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Fictive Narrative Philosophy: How Fiction Can Act as Philosophy (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)
by Michael BoylanWhat is the philosophical voice within literature? Does literature have a voice of its own? Can this voice really be philosophical in its own right? In this book, Michael Boylan argues that some literary works indeed can make their own unique claims in different areas of philosophy. He calls this method fictive narrative philosophy. The first part of the book presents an overview of traditional thinking about philosophy and literature across classical, modern, and contemporary periods. It does not seek to denigrate these methods of studying literature, but rather to ask more of them. The second part then sets out a rigorous definition of what constitutes fictive narrative philosophy. This definition outlines detailed conceptions of the methods of presentation, audience engagement, logical mechanics, and constructional devices of fictive narrative philosophy. The author brings this definition to bear on individual authors and works that can be considered prime examples of fictive narrative philosophy. Finally, the book sets out why and when fictive narratives might be more favorable than traditional philosophical discourse, and how the concept of fictive narrative philosophy can move teaching and scholarship forward in a positive direction. Fictive Narrative Philosophy presents an entirely new and unique approach in which literature can be a form of philosophy. It will appeal to scholars and upper-level students interested in philosophy and literature.
International Public Health Policy and Ethics (International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine #42)
by Michael BoylanPublic Health Policy and Ethics brings together philosophers and practitioners to address the foundations and principles upon which public health policy may be advanced – especially in the international arena. What is the basis that justifies public health in the first place? Why should individuals be disadvantaged for the sake of the group? How do policy concerns and clinical practice work together and work against each other? Can the boundaries of public health be extended to include social ills that are amenable to group-dynamic solutions? What about political issues? How can international finance make an impact? These are some of the crucial questions that form the core of this volume of original essays sure to cause practitioners to engage in a critical re-evaluation of the role of ethics in public health policy.
International Public Health Policy and Ethics (The International Library of Bioethics #106)
by Michael BoylanThis second edition of International Public Health Policy and Ethics complements the popular first edition with contemporary problems in international public health. It brings together philosophers and practitioners to address the foundations and principles upon which public health policy may be advanced – especially in the international arena. What is the basis that justifies public health in the first place? Why should individuals be disadvantaged for the sake of the group? How do policy concerns and clinical practice work together and work against each other? Can the boundaries of public health be extended to include social ills that are amenable to group-dynamic solutions? What about political issues? How can international finance make an impact? These are some of the crucial questions that form the core of this volume of original essays sure to cause practitioners to engage in a critical re-evaluation of the role of ethics in public health policy. With a targeted new essay dealing with COVID and public health issues in Africa this second edition provides a resource building on the first edition.
The Origins of Ancient Greek Science: Blood—A Philosophical Study (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies)
by Michael BoylanThis book examines the origins of ancient Greek science using the vehicles of blood, blood vessels, and the heart. Careful attention to biomedical writers in the ancient world, as well as to the philosophical and literary work of writers prior to the Hippocratic authors, produce an interesting story of how science progressed and the critical context in which important methodological questions were addressed. The end result is an account that arises from debates that are engaged in and "solved" by different writers. These stopping points form the foundation for Harvey and for modern philosophy of biology. Author Michael Boylan sets out the history of science as well as a critical evaluation based upon principles in the contemporary canon of the philosophy of science—particularly those dealing with the philosophy of biology.
The Origins of Ancient Greek Science: Blood—A Philosophical Study (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies #22)
by Michael BoylanThis book examines the origins of ancient Greek science using the vehicles of blood, blood vessels, and the heart. Careful attention to biomedical writers in the ancient world, as well as to the philosophical and literary work of writers prior to the Hippocratic authors, produce an interesting story of how science progressed and the critical context in which important methodological questions were addressed. The end result is an account that arises from debates that are engaged in and "solved" by different writers. These stopping points form the foundation for Harvey and for modern philosophy of biology. Author Michael Boylan sets out the history of science as well as a critical evaluation based upon principles in the contemporary canon of the philosophy of science—particularly those dealing with the philosophy of biology.
Philosophy: An Innovative Introduction: Fictive Narrative, Primary Texts, and Responsive Writing
by Michael BoylanPhilosophy: An Innovative Introduction features a unique, engaging approach to introduce students to philosophy. It combines traditional readings and exercises with fictive narratives starring central figures in the history of the field from Plato to Martin Luther King, Jr. The book makes innovative use of compelling short stories from two writers who have prominently combined philosophy and fiction in their work. These narratives illuminate pivotal aspects of the carefully selected classic readings that follow. This gives students two ways to understand the philosophical positions: through indirect argument in fiction and through direct, deductive presentations. Study questions and writing exercises accompany each set of readings and help students grasp the material and create their own arguments.
Philosophy: An Innovative Introduction: Fictive Narrative, Primary Texts, and Responsive Writing (Studies In Social, Political, And Legal Philosophy (PDF) #70)
by Michael BoylanPhilosophy: An Innovative Introduction features a unique, engaging approach to introduce students to philosophy. It combines traditional readings and exercises with fictive narratives starring central figures in the history of the field from Plato to Martin Luther King, Jr. The book makes innovative use of compelling short stories from two writers who have prominently combined philosophy and fiction in their work. These narratives illuminate pivotal aspects of the carefully selected classic readings that follow. This gives students two ways to understand the philosophical positions: through indirect argument in fiction and through direct, deductive presentations. Study questions and writing exercises accompany each set of readings and help students grasp the material and create their own arguments.
The Process of Argument: An Introduction
by Michael BoylanThe Process of Argument: An Introduction is a necessary companion for anyone seeking to engage in successful persuasion: To organize, construct, and communicate arguments. It is both comprehensive and accessible: An authoritative guide to logical thinking and effective communication. The book begins with techniques to improve reading comprehension, including guides on navigating through fake news and internet trolls. Then, readers are taught how to reconstruct deductive, inductive, and abductive presentations so that the logical structure is explicit. And finally, there is a step-by-step guide for responding to these texts via the argumentative essay. Along the way are current examples from social media and elsewhere on the internet along with guides for assessing truth claims in an ever-complicated community worldview. Throughout, are carefully selected reading questions and exercises that will pace readers in order to ensure that the text is securely grasped and successfully applied. Key Features Offers guidance on how to read a text through self-analysis and social criticism Provides a step-by-step procedure for allowing the student to move from reading to reconstruction to being prepared to write an effective argumentative essay Presents truth theory and shows readers how they can helpfully acquaint themselves with a version of realistic, foundational epistemology Offers guidelines and helpful tools on how best to structure an argumentative, pro or con, essay Includes expansive coverage of inductive logic through the use and assessment of statistics Covers abductive logic as it applies to the analysis of narrative in argumentative writing Has up-to-date examples from the media, including from blogs, social media, and television Includes a helpful glossary of all important terms in the book
The Process of Argument: An Introduction
by Michael BoylanThe Process of Argument: An Introduction is a necessary companion for anyone seeking to engage in successful persuasion: To organize, construct, and communicate arguments. It is both comprehensive and accessible: An authoritative guide to logical thinking and effective communication. The book begins with techniques to improve reading comprehension, including guides on navigating through fake news and internet trolls. Then, readers are taught how to reconstruct deductive, inductive, and abductive presentations so that the logical structure is explicit. And finally, there is a step-by-step guide for responding to these texts via the argumentative essay. Along the way are current examples from social media and elsewhere on the internet along with guides for assessing truth claims in an ever-complicated community worldview. Throughout, are carefully selected reading questions and exercises that will pace readers in order to ensure that the text is securely grasped and successfully applied. Key Features Offers guidance on how to read a text through self-analysis and social criticism Provides a step-by-step procedure for allowing the student to move from reading to reconstruction to being prepared to write an effective argumentative essay Presents truth theory and shows readers how they can helpfully acquaint themselves with a version of realistic, foundational epistemology Offers guidelines and helpful tools on how best to structure an argumentative, pro or con, essay Includes expansive coverage of inductive logic through the use and assessment of statistics Covers abductive logic as it applies to the analysis of narrative in argumentative writing Has up-to-date examples from the media, including from blogs, social media, and television Includes a helpful glossary of all important terms in the book
Public Health Policy and Ethics (International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine #19)
by Michael BoylanPublic Health Policy and Ethics brings together philosophers and practitioners to address the foundations and principles upon which public health policy may be advanced. What is the basis that justifies public health in the first place? Why should individuals be disadvantaged for the sake of the group? How do policy concerns and clinical practice work together and work against each other? Can the boundaries of public health be extended to include social ills that are amenable to group-dynamic solutions? These are some of the crucial questions that form the core of this volume of original essays sure to cause practitioners to engage in a critical re-evaluation of the role of ethics in public health policy. This volume is unique because of its philosophical approach. It develops a theoretical basis for public health and then examines cutting-edge issues of practice that include social and political issues of public health. In this way the book extends the usual purview of public health. Public Health Policy and Ethics is of interest to those working in public health policy, ethics and social philosophy. It may be used as a textbook for courses on public health policy and ethics, medical ethics, social philosophy and applied or public philosophy.
Teaching Ethics with Three Philosophical Novels
by Michael BoylanThis book offers a unique method for teaching ethics and social/political philosophy by combining primary texts and resource material along with three philosophical novels so that students can apply the abstract principles to real-life situations. Boylan provides a preface to introduce instructors in how to effectively put together a course in ethics using fiction. A sample syllabus and sample assignments are provided. Students often turn-off when confronted with abstract ethical principles, alone. This book allows interaction with philosophical novels that provide real-life situations that mirrors applying normative principles to lived experience. Students will be drawn into this realism and their engagement with the material will be significantly enhanced. This is an innovative textbook for teachers and students of general philosophy, ethics, business ethics, social and political philosophy, as well as students of literature and philosophy.
Teaching Ethics with Three Philosophical Novels
by Michael BoylanThis book offers a unique method for teaching ethics and social/political philosophy by combining primary texts and resource material along with three philosophical novels so that students can apply the abstract principles to real-life situations. A sample syllabus and sample assignments are provided. This second edition contains an additional teacher's manual, guiding instructors in how to effectively put together a course in ethics using fiction. Students often turn-off when confronted with abstract ethical principles, alone. This book allows interaction with philosophical novels that provide real-life situations that mirrors applying normative principles to lived experience. Students will be drawn into this realism and their engagement with the material will be significantly enhanced. This is an innovative textbook for teachers and students of general philosophy, ethics, business ethics, social and political philosophy, as well as students of literature and philosophy.
Mary Shepherd: A Guide (OXFORD GUIDES TO PHILOSOPHY SERIES)
by Deborah BoyleScottish philosopher Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847) wrote two books that she conceived as one unified project: Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (1827). While they were well received in her day, Shepherd's insightful philosophical writings have been neglected for some 150 years and are only now receiving the scholarly attention they deserve. Mary Shepherd: A Guide by Deborah Boyle, part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy series, navigates students of philosophy or general readers through Shepherd's two significant works. The first four chapters address topics raised in the 1824 Essay: Shepherd's arguments for two key causal principles, her objections to Hume and her alternative accounts of causation and causal inference; her theory of objects as bundles of qualities; her critique of Thomas Brown's defence of Humean causation; and her discussion of London surgeon William Lawrence's accounts of sentience and life, which Shepherd treats as a case study of how Humean theory can lead to errors in scientific reasoning. Chapter 5 covers topics central to both of Shepherd's books: what she means by "sensation," "idea," "will," "imagination," "understanding," "reasoning," and "latent reasoning." The remaining five chapters proceed systematically through Shepherd's 1827 book, where she seeks to prove, against Berkeleian idealism, that we can know that an external world of mind-independent matter exists. Boyle discusses Shepherd's proofs for such an external world, her responses to various sceptical challenges, and her specific objections to Berkeley. Each chapter ends with a list of works for further reading and a glossary of terms that explain Shepherd's sometimes idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, resulting in an essential guide to a philosopher who exerted considerable influence during her time.
Mary Shepherd: A Guide (OXFORD GUIDES TO PHILOSOPHY SERIES)
by Deborah BoyleScottish philosopher Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847) wrote two books that she conceived as one unified project: Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (1827). While they were well received in her day, Shepherd's insightful philosophical writings have been neglected for some 150 years and are only now receiving the scholarly attention they deserve. Mary Shepherd: A Guide by Deborah Boyle, part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy series, navigates students of philosophy or general readers through Shepherd's two significant works. The first four chapters address topics raised in the 1824 Essay: Shepherd's arguments for two key causal principles, her objections to Hume and her alternative accounts of causation and causal inference; her theory of objects as bundles of qualities; her critique of Thomas Brown's defence of Humean causation; and her discussion of London surgeon William Lawrence's accounts of sentience and life, which Shepherd treats as a case study of how Humean theory can lead to errors in scientific reasoning. Chapter 5 covers topics central to both of Shepherd's books: what she means by "sensation," "idea," "will," "imagination," "understanding," "reasoning," and "latent reasoning." The remaining five chapters proceed systematically through Shepherd's 1827 book, where she seeks to prove, against Berkeleian idealism, that we can know that an external world of mind-independent matter exists. Boyle discusses Shepherd's proofs for such an external world, her responses to various sceptical challenges, and her specific objections to Berkeley. Each chapter ends with a list of works for further reading and a glossary of terms that explain Shepherd's sometimes idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, resulting in an essential guide to a philosopher who exerted considerable influence during her time.
The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish
by Deborah BoyleThe prolific Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) published books on natural philosophy as well as stories, plays, poems, orations, allegories, and letters. Her mature philosophical system offered a unique panpsychist theory of Nature as composed of a continuous, non-atomistic, perceiving, knowing matter. In contrast to the dominant philosophical thinking of her day, Cavendish argued that all matter has free will and can choose whether or not to follow Nature's rules. The Well-Ordered Universe explores the development of Cavendish's natural philosophy from the atomism of her 1653 poems to the panpsychist materialism of her 1668 Grounds of Natural Philosophy. Deborah Boyle argues that her natural philosophy, her medical theories, and her social and political philosophy are all informed by an underlying concern with order, regularity, and rule-following. This focus on order reveals interesting connections among apparently disparate elements of Cavendish's philosophical program, including her views on gender, on animals and the environment, and on sickness and health. Focusing on the role of order in Cavendish's philosophy also helps reveal key differences between her natural philosophy and her more conservative social and political philosophy. Cavendish believed that humans' special desire for public recognition often leads to an unruly ambition, causing humans to disrupt society in ways not seen in the rest of Nature. Thus, The Well-Ordered Universe defends Cavendish as a royalist who endorsed absolute monarchy and a rigid social hierarchy for maintaining order in human society.
Descartes on Innate Ideas (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)
by Deborah A. BoyleThe concept of innateness is central to Descartes' epistemology; the Meditations display a new, non-Aristotelian method of acquiring knowledge by attending properly to our innate ideas. Yet understanding Descartes's conception of innate ideas is not an easy task and some commentators have concluded that Descartes held several distinct and unrelated conceptions of innateness. In Descartes on Innate Ideas, however, Deborah Boyle argues that Descartes's remarks on innate ideas in fact form a unified account. Addressing the further question of how Descartes thinks innate ideas are known, the author shows that for Descartes, thinkers have implicit knowledge of their innate ideas. Thus she shows that the actual perception of these innate ideas is, for Descartes, a matter of making them explicit, turning the intellect away from sense-perceptions and towards pure thought. The author also provides a new interpretation of the Cartesian 'natural light', an important mental faculty in Descartes' epistemology.
Descartes on Innate Ideas (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)
by Deborah A. BoyleThe concept of innateness is central to Descartes' epistemology; the Meditations display a new, non-Aristotelian method of acquiring knowledge by attending properly to our innate ideas. Yet understanding Descartes's conception of innate ideas is not an easy task and some commentators have concluded that Descartes held several distinct and unrelated conceptions of innateness. In Descartes on Innate Ideas, however, Deborah Boyle argues that Descartes's remarks on innate ideas in fact form a unified account. Addressing the further question of how Descartes thinks innate ideas are known, the author shows that for Descartes, thinkers have implicit knowledge of their innate ideas. Thus she shows that the actual perception of these innate ideas is, for Descartes, a matter of making them explicit, turning the intellect away from sense-perceptions and towards pure thought. The author also provides a new interpretation of the Cartesian 'natural light', an important mental faculty in Descartes' epistemology.
Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey
by Marjorie O'Rourke BoyleThis book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey
by Marjorie O'Rourke BoyleThis book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
COVID-19 and the Case Against Neoliberalism: The United Kingdom’s Political Pandemic
by Mark Boyle James Hickson Katalin Ujhelyi GomezThis book seeks to better understand the meaning and implications of the UKs calamitous encounter with the COVID-19 global pandemic for the future of British neoliberalism. Construing COVID-19 as a political pandemic and mobilising a novel applied political philosophy approach, the authors cultivate fresh intellectual resources, both analytical and normative, to better understand why the UK failed the COVID-19 test and how it might ‘fail forward’ so as to strengthen its resilience. COVID-19 they argue, has intercepted the UK government’s decades-long experimentation with neoliberalism at what appears to be a threshold moment in this model’s life course. Neoliberalism has served as a key progenitor of the country’s vulnerability: the pandemic has cruelly unveiled the failings of neoliberal logics and legacies which have placed the country at elevated risk and hampered its response. The pandemic in turn has attenuated underlying systemic maladies inherent in British neoliberalism and served as a great disruptor and potential accelerant of history; a consequential episode in the tumultuous life of this politico-economic model. To meaningfully ‘build back better’, a true renaissance of social democracy is needed. Drawing upon the neorepublican tradition of political philosophy, the authors confront neoliberalism’s hegemonic but parochial concept of human freedom as non-interference and place the neorepublican idea of freedom as non-domination in the service of building a new UK social contract. This book will be of interest to political philosophers, political geographers, medical sociologists, public-health scholars, and epidemiologists, to stakeholders engaged in the public inquiry processes now gathering momentum globally and to architects of build back better programmes, especially in western advanced capitalist economies.
Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind
by Matthew BoyleThe topic of self-knowledge has been central to philosophy since antiquity--but if self-knowledge deserves to be not just a goal that each of us should privately pursue, but a topic that philosophers should investigate in general terms, on what basis does it claim our attention? Much contemporary work in philosophy and cognitive science treats human cognition and perception as processes of representation manipulation, unaffected by our capacity for self-awareness. In Transparency and Reflection Matthew Boyle challenges this paradigm by urging a reconsideration of the classical idea that the capacity for reflective self-knowledge is an essential feature of human mindedness. Boyle argues that our ability for reflective self-knowledge is a byproduct of the "first person perspective" on our own lives that all human beings possess, as rational animals, and he seeks to defend this perspective against influential forms of skepticism about its soundness. Once we appreciate the connection between having a first person perspective on our own minds and having the capacity for self-knowledge, Boyle suggests, we can see a link between debates about how we know our own minds and the dark but intriguing idea that Jean-Paul Sartre expressed in his remark that, for a human being, "to exist is always to assume its being" in a way that implies "an understanding of human reality by itself."
Transparency and Reflection: A Study of Self-Knowledge and the Nature of Mind
by Matthew BoyleThe topic of self-knowledge has been central to philosophy since antiquity--but if self-knowledge deserves to be not just a goal that each of us should privately pursue, but a topic that philosophers should investigate in general terms, on what basis does it claim our attention? Much contemporary work in philosophy and cognitive science treats human cognition and perception as processes of representation manipulation, unaffected by our capacity for self-awareness. In Transparency and Reflection Matthew Boyle challenges this paradigm by urging a reconsideration of the classical idea that the capacity for reflective self-knowledge is an essential feature of human mindedness. Boyle argues that our ability for reflective self-knowledge is a byproduct of the "first person perspective" on our own lives that all human beings possess, as rational animals, and he seeks to defend this perspective against influential forms of skepticism about its soundness. Once we appreciate the connection between having a first person perspective on our own minds and having the capacity for self-knowledge, Boyle suggests, we can see a link between debates about how we know our own minds and the dark but intriguing idea that Jean-Paul Sartre expressed in his remark that, for a human being, "to exist is always to assume its being" in a way that implies "an understanding of human reality by itself."
Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea
by Svetlana BoymThe word “freedom” is so overly used—and frequently abused—that it is always in danger of becoming nothing but a cliché. In Another Freedom, Svetlana Boym offers us a refreshing new portrait of the age-old concept. Exploring the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece to the present day, she argues that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only “what is” but also “what if.” Beginning with notions of sacrifice and the emergence of a public sphere for politics and art, Boym expands her account to include the relationships between freedom and liberation, modernity and terror, and political dissent and creative estrangement. While depicting a world of differences, she affirms lasting solidarities based on the commitment to the passionate thinking that reflections on freedom require. To do so, Boym assembles a remarkable cast of characters: Aeschylus and Euripides, Kafka and Mandelstam, Arendt and Heidegger, and a virtual encounter between Dostoevsky and Marx on the streets of Paris. By offering a fresh look at the strange history of this idea, Another Freedom delivers a nuanced portrait of freedom, one whose repercussions will be felt well into the future.
The Future of Nostalgia
by Svetlana BoymCombining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities--St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague--and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.
The Off-Modern (International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics)
by Svetlana BoymSvetlana Boym writes a new genealogy of modernity, moving beyond older debates between modernism and postmodernism to focus on the intersection of art, architecture, technology, and philosophy in the early twenty-first century. Drawing on theories of Georg Simmel, Henri Bergson, Aby Warburg, and Jacques Derrida, Boym presents the off-modern as an eccentric, self-questioning, anti-authoritarian perspective with roots in the Russian avant-garde, now developed in surprising ways by contemporary artists, architects, and curators around the world. She illustrates the off-modern in discussions of (and with) figures as diverse as architect Rem Koolhaas, Albanian artist-turned-mayor Edi Rama, an art collective in Delhi, and the creator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Both a manifesto and a memoir, The Off-Modern often returns to themes of travel and immigration, exploring issues of diasporic intimacy and productive estrangement amid nostalgic landscapes of urban ruins.