A Field Guide to a New Meta-field: Bridging the Humanities-Neurosciences Divide

Barbara Stafford is a pioneering art historian whose research has long helped to bridge the divide between the humanities and cognitive sciences. In A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field, she marshals a distinguished group of thinkers to forge a ground-breaking dialogue between the emerging brain sciences, the liberal arts, and social sciences.

Stafford’s book examines meaning and mental function from this dual experimental perspective. The wide-ranging essays included here—from Frank Echenhofer’s foray into shamanist hallucinogenic visions to David Bashwiner’s analysis of emotion and danceability—develop a common language for implementing programmatic and institutional change. Demonstrating how formerly divided fields are converging around shared issues, A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field maps a high-level, crossdisciplinary adventure from one of our leading figures in visual studies.

Barbara Stafford is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She is the author of seven books, including, most recently, Visual Analogy, and a coauthor of Devices of Wonder. She is also the 2015 recipient of the Media Art Histories Award for Outstanding Achievement.