Colleagues: While not directly focused on the Internet as such, the following may be of interest to Aoir-ists, especially vis-a-vis notions of literacy in electronic culture and the possible impacts of shifting from print to electronic culture. +++ Please post and distribute as appropriate. Apologies for duplications and cross-postings - Forthcoming book announcement. Critical Thinking and the Bible in the Age of New Media, edited by Charles Ess. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004) Critical Thinking and the Bible in the Age of New Media collects contemporary scholarship to address the question: What does critical thinking about the Bible - e.g., as applied in Jewish and Christian traditions of interpretation, theology, and our very understanding of what "Scripture" means - "look like" as the Bible (_the_ Book of the age of print) is transmediated from print to electronic formats? This volume, the first of its kind, is made up of contributions originally developed for a conference sponsored by the American Bible Society. Contributors represent a wide diversity of religious traditions and academic disciplines--philosophy, biblical studies, theology, feminism, aesthetics, communication theory, and media studies. Ess's Introduction summarizes the individual chapters and then develops their broader significance for contemporary debates regarding media, postmodernism, and the possible relationships between faith and reason. Table of Contents: Introduction: Critical Thinking, Biblical Texts, and Faith and Reason in the Age of New Media Keynote Address: Reasoned Judgment and Revelation: The Relation of Critical Thinking and Bible Study - Peter Facione Critical Thinking Within Biblical Texts: Bible Reading and Critical Thinking - Christof Hardmeier Critical Thinking for Ordinary Believers - Byron Eubanks Three Contemporary Perspectives on Critical Thinking and the Bible Let the Reader Understand: Biblically Disciplined Thought in Light of the Interrogative Model of Reasoning -Susan and Jim Bachman Critical Thinking in the Black Church - Isaac Mwase Women's Feminist Critical Thinking about the Bible - Elizabeth Dodson Gray Postmodern Perspectives Reading Scripture as Critical-thinking Christians in a Postmodern Era - James Voelz McLuhan and a Critical Electronic Ethos: Contexts in Collision or Harmony - Donald Colhour Hearing the Hum in a Wired World: Preliminary Musings on Virtual Reality and Evangelical Education - Ben Witherington Voices of Caution Images Have Consequences: The Impact of the Visual on the Word - Terry Lindvall Reading and Critical Thinking: Pentecostal Traditions vis-á-vis New Media - Michael Palmer Middle Grounds Bible Study, Critical Thinking and Post-Critical Thought: Cultural Considerations - Phil Mullins Bible Reading between History and Industry - Eep Talstra Prayer and the Internet - Kate Lindemann Contributors; Index. 348 pages. Available early summer. ISBN 0-7618-2863-X Paper $38.00 ISBN 0-7618-2862-1 Cloth $65.00 The book may be pre-ordered by calling UPA Customer Service at 1-800-462-6420. +++ Thanks! and cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23