Description: The first cross-historical study of the relationship between methods of close reading and discourses on attention.
Brief description: Marion Thain is Professor of Culture and Technology at the University of Edinburgh and Director of Edinburgh Futures Institute. She publishes primarily on the relationship between culture and technology (understood in the broadest terms) and her current projects sit within the interdisciplinary field of attention studies. See marionthain.org for more details.
Review Quotes: When attention is under siege, reading remains our best defence - not as shelter, but as training. Across centuries, from Bernard of Clairvaux to Austen and Proust and beyond, reading teaches us to notice how we notice. The essays in this volume do the same: by attending to each other, they invite us to join the conversation.--David Marno, University of California, Berkeley