New writers wanted

EARSeL's History: The First 30 Years
Madeleine Godefroy, Gunnar Ostrem, Robin Vaughan
European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories

The European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories is a non-profit making organisation of institutes and laboratories which are involved in the peaceful use of remote sensing.

It was set up just over 30 years ago to provide a focus for remote sensing activities in Europe and to facilitate cooperation between laboratories in different countries. As the economic and political climate changes EARSeL has had to develop new strategies and frequently reinvent itself.

This book details the history of the organisation since it was set up. It attempts to document EARSeL's development from being an idea of a small group of individuals to the present day and the changes that have taken place in its structures and its activities to ensure continued relevance.

Madeleine Godefroy was Secretary of EARSel from 1981 to 2005. Gunnar Ostrem was Treasurer of EARSeL from 1977 to 1984 and became an Honorary Member in 2004.

Robin Vaughan is an Honorary Fellow and former Director of the University's Centre for Remote Sensing and Environmental Monitoring. He has been Treasurer and Chairman of EARSeL and was made an honorary member in 2004.

Modern Literature and the Tragic
K. M. Newton
Edinburgh University Press

This book explores modern literature's responses to the tragic. It examines writers from the latter half of the nineteenth century through to the later twentieth century whose work engages with ideas about tragedy and the tragic.

Although the main emphasis is on detailed discussion of particular literary texts, the introduction considers some established theories of tragedy, for example Aristotle and Hegel, and more recent theory related to the tragic in the work of Peter Szondi and Jacques Derrida.

Though the idea of the tragic is problematic in the modern period the issues it raises are still of crucial significance, and this book argues that it has provoked a variety of responses from the hostile, producing anti-tragic writing, such as the plays of Ibsen in his social realist period and those of Shaw and Brecht, to attempts, especially by writers of fiction such as Hardy, to reconstruct the tragic on the basis of intellectual developments (mainly deriving from Schopenhauer and Darwin) that create a new foundation for the tragic in modern times.

Later chapters discuss the influence of Nietzsche's revisionist view of Greek tragedy with its redefining of the concept of the tragic on such writers as Strindberg and Lawrence; the Theatre of the Absurd's more ambiguous relation to the tragic in the post-second world war period; and the relation between the tragic and postmodern anti-foundationalism.

One of the major aims of the study is to show by a detailed analysis of certain key texts that many writers who might seem not to have much in common implicitly enter into debate or dialogue with each other in relation to the fundamental issues raised by tragedy and the tragic.

Professor Ken Newton is a Professor of English in the School of Humanities.

Caledon Ships
David Middleton
Friends of Dundee City Archives

This new book published by Friends of Dundee City Archives features profiles of a selection of ships built by Caledon Shipbuilding and Engineering Company between 1894 and 1980.

Each profile includes illustrations, technical details and life stories of the individual ships.

The book is aimed at students and researchers of the history of ship design and development as well as former employees of the company and their families and anyone interested in Dundee's industrial past.

It is written by David Middleton, former senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Dundee, currently a volunteer at Dundee City Archives and one time Engineering apprentice at Caledon.