Christine Buci-Glucksmann is a philosopher, professor emerita of the University of Paris VIII, and the author of many books in the fields of political philosophy, aesthetics, contemporary art, the baroque, ornament, Asian art, and virtual art. Her most recent works include Esth¿que de l¿¿¿re (2003), Au-del¿e la m¿ncholie (2005), Philosophie de l¿ornement: D¿Orient en Occident (2008), and Une femme philosophe (2008). Two of her books have previously been translated into English: Gramsci and the State (1980) and Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity (1994).Dorothy Z. Baker is professor emerita of the University of Houston, the author of Mythic Masks in Self-Reflexive Poetry and America¿s Gothic Fiction and the editor of Poetics in the Poem and The Silent and Soft Communion. She has translated the poetry of Pierre Reverdy and Armand Robin.