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This timely collaboration by three prominent scholars of media-based performance presents a new model for understanding and analyzing theater and performance created and experienced where time-based, live events, and mediated technologies converge–particularly those works conceived and performed explicitly within the context of contemporary digital culture.

Performance and Media introduces readers to the complexity of new media-based performances and how best to understand and contextualize the work. Each author presents a different model for how best to approach this work, while inviting readers to develop their own critical frameworks, i.e., taxonomies, to analyze both past and emerging performances. Performance and Media capitalizes on the advantages of digital media and online collaborations, while simultaneously creating a responsive and integrated resource for research, scholarship, and teaching. Unlike other monographs or edited collections, this book presents the concept of multiple taxonomies as a model for criticism in a dynamic and rapidly changing field.

Phylogenetic Systematics, first published in 1966, marks a turning point in the history of systematic biology. Willi Hennig's influential synthetic work, arguing for the primacy of the phylogenetic system as the general reference system in biology, generated significant controversy and opened possibilities for evolutionary biology that are still being explored.
 
 

Most of us lump plants together in one big family, and when pressed can only explain their grouping by what they’re not—not an animal, not a mineral, and so just a plant. In reality, there are hundreds of different plant families, each grouped logically by a unique family history and genealogy. This brings sense and order to the more than a quarter of a million different plant species covering a diverse spectrum that includes soaring sequoias (Cupressaceae), squat prickly pear (Cactaceae), and luxuriant roses (Rosaceae).

Plant Families is an easy-to-use, beautifully illustrated guide to the more than one hundred core plant families every horticulturist, gardener, or budding botanist needs to know. It introduces the basics of plant genealogy and teaches readers how to identify and understand the different structures of flowers, trees, herbs, shrubs, and bulbs. It then walks through each family, explaining its origins and range, and describing characteristics such as size, flowers, and seeds. Each family is accompanied by full-color botanical illustrations and diagrams. “Uses For” boxes planted throughout the book provide practical gardening tips related to each family.

We have much to gain by learning about the relationships between plant families. By understanding how botanists create these groupings, we can become more apt at spotting the unique characteristics of a plant and identify them faster and more accurately. Understanding plant families also helps us to make sense of—and better appreciate—the enormous biological diversity of the plant kingdom.

The peoples of the American Southwest during the 13th through the 17th centuries witnessed dramatic changes in settlement size, exchange relationships, ideology, social organization, and migrations that included those of the first European settlers. Concomitant with these world-shaking events, communities of potters began producing new kinds of wares—particularly polychrome and glaze-paint decorated pottery—that entailed new technologies and new materials. The contributors to this volume present results of their collaborative research into the production and distribution of these new wares, including cutting-edge chemical and petrographic analyses. They use the insights gained to reflect on the changing nature of communities of potters as they participated in the dynamic social conditions of their world.