methods teachers can use to integrate imagery into their pedagogy. Accessible and lively chapters include classroom activities and student-generated examples. "Language and Image in the Reading-Writing Classroom" is an excellent text for preservice and in-service pedagogy courses and an important resource for practicing teachers, researchers, and professionals in the field.

The essays in WAYS OF SEEING, WAYS OF SPEAKING: THE INTEGRATION OF RHETORIC AND VISION IN CONSTRUCTING THE REAL explore the intersections among image, word, and visual habits in shaping realities and subjectivities. Each of the nine authors addresses the following question: How is the constitution of our world and our identities composed of the intricate interweaving of imagery, rhetoric, and shared ways of seeing? Central to the essays comprising this book is the belief that how we articulate our realities and identities is inseparable from how we see reality and what we see as reality. Understanding any aspect of human existence-from scientific knowledge, to constructions of identity, to the interface of bodies and technologies-requires attention to the integration of ways of seeing and ways of speaking. WAYS OF SEEING, WAYS OF SPEAKING is groundbreaking in three ways. First, it is an exploration of the way in which our construction of the real is a communal activity involving image, rhetoric, and visual habits. Second, it provides insight into the dynamic by which any construction of the real-a knotting of rhetoric, imagery, and visual conventions-emerges, grows to dominance, and serves as a site of resistance. Third, these essays, jointly and individually, set a course for further work in analyzing the integration of image, rhetoric, and visual habits in myriad constructions of the real. CONTRIBUTORS Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Don Ihde, Alan Gross, Anne Frances Wysocki, Sue Hum, Gunther Kress, Catherine L. Hobbs, Mieke Bal, David Palumbo-Liu, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Valentina Vitali ABOUT THE EDITORS Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Associate Professor of English at Florida State University, is the author of Embodied Literacies: Imageword and a Poetics of Teaching (2003), winner of the 2005 Conference on College Composition and Communication's Best Book of the Year Award. Sue Hum, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is the co-editor, with Peter Vandenberg and Jennifer Clary-Lemon, of Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers (2006). Linda T. Calendrillo is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Valdosta State University. She is the co-editor, with Kristie Fleckenstein, of JAEPL: The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning.