Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed “posthuman cinema.” It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.
Screening programmes involve the systematic offer of testing for populations or groups of apparently healthy people to identify individuals who may be at future risk of a particular medical condition or disease, with the aim of offering intervention to reduce their risk. For many years, screening was practised without debate, and without evidence, but in the 1960s serious challenges were raised about many of the screening procedures then being practised. Benefits and harms of screening must be measured in high quality trials, and the benefits of screening must be weighed alongside the negative side-effects. Concerns were raised about potential and actual harm arising when people without a health problem received dangerous and unnecessary investigations and treatments as a result of routine screening tests. Controversy raged, and it took some 50 years to achieve widespread recognition that evidence-based and quality assured programme delivery was essential, coupled with provision of balanced informed to enable informed choice for potential participants. Commercially motivated provision of poor quality and non-evidence based screening tests is increasing and screening remains a highly contested topic that has relevance in all health systems including for the general public and media. This book serves as a practical and comprehensive guide to all aspects of screening. Following the international success of the first edition, this second edition brings extensive updates and new case study material. The first section deals with concepts, methods, and evidence, charts the story of screening back to 1861, and covers all aspects of a screening programme and how to research the full consequences. The second section is a practical guide to sound policy-making and to high quality delivery of best value screening. The controversies, paradoxes, uncertainties, and ethical dilemmas of screening are explained, and each chapter is packed with examples, real-life case histories, helpful summary points, and self-test questions. Reference is made to the NHS, a leader in screening, but the primary focus is on universal principles, making the book highly relevant across the globe.
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary representation of the author on screen. It does this through two main approaches: by looking at how biographies of well-known authors in Western culture have been adapted onto the film and television screen; and by examining the wider preoccupation with the idea of what the ‘author persona’ means in broader economic, cultural, industrial, and ideological terms. Drawing from current debates about the uses of the heritage industry and conventions of the Hollywood biopic and celebrity culture, this book re-frames the analysis of the author on screen in contemporary culture and theorises it under its own unique genre: the ‘literary biopic’. With case studies including adaptations of the biographies and cultural personas of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, and Allen Ginsberg—to name a few–this book examines how and why the author continues to be a prominent screen and cultural preoccupation.
