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Bioethics Mediation
A Guide to Shaping Shared Solutions, Revised and Expanded Edition
Nancy Neveloff Dubler
Vanderbilt University Press, 2011
Bioethics Mediation offers stories about patients, families, and health care providers enmeshed in conflict as they wrestle with decisions about life and death. It provides guidance for those charged with supporting the patient's traditional and religious commitments and personal wishes. Today's medical system, without intervention, privileges those within shared cultures of communication and disadvantages those lacking power and position, such as immigrants, the poor, and nonprofessionals. This book gives clinical ethics consultants, palliative care providers, and physicians, nurses, and other medical staff the tools they need to understand and manage conflict while respecting the values of patients and family members.


Conflicts come in different guises, and the key to successful resolution is early identification and intervention. Every bioethics mediator needs to be prepared with skills to listen, "level the playing field," identify individual interests, explore options, and help craft a "principled resolution" -- a consensus that identifies a plan aligned with accepted ethical principles, legal stipulations, and moral rules and that charts a clear course of future intervention.


The organization of the book makes it ideal for teaching or as a handbook for the practitioner. It includes actual cases, modified to protect the privacy of patients, providers, and institutions; detailed case analyses; tools for step-by-step mediation; techniques for the mediator; sample chart notes; and a set of actual role plays with expert mediator and bioethics commentaries. The role plays include:


- discharge planning for a dying patient

- an at-risk pregnancy

- HIV and postsurgical complications in the ICU

- treatment for a dying adolescent

- dialysis and multiple systems failure
Expanded by two-thirds from the 2004 edition, the new edition features two new role plays, a new chapter on how to write chart notes, and a discussion of new understandings of the role of the clinical ethics consultant.

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The Cosmic Zoom
Scale, Knowledge, and Mediation
Zachary Horton
University of Chicago Press, 2021
In The Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, a view of two people enjoying a picnic zooms up and away to show their surroundings, moving progressively farther into space, then zooms back in for a close-up of the hand of the picnicker, travelling deep into the microscopic realm. This is one of the most iconic examples of the “cosmic zoom,” a trope that has influenced countless media forms over the past seventy years.

Horton uses the cosmic zoom as a starting point to develop a cross-disciplinary theory of scale as mediated difference. He considers the origins of our notions of scale, how scalar mediation functions differently in analog and digital modes, and how cosmic zoom media has influenced scientific and popular views of the world. Analyzing literature, film, digital media, and database history, Horton establishes a much-needed framework for thinking about scale across multiple domains and disciplines.
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Crash Cultures
Modernity, Mediation and the Material
Edited by Jane Arthurs and Iain Grant
Intellect Books, 1995
Since Diana's car crash in August 1997, media interest in the crash as an event needing explanation has proliferated. A glut of documentaries on television have investigated the social and scientific history of our responses to the car crash, as well as showing the personal impact of the crash on individual lives.

In trying to give meaning to one celebrity crash, the more general significance of the car crash, its challenge to rational control or explanation, its disregard for the subject and its will, became the focus for attention. Coincidentally, the two most newsworthy films of 1997 were David Cronenberg's Crash and James Cameron's Titanic, both of which generated intense popular interest.

The principal purpose of this collection of essays is to subject texts, within which crashes figure, to well-defined cultural study. The themes that emerge from this collection, which is truly experimental in attempting to draw together the resources for a cultural study of events, are many and varied. Moreover, they vary in format, in order to bring as many modes of address as possible to bear on the crashes that catastrophically and fantastically punctuate the fabric of everyday life.
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Demanding Images
Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia
Karen Strassler
Duke University Press, 2019
The end of authoritarian rule in 1998 ushered in an exhilarating but unsettled period of democratization in Indonesia. A more open political climate converged with a rapidly changing media landscape, yielding a vibrant and volatile public sphere within which Indonesians grappled with the possibilities and limits of democracy amid entrenched corruption, state violence, and rising forms of intolerance. In Demanding Images Karen Strassler theorizes image-events as political processes in which publicly circulating images become the material ground of struggles over the nation's past, present, and future. Considering photographs, posters, contemporary art, graffiti, selfies, memes, and other visual media, she argues that people increasingly engage with politics through acts of making, circulating, manipulating, and scrutinizing images. Demanding Images is both a closely observed account of Indonesia's turbulent democratic transition and a globally salient analysis of the work of images in the era of digital media and neoliberal democracy. Strassler reveals politics today to be an unruly enterprise profoundly shaped by the affective and evidentiary force of images.
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Domesticating Democracy
The Politics of Conflict Resolution in Bolivia
Susan Helen Ellison
Duke University Press, 2018
In Domesticating Democracy Susan Helen Ellison examines foreign-funded alternate dispute resolution (ADR) organizations that provide legal aid and conflict resolution to vulnerable citizens in El Alto, Bolivia. Advocates argue that these programs help residents cope with their interpersonal disputes and economic troubles while avoiding an overburdened legal system and cumbersome state bureaucracies. Ellison shows that ADR programs do more than that—they aim to change the ways Bolivians interact with the state and with global capitalism, making them into self-reliant citizens. ADR programs frequently encourage Bolivians to renounce confrontational expressions of discontent, turning away from courtrooms, physical violence, and street protest and coming to the negotiation table. Nevertheless, residents of El Alto find creative ways to take advantage of these micro-level resources while still seeking justice and a democratic system capable of redressing the structural violence and vulnerability that ADR fails to treat.
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English for Dispute Resolution
Mastering Negotiation, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution
Barrie J. Roberts
University of Michigan Press, 2025
English for Dispute Resolution shows advanced-level ESL students and professionals how to negotiate and mediate in English. Following the approach used in US law and business schools to teach Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the book balances readings on ADR theory and strategies with activities, practice role plays, and self-reflection. It provides complex information and step-by-step instructions in plain English, clearly explains key ADR terms and idioms, and highlights cross-cultural communication issues that readers may encounter.

Whether they are using English for Dispute Resolution as a self-study resource or a course textbook, readers can use the book to develop their own unique negotiation and mediation styles in English and improve their professional-level English skills and soft skills for any purpose. Chapters introduce Alternative Dispute Resolution, negotiation ethics, competitive and collaborative negotiation, negotiation game theory, apologies, drafting written agreements, and mediation. After an engaging hypothetical case that introduces the chapter’s key points, each chapter provides warm-up questions, readings about dispute resolution theory and strategies, language tips, and activities and sample phrases to practice applying chapter lessons to real-world disputes. Chapters also invite readers to explore topics of interest, such as dispute resolution in their home countries, personal and professional lives, and current events, and the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in ADR. Readers will simultaneously build confidence in their English and cross-cultural dispute resolution skills.

English for Dispute Resolution offers readers:
  • Lessons that explain the theories behind Alternative Dispute Resolution, negotiation ethics, competitive and collaborative negotiation, and mediation
  • Activities that help them develop their own unique negotiation strategies and styles along with critical thinking, problem-solving, reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
  • Step-by-step guidance, sample sentences, and practice activities for applying chapter lessons to real-world disputes.
  • Opportunities to explore topics of interest, such as dispute resolution in their home countries, personal and professional lives and current events, and the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in ADR.
  • Key ADR terms and idioms in plain, accessible English.
  • Specific tips to improve cross-cultural communication for negotiating and mediating in English.
A companion website with downloadable checklists, forms, and sample language that can be used for classroom role-plays and real-world negotiations and mediations.
ESL and ESP instructors can use this book along with The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution to supplement Legal or Business English courses, teach new standalone negotiation or mediation courses, build students’ soft skills, or to add engaging activities and role-plays to ESL courses.
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Excommunication
Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation
Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Always connect—that is the imperative of today’s media. But what about those moments when media cease to function properly, when messages go beyond the sender and receiver to become excluded from the world of communication itself—those messages that state: “There will be no more messages”? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark turn our usual understanding of media and mediation on its head by arguing that these moments reveal the ways the impossibility of communication is integral to communication itself—instances they call excommunication.
 
In three linked essays, Excommunication pursues this elusive topic by looking at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. First, Galloway proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation today—mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. Then, Thacker goes boldly beyond Galloway’s classification scheme by examining the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Charting a trajectory of examples from H. P. Lovecraft to Meister Eckhart, Thacker explores those instances when one communicates or connects with the inaccessible, dubbing such modes of mediation “haunted” or “weird” to underscore their inaccessibility. Finally, Wark evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left. He posits a critical theory that celebrates heresy and that is distinct from those that now venerate Saint Paul.
 
Reexamining commonplace definitions of media, mediation, and communication, Excommunication offers a glimpse into the realm of the nonhuman to find a theory of mediation adequate to our present condition.
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Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital
Ani Maitra
Northwestern University Press, 2020
In Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital, Ani Maitra urgently calls for a reevaluation of identity politics as an aesthetic maneuver regulated by capitalism. A dominant critical trend in the humanities, Maitra argues, is to dismiss or embrace identity through the formal properties of a privileged aesthetic medium such as literature, cinema, or even the performative body. In contrast, he demonstrates that identity politics becomes unavoidably real and material only because the minoritized subject is split between multiple sites of mediation—visual, linguistic, and sonic—while remaining firmly tethered to capitalism’s hierarchical logic of value production. Only in the interstices of media can we track the aesthetic conversion of identitarian difference into value, marked by the inequities of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
 
Maitra’s archive is transnational and multimodal. Moving from anticolonial polemics to psychoanalysis to diasporic experimental literature to postcolonial feminist and queer media, he lays bare the cunning by which capitalism produces and fragments identity through an intermedial “aesthetic dissonance” with the commodity form. Maitra’s novel contribution to theories of identity and to the concept of mediation will interest a wide range of scholars in media studies, critical race and postcolonial studies, and critical aesthetics.
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Jesus the Mediator
William Brownsberger
Catholic University of America Press, 2013
In Jesus the Mediator, William L. Brownsberger offers an account of the human psychology assumed by the Second Person of the Trinity in light of its salvific significance
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Mediation and Protest Movements
Edited by Bart Cammaerts, Alice Mattoni, and Patrick McCurdy
Intellect Books, 2013

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics.

In a series of fascinating essays, contributors to this timely volume focus on the processes and practices in which contemporary protesters engage when acting with and through media. Covering both online and offline contexts as well as mainstream and alternative media, they consider media environments around the world in all their complexity. They also provide a broad and comparative perspective on the ways that protest movements at local and transnational levels engage in mediation processes and develop media practices. Bridging the gap between social movement theory and media and communication studies, Mediation and Protest Movements will serve as an important reference for students and scholars of the media and social change.

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Mozart and the Mediation of Childhood
Adeline Mueller
University of Chicago Press, 2021

The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s precocity is so familiar as to be taken for granted. In scholarship and popular culture, Mozart the Wunderkind is often seen as belonging to a category of childhood all by himself. But treating the young composer as an anomaly risks minimizing his impact. In this book, Adeline Mueller examines how Mozart shaped the social and cultural reevaluation of childhood during the Austrian Enlightenment. Whether in a juvenile sonata printed with his age on the title page, a concerto for a father and daughter, a lullaby, a musical dice game, or a mass for the consecration of an orphanage church, Mozart’s music and persona transformed attitudes toward children’s agency, intellectual capacity, relationships with family and friends, political and economic value, work, school, and leisure time.
 
Thousands of children across the Habsburg Monarchy were affected by the Salzburg prodigy and the idea he embodied: that childhood itself could be packaged, consumed, deployed, “performed”—in short, mediated—through music. This book builds upon a new understanding of the history of childhood as dynamic and reciprocal, rather than a mere projection or fantasy—as something mediated not just through texts, images, and objects but also through actions. Drawing on a range of evidence, from children’s periodicals to Habsburg court edicts and spurious Mozart prints, Mueller shows that while we need the history of childhood to help us understand Mozart, we also need Mozart to help us understand the history of childhood.

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Out of Mind
Mode, Mediation, and Cognition in Twenty-First-Century Narrative
Torsa Ghosal
The Ohio State University Press, 2021
What is the relationship between aesthetic presentation of thought and scientific conceptions of cognition? Torsa Ghosal’s Out of Mind: Mode, Mediation, and Cognition in Twenty-First-Century Narrative answers this question by offering incisive commentary on a range of contemporary fictions that combine language, maps, photographs, and other images to portray thought. Situating literature within groundbreaking debates on memory, perception, abstraction, and computation, Ghosal shows how stories not only reflect historical beliefs about how minds work but also participate in their reappraisal. Out of Mind makes a compelling case for understanding narrative forms and cognitive-scientific frameworks as co-emergent and cross-pollinating. To this end, Ghosal harnesses narrative theory, multimodality studies, cognitive sciences, and disability studies to track competing perspectives on remembering, reading, and sense of place and self. Through new readings of the works of Kamila Shamsie, Aleksandar Hemon, Mark Haddon, Lance Olsen, Steve Tomasula, Jonathan Safran Foer, and others, Out of Mind generates unique insights into literary imagination’s influence on how we think and perceive amid twenty-first-century social, technological, and environmental changes.
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Rituals Of Mediation
International Politics And Social Meaning
Francois Debrix
University of Minnesota Press, 2003

A timely consideration of the meaning of transnational cultural interactions today

In an era of increasing globalization, the cultural and the international have borders as permeable as most nations’s—and an understanding of one requires making sense of the other. Foregrounding the role of mediation—understood here as a site of representation, transformation, and pluralization—the authors engage two specific questions: How might we make theoretical and practical sense of transnational cultural interactions? And how are we to understand the ways in which the sites of mediation represent, transform, and remediate internationals? Accordingly, the authors consider international issues like security, development, political activism, and the war against terrorism through the lens of cultural practices such as traveling through airports, exhibiting art and photography, logging on to the Internet, and spinning news stories.

Contributors: Robin Brown, U of Leeds; David Campbell, U of Newcastle upon Tyne; Michael Dillon, U of Lancaster; Debbie Lisle, Queen’s U, Belfast; Moya Lloyd, Queen’s U, Belfast; Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U; Patricia L. Price, Florida International U; Jayne Rodgers, U of Leeds; Marysia Zalewski, Queen’s U, Belfast.
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The Spirit of Dialogue
Lessons from Faith Traditions in Transforming Conflict
Aaron T. Wolf
Island Press, 2017
We tend to approach conflict from the perspective of competing interests. A farmer’s interest lies in preserving water for crops, while an environmentalist’s interest is in using that same water for instream habitats. It’s hard to see how these interests intersect. But what if there was a different way to understand each party’s needs?

Aaron T. Wolf has spent his career mediating such conflicts, both in the U.S. and around the world. He quickly learned that in negotiations, people are not automatons, programed to defend their positions, but are driven by a complicated set of dynamics—from how comfortable (or uncomfortable) the meeting room is to their deepest senses of self. What approach or system of understanding could possibly untangle all these complexities? Wolf’s answer may be surprising to Westerners who are accustomed to separating religion from science, rationality from spirituality.

Wolf draws lessons from a diversity of faith traditions to transform conflict. True listening, as practiced by Buddhist monks, as opposed to the “active listening” advocated by many mediators, can be the key to calming a colleague’s anger. Alignment with an energy beyond oneself, what Christians would call grace, can change self-righteousness into community concern. Shifting the discussion from one about interests to one about common values—both farmers and environmentalists share the value of love of place—can be the starting point for real dialogue.

As a scientist, Wolf engages religion not for the purpose of dogma but for the practical process of transformation. Whether atheist or fundamentalist, Muslim or Jewish, Quaker or Hindu, any reader involved in difficult dialogue will find concrete steps towards a meeting of souls.
 
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Sunspots and the Sun King
Sovereignty and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century France
Ellen M. McClure
University of Illinois Press, 2006

Mediation, monarchy, and Louis XIV's attempts to legitimize his reign

In order to assert his divine right, Louis XIV missed no opportunity to identify himself as God’s representative on earth. However, in Sunspots and the Sun King Ellen McClure explores the contradictions inherent in attempting to reconcile the logical and mystical aspects of divine right monarchy. McClure analyzes texts devoted to definitions of sovereignty, presents a meticulous reading of Louis XIV’s memoirs to the crown prince, and offers a novel analysis of diplomats and ambassadors as the mediators who preserved and transmitted the king’s authority. McClure asserts that these discussions, ranging from treatises to theater, expose incommensurable models of authority and representation permeating almost every aspect of seventeenth-century French culture.

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The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution
Mastering Negotiation, Mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution
Barrie J. Roberts
University of Michigan Press, 2025
The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution shows ESL/ESP instructors how to use the textbook to teach negotiation, mediation, professional-level communication, and the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Designed to support instructors who may not have formal background or training in these topics, the book provides separate guidance for ESP and ESL instructors. It shows ESP instructors how to use the textbook in their current Legal English or Business English courses or in stand-alone negotiation or mediation courses. It advises ESL instructors on how to use these topics as a theme for multi-skill courses or as an engaging new way to develop students’ cross-cultural communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and other soft skills in their current courses. The textbook and guide are based on over twenty years of classroom experience with high-intermediate to advanced ESL and ESP students, from undergrads to LL.M. students, and on teacher-training workshops offered at places such as UC Berkeley, TESOL, and CATESOL. 

Each chapter of the textbook provides a ready-made lesson plan with a sample dispute, warm-up questions, background readings, follow-up questions, activities, and reflections, and The Teaching Guide supplements each chapter with:
  • Support in the form of teaching tips, lesson plans, additional activities or role-plays, assessment suggestions, and resources for further exploration.
  • Separate guidance for ESL and Legal English/Business English instructors that helps them select the material and activities best suited to their students’ interests and needs.
  • Resources such as sample syllabi and activities with step-by-step instructions that make it easy to start teaching the textbook.
  • An online companion site where instructors can download and send activities and role-plays directly to their students.
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