Humanities

12 pages, 258 KB

Open AccessArticle

Cultural Memory and Identity in Times of Conflict: Analysing the Bulgarian Campaign of 1913 Through Romanian Soldiers’ Memoirs

by Negoiță Cătălin

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 205; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100205 - 21 Oct 2025

Viewed by 203

Abstract

The formation of collective identity and cultural memory is deeply influenced by the historical context and the area in which they develop. Memorial writing entails the reconstruction of the realities of the age under focus, drawing on the author’s objective and especially subjective [...] Read more.

The formation of collective identity and cultural memory is deeply influenced by the historical context and the area in which they develop. Memorial writing entails the reconstruction of the realities of the age under focus, drawing on the author’s objective and especially subjective memories. It is influenced by the one who analyses the events, the language and the underlying values. Thus, the boundary between fiction and reality is often indistinct, as memory gaps are filled with the aid of imagination, without diminishing the documentary value of the text. Since memoirs represent a crossover between history, identity, and literature, an armed conflict can be narrated in many ways. This is also true for Romania’s military campaign in 1913, a moment that is not sufficiently explored by Romanian historiography and literature. Those who serve as chroniclers of the time, enduring endless marches through hostile environments and encountering a largely unfriendly population, contribute to Romanians’ discovery of a reality of the country south of the Danube River that is both similar to and different from theirs. Writers, historians, and publicists fill their pages with memories of a campaign where almost no shots were fired but which resulted in over 5000 victims killed by cholera. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cross-Borders and Crossroads—Sharing Cultural Memory and Identity Negotiation in South-Eastern European Narratives)

13 pages, 243 KB

Open AccessArticle

Objecting to the Burden: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Zakhor and American Jewish Literature

by Ariel Horowitz

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 204; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100204 - 20 Oct 2025

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Abstract

In his seminal book Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1982), renowned historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argues that it is literature and culture, and not historiography, that shaped Jewish collective memory for generations. In Yerushalmi’s telling, the boundaries between historiography and literature, “truth” [...] Read more.

In his seminal book Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1982), renowned historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argues that it is literature and culture, and not historiography, that shaped Jewish collective memory for generations. In Yerushalmi’s telling, the boundaries between historiography and literature, “truth” and “myth,” are set and strict. However, the reception of Yerushalmi’s work itself challenges this assumption and obscures the clear-cut distinctions between literature and historiography. This paper reads Yerushalmi’s book alongside its preface, written by Harold Bloom, in an attempt to understand Zakhor not only as a historiographic argument, but as a narrative of Jewish modernity, a literary meditation, embodying the very shift in collective memory that Yerushalmi himself lamented. The paper then explores the ways in which Yerushalmi’s work has inspired two prominent contemporary American Jewish writers: Joshua Cohen, in his novel The Netanyahus (2021), and Nicole Krauss, in her short story “Zusya on the Roof” (2013). In their literary work, one can hear echoes of Yerushalmi’s work, distinct and identifiable, yet incorporated in a fictional, imaginative world. Zakhor thus serves not only as an inspiration but as a catalyst for a deep, insightful rendering of Jewish history and one’s grappling with it. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Comparative Jewish Literatures)

16 pages, 1397 KB

Open AccessReview

The Monster of Ravenna and Other Imaginations: Animal Symbols, Birth Defects, and Political Agendas in the Conceptualization of Monstrosities from Medieval Witchcraft Lore to Early Modern Europe, with Some Repercussions in the 19th Century and Beyond

by Juan Claudio Gutierrez and Steven D. Holladay

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 203; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100203 - 19 Oct 2025

Viewed by 717

Abstract

Fascination with the unknown has always characterized humanity. This includes creation of mythical creatures that are believed to exist even though fully unproven. Fabricating monsters began to peak in early modern Europe. Sixteenth-century monsters were among the earliest documented, often with printed leaflets [...] Read more.

Fascination with the unknown has always characterized humanity. This includes creation of mythical creatures that are believed to exist even though fully unproven. Fabricating monsters began to peak in early modern Europe. Sixteenth-century monsters were among the earliest documented, often with printed leaflets that displayed such creatures. This monster tradition began to flourish, both in scientific and popular form including human, animal and hybrid monsters. One of the most famous products of the time was the Monster of Ravenna, inspired by a malformed human birth in 1512, Italy. Due to a lack of understanding of teratology, animal and, indeed, even human birth defects were mischaracterized and used as tools to support the validity of monsters for political agendas. Animals have been an ongoing part of these and other mythical conceptualizations, sometimes of the divine, sometimes of the demonic. This article considers appearance of human- and animal-based fictional monsters in early modern Europe with some later repercussions. Full article

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5 pages, 138 KB

Open AccessEditorial

Riotous Assemblies: Afterword

by Nathan K. Hensley

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 202; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100202 - 17 Oct 2025

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Abstract

The fissures in the organization of society that has obtained for some while widen weekly [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anglophone Riot)

6 pages, 767 KB

Open AccessEditorial

Introduction: African American Children’s Literature

by Neal A. Lester

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100201 - 16 Oct 2025

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Abstract

Accepting the notion that “childhood” and “adulthood” are social constructs and not biological facts affords an opportunity to see and understand how the lived experiences of children and adults, past and present, intersect in complicated and multitextured ways [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)

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3 pages, 121 KB

Open AccessEditorial

An Author Writing to Remember and Celebrate Black Children

by Sharon Bell Mathis

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 200; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100200 - 15 Oct 2025

Viewed by 191

Abstract

With an undergraduate degree in sociology from Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD) and a master’s degree in Library Science from the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC), Sharon Bell Mathis is a librarian and a multiple award-winning children’s and young adult book author [...] Read more.

With an undergraduate degree in sociology from Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD) and a master’s degree in Library Science from the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC), Sharon Bell Mathis is a librarian and a multiple award-winning children’s and young adult book author [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)

4 pages, 144 KB

Open AccessEditorial

Mirrors and Windows: Lucille Clifton and African American Identity in Children’s Books

by Sidney L. Clifton

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 199; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100199 - 15 Oct 2025

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Abstract

In March 2024, the Guest Editor of this Special Issue on African American Children’s Literature attended the first of its kind—a day-long symposium specifically devoted to African American children’s literature [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)

23 pages, 1477 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Shapes of Cinderella: Emotional Architecture and the Language of Moral Difference

by Katherine Elkins

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 198; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100198 - 14 Oct 2025

Viewed by 299

Abstract

This study leverages emotional arc modeling along with close reading to examine the Chinese Ye Xian, Perrault’s Cendrillon, and two Grimm versions. While computational modeling suggests that Cinderella tales share similar “recognition scaffolds,” their emotional architectures reflect distinct moral universes. Story [...] Read more.

This study leverages emotional arc modeling along with close reading to examine the Chinese Ye Xian, Perrault’s Cendrillon, and two Grimm versions. While computational modeling suggests that Cinderella tales share similar “recognition scaffolds,” their emotional architectures reflect distinct moral universes. Story peaks and valleys vary according to individual narrative resolutions to a universal problem of virtue unrecognized. Ye Xian descends to maximum negative sentiment when sacred bonds rupture, aligning with Buddhist-Daoist ethics in which divine-human reciprocity supersedes other bonds. Perrault’s arc offers surprising asymmetry: linguistic violence (Culcendron) defines every valley, while material transformation marks every peak. The 1812 Grimm tale oscillates between degradation and elevation with peaks and valleys suggestive of a syncretism between folk magic and Protestant theology. The 1857 version flattens into a rough semblance of Perrault’s emotional architecture, but peaks and valleys reflect Protestant, rather than aristocratic, values. These many shapes of Cinderella suggest fairy tales may serve as a flexible emotional technology. Themes of good and evil are key features of these emotional architectures, but how they are expressed vary from tale to tale. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Depiction of Good and Evil in Fairytales)

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12 pages, 200 KB

Open AccessArticle

Secularization and the Construction of an Author–Reader Intellectual Community: A Study of Virginia Woolf’s Religious Legacies

by Qiong Yu

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 197; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100197 - 11 Oct 2025

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Abstract

The secularization of religion in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Britain profoundly altered the ethical foundations of the modernist novel, challenging writers to reimagine the role of literature in the absence of religious authority. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates how modernist authors—exemplified by [...] Read more.

The secularization of religion in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Britain profoundly altered the ethical foundations of the modernist novel, challenging writers to reimagine the role of literature in the absence of religious authority. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates how modernist authors—exemplified by Virginia Woolf—both inherited and transformed the ethical ideals of religious communities. Through a comparative approach, this article traces the secularization of the Clapham Sect’s “moral covenant” and the Quaker notion of the “inner light”, revealing how these religious legacies, as mediated through the intellectual frameworks of Leslie Stephen and George Moore, contributed to Woolf’s construction of an author–reader intellectual community. The study demonstrates how this religious inheritance is reconfigured in Woolf’s theory of the ‘common reader,’ highlighting her contribution to modernist aesthetics and ethics. Through the figure of the ‘common reader,’ religion emerges not as a set of fixed doctrines, but as a foundation for constructing ethical communities in a secular age. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

16 pages, 250 KB

Open AccessArticle

Beyond the Wound: Queer Trauma, Memory, and Resistance in Rainbow Milk

by Corpus Navalón-Guzmán

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 196; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100196 - 7 Oct 2025

Viewed by 522

Abstract

This paper explores how trauma functions not only as a mark of suffering but as a generative force of memory, agency, and resistance. Traditional trauma narratives often confine queer bodies to sites of pain, overlooking their role in reshaping history and reclaiming identity. [...] Read more.

This paper explores how trauma functions not only as a mark of suffering but as a generative force of memory, agency, and resistance. Traditional trauma narratives often confine queer bodies to sites of pain, overlooking their role in reshaping history and reclaiming identity. Drawing on Ann Cvetkovich’s concept of queer trauma as an anti-pathological force, this study examines how Rainbow Milk portrays distress not as an individual affliction requiring clinical intervention but as an insidious, intergenerational experience that circulates through familial silence and socio-cultural marginalization. At the same time, the novel illustrates how trauma can open pathways to self-expression and historical reclamation. By uncovering his family’s hidden past, the protagonist embarks on an unconventional healing process that links personal memory with collective histories of exclusion. In doing so, Rainbow Milk reframes trauma not as a fixed wound but as a dynamic, lived experience that enables identity reconstruction through remembrance, connection, and resilience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

29 pages, 3069 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Not Your Average Fashion Show:” Rethinking Black Queer Women’s Activism in Queer Fashion Shows

by Donnesha Alexandra Blake

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 195; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100195 - 2 Oct 2025

Viewed by 446

Abstract

In this study, I expand on the Black feminist tradition of rethinking Black women’s activism by examining how Black queer women’s fashion shows challenge traditional definitions and sites of activism. I present BlaQueer Style as an interpretive framework that largely draws on the [...] Read more.

In this study, I expand on the Black feminist tradition of rethinking Black women’s activism by examining how Black queer women’s fashion shows challenge traditional definitions and sites of activism. I present BlaQueer Style as an interpretive framework that largely draws on the wisdom and theories of Black feminism to undercover how these productions and the politics that shape them are not only sites of activism because they challenge the conventions of mainstream cultural institutions, but because they make space for the social and personal transformation of the communities they center. In this analysis of two public LGBTQ+ fashion shows, I argue that intention aside, the Black queer women founders and fashion workers and their practices and performances of centering marginalized communities, using the body to signal and subvert controlling images, and building coalition among these communities, highlight the liberatory potential of their fashion work. In a time when Black queer and trans people are experiencing misrepresentation and other forms of violence globally, BlaQueer Style is what I name the politics that presents a deep commitment to both the aesthetics and the liberation of these communities in Black queer women’s fashion work. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bridging Gaps in Critical Queer Genealogies: Transformative Emergent Scholarship in Queer Studies)

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22 pages, 306 KB

Open AccessArticle

Hölderlin’s Mnemosyne: A Reading

by Charles Bambach

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 194; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100194 - 2 Oct 2025

Viewed by 504

Abstract

I offer a close reading of Hölderlin’s “Mnemosyne“ (“Reif sind, in Feuer getaucht…”) that situates it in terms of its links to Greek tragedy and Homer. The essay explores Hölderlin’s focus on Achilles and the death of the Greek heroes Patroklos and Ajax [...] Read more.

I offer a close reading of Hölderlin’s “Mnemosyne“ (“Reif sind, in Feuer getaucht…”) that situates it in terms of its links to Greek tragedy and Homer. The essay explores Hölderlin’s focus on Achilles and the death of the Greek heroes Patroklos and Ajax against the notion of “poetic transport.” I also look at Hölderlin’s 2nd Böhlendorff Letter that traffics in the relation between antiquity and modernity. The essay also offers a reading of the second stanza of “Mnemosyne” in terms of Rousseau’s essay on “The Reveries of the Solitary Walker” and its appeal to the poet. As Hölderlin pursues the tense relation between memory and death, he poses questions about ethical responsibility that challenge the human being to find a path between wallowing in too excessive grief that ends in unbounded subjectivity and affirming the sense of the other that extends beyond our own self-preoccupation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hölderlin and Poetic Transport)

27 pages, 2432 KB

Open AccessArticle

The GOLEM Ontology for Narrative and Fiction

by Federico Pianzola, Luotong Cheng, Franziska Pannach, Xiaoyan Yang and Luca Scotti

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 193; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100193 - 1 Oct 2025

Viewed by 744

Abstract

This paper introduces the GOLEM ontology, a novel framework designed to provide a structured and computationally tractable representation of narrative and fictional elements. Addressing limitations in existing ontologies regarding the integration of fictional entities and diverse narrative theories, our model extends CIDOC CRM [...] Read more.

This paper introduces the GOLEM ontology, a novel framework designed to provide a structured and computationally tractable representation of narrative and fictional elements. Addressing limitations in existing ontologies regarding the integration of fictional entities and diverse narrative theories, our model extends CIDOC CRM and LRMoo and leverages DOLCE’s cognitive foundations to provide a flexible and interoperable framework. The ontology captures complexities of narrative structure, character dynamics, and fictional worlds while supporting provenance tracking and pluralistic interpretations. The modular structure facilitates alignment with various literary and narrative theories and integration of external resources. Future work will focus on expanding domain-specific extensions, validating the model through larger-scale case studies, and developing a reader response module to systematically model the reception of narratives. By fostering interoperability between literary theory, fan cultures, and computational analysis, this ontology lays a foundation for interoperable comparative research on narrative and fiction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Interpretation of Fictional Characters in Literary Texts: History of Literary Criticism, Philosophy and Formal Ontologies)

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19 pages, 238 KB

Open AccessArticle

Spirits and Friends Beyond (The Seas): Spiritualism and the Creation of Universalism During the First World War and Its Aftermath

by David Stewart Nash

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 192; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100192 - 30 Sep 2025

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Abstract

This article commences by noting that most accounts of Spiritualism during World War One and its aftermath consider that it was harnessed to assist either with the war effort, or to provide comfort for those on the Home Front who were grieving for [...] Read more.

This article commences by noting that most accounts of Spiritualism during World War One and its aftermath consider that it was harnessed to assist either with the war effort, or to provide comfort for those on the Home Front who were grieving for the dead or missing. However, as this article uncovers and elaborates, there was a brand of Spiritualism which looked beyond this nationalism to provide a form of universalism which sought to heal the wound of both current and past conflicts, instead to provide a world of harmony in the post war world. The population of England was to be reunited culturally with its dead through a rewriting of the history of the Reformation, informed by Spiritualist contact with the Tudor World and individuals within it. By looking at the wartime and immediately post wartime careers of three individuals (Edward Bligh Bond, William Packenham-Walsh and Margaret Murray) the article demonstrates the work of this area of Spiritualism to suggest collective approaches to reconciliation and the writing of past historical wrongs. These individuals also provide evidence of a commitment to creating a shared psychological, anthropological and cultural heritage that would bring Europeans together to transcend the rationalist nightmare created during the war years. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nineteenth-Century Gothic Spiritualisms: Looking Under the Table)

17 pages, 261 KB

Open AccessArticle

“We’re Controversial by Our Mere Existence”: Navigating the U.S. Sociopolitical Context as TQ-Center(ed) Diversity Workers

by Kalyani Kannan, Kristopher Oliveira, Steven Feldman, D. Chase J. Catalano, Antonio Duran and Jonathan T. Pryor

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100191 - 29 Sep 2025

Viewed by 478

Abstract

In the face of escalating sociopolitical hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, trans and queer (TQ) center(ed) diversity workers in higher education are navigating increasingly precarious professional landscapes. This study explores the lived experiences of TQ-center(ed) diversity workers through a general [...] Read more.

In the face of escalating sociopolitical hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, trans and queer (TQ) center(ed) diversity workers in higher education are navigating increasingly precarious professional landscapes. This study explores the lived experiences of TQ-center(ed) diversity workers through a general qualitative design informed by participatory action research (PAR). Drawing on the concept of “burn through,” critiquing the role of institutions in the exhaustion of practitioners, and the theory of tempered radicalism, describing the fine line diversity workers must navigate to advocate for change within oppressive systems, we examine how these practitioners persist amid institutional neglect, emotional labor, and political antagonism. Findings from interviews with eight participants reveal three central themes: the systemic nature of burn through, the protective power of community, and the multifaceted role of liberation in TQ-center(ed) diversity work. Participants described both the toll and the transformative potential of their roles, highlighting community as a critical site of resistance and renewal. This study contributes to the growing literature on TQ advocacy in higher education and underscores the need for institutional accountability and collective care in sustaining liberatory futures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bridging Gaps in Critical Queer Genealogies: Transformative Emergent Scholarship in Queer Studies)

22 pages, 348 KB

Open AccessArticle

Truman Capote’s Decadent/Campy Parody of Southern Gothic: Aesthetic Self-Distancing in Other Voices, Other Rooms

by Motomu Yoshioka

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 190; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100190 - 28 Sep 2025

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Abstract

This article explores Truman Capote’s parodic/reconstructive exploitation of decadent aesthetics in his “Southern Gothic” novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), as dissident self-distancing from postwar conservatism. Modernist Southern Gothic writers owe European decadent culture for their thematization of the sociocultural decay of the [...] Read more.

This article explores Truman Capote’s parodic/reconstructive exploitation of decadent aesthetics in his “Southern Gothic” novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), as dissident self-distancing from postwar conservatism. Modernist Southern Gothic writers owe European decadent culture for their thematization of the sociocultural decay of the antebellum South and characterization of dandiacal dissidents, while often reiterating the claustrophobic mood of the patriarchal and racist society and excluding/villainizing those dandies. Critically analogizing the nationalist heteronormativity of the early-Cold War American society with the oppressive patriarchy of the South, OVOR playfully deconstructs the tragic narrative of Modernist Southern Gothic by foregrounding the reparative aspect of decadent aesthetics mainly through the pedagogic relationship between a Wildean dilettante, Randolph, and a young protagonist, Joel. Simultaneously, with the ironical self-satire against the potential authoritarianism of white bourgeois decadence, Capote democratizes decadent aesthetics as a non-normative survival method through the exposure of Randolph’s vulnerability and the parodic adaptation of his dilettantism by the non-white characters. I argue that OVOR marks the vacillating but inevitable transition from decadence to camp as a seemingly non-political but necessary survivalist strategy in the Cold War/Pre-Stonewall American society that conducts surveillance of, persecutes, and stigmatizes as “decadence” non-normative genders and sexualities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Use and Misuse of Fin-De-Siècle Decadence and Its Imagination)

21 pages, 387 KB

Open AccessArticle

Escaping the Workshop: Writers from the Factory in China’s Early Reform Era (1978–1989)

by Sandy J. S. Zhang

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 189; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100189 - 26 Sep 2025

Viewed by 1103

Abstract

This article traces the trajectory of China’s dominant literary field as it shifted from proletarian to intellectual literature in the early reform era. It examines the conditions and cultural logic underlying the striking phenomenon whereby former industrial workers, once incorporated into the literary [...] Read more.

This article traces the trajectory of China’s dominant literary field as it shifted from proletarian to intellectual literature in the early reform era. It examines the conditions and cultural logic underlying the striking phenomenon whereby former industrial workers, once incorporated into the literary field, rapidly distanced themselves from the very genre historically rooted in their own industrial experiences, namely, worker literature. Focusing on writers emerging from factories and on Shanghai Literature—a journal once known for publishing worker literature. The article analyzes the reconfiguration of class and identity that accompanied China’s transition from its high socialist past. I argue that socialist worker literature never fully reconciled the structural antagonism between manual and mental labor. In the early reform era, factory-based writers appropriated literature as a mode of symbolic escape and ideological critique. Hence, literature itself became a site where the contradictions of socialist and capitalist modernity were negotiated and contested. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Labor Utopias and Dystopias)

22 pages, 303 KB

Open AccessArticle

“A Kind of Hamlet”: Rescripting Shakespeare and the Refusal of Racial Scripts in James Ijames’s Fat Ham

by Vanessa I. Corredera

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100188 - 26 Sep 2025

Viewed by 498

Abstract

In his 1926 “Criteria of Negro Art,” W.E.B. Du Bois advocates for art’s role in the quest for liberation while acknowledging the challenges facing the creation of Black art, observing, “We can go on the stage; we can be just as funny as [...] Read more.

In his 1926 “Criteria of Negro Art,” W.E.B. Du Bois advocates for art’s role in the quest for liberation while acknowledging the challenges facing the creation of Black art, observing, “We can go on the stage; we can be just as funny as white Americans wish us to be; we can play all the sordid parts that America likes to assign to Negroes; but for anything else there is still small place for us.” He elaborates, “As it is now we are handing everything over to a white jury.” Almost 100 years later, the issues Du Bois raises about Black art, the quest for Black freedom, and the structures of white supremacy that stymie this striving remain troublingly relevant for contemporary Shakespearean performance. As scholars have noted, complex challenges (the Shakespeare system, capitalist pressures, etc.) continue to make contemporary American Theater, and Shakespeare within it, “still a small space” for Black artists. In the face of these forces, what can and does resistance look like for Black artists within predominantly white theatrical spaces? Here, I tackle this question, thereby continuing the scholarly interrogation of the relationship between contemporary Shakespeare performance, race, and social justice. I turn to a recent lauded adaptation of Shakespeare that, in its move from local theater to Broadway, inevitably had to engage with the structures of American theater’s (and Shakespeare’s) racial capitalism—James Ijames’s Pulitzer-prize-winning Fat Ham (2021). Fat Ham, I contend, tackles head on the historical racial scripts imposed on Black subjects and, through a range of adaptive moves, exposes and resists them, offering counterscripts that insist on the personal and interpersonal complexity and flourishing of Black subjectivity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)

12 pages, 219 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Future of Nostalgia: Loss and Absence in the Age of Algorithmic Temporality

by Silvia Pierosara

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100187 - 25 Sep 2025

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Abstract

For human beings, accepting loss and absence is a constant effort, particularly when it comes to accepting their own finitude, which becomes apparent as time passes and people leave us. This is closely linked to nostalgia and the processes of remembrance. While there [...] Read more.

For human beings, accepting loss and absence is a constant effort, particularly when it comes to accepting their own finitude, which becomes apparent as time passes and people leave us. This is closely linked to nostalgia and the processes of remembrance. While there are many nuances, we can distinguish between constructive and destructive nostalgia. The former cannot accept absence or the passage of time and deludes itself into thinking that it can recover what has been lost. The latter recognizes the temptation to recover everything, but knows that this is impossible, and accepts that the past can only be preserved by transforming it into something else. Contemporary technologies that use algorithms can exacerbate the former tendency by manipulating memory processes and distorting the meaning of the virtual. The aim of this contribution is to shed light on the dynamics and implications of nostalgia as it is influenced by algorithms. To this end, it is divided into three stages. In the first stage, nostalgia is examined for its “restraining” power in relation to deterministically progressive philosophies of history, also through a reference to the original philosophical meaning of the term ‘virtual’. In the second stage, the relation to progress is thematized through a reflection on technologies and artificial intelligence, which uses algorithms and devours our data. In the third stage, it will be shown how thinking about nostalgia and artificial and algorithmic ‘intelligence(s)’ can be a valuable test case for distinguishing between the uses and abuses of nostalgia, between constructive nostalgia and destructive nostalgia. Full article

12 pages, 238 KB

Open AccessArticle

Miriam’s Red Jewel: Jewish Femininity and Cultural Memory in Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun

by Irina Rabinovich

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 186; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100186 - 24 Sep 2025

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Abstract

This article offers a new perspective on Miriam’s red jewel in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun (1860), interpreting it as a symbol of Jewish femininity, diasporic memory, and aesthetic resistance. Although the jewel has received little critical attention, this study suggests that it [...] Read more.

This article offers a new perspective on Miriam’s red jewel in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun (1860), interpreting it as a symbol of Jewish femininity, diasporic memory, and aesthetic resistance. Although the jewel has received little critical attention, this study suggests that it plays a central role in shaping Miriam’s identity and in articulating broader cultural anxieties around gender, ethnicity, and visibility. Through intertextual readings of Shakespeare’s Jessica and Walter Scott’s Rebecca and Rowena, the essay situates Miriam within a literary tradition of Jewish women whose identities are mediated through symbolic adornments. In addition to literary analysis, the article draws on visual art history—particularly Carol Ockman’s interpretation of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1848 portrait of Baronne de Rothschild—to explore how 19th-century visual culture contributed to the eroticization and exoticization of Jewish women. By placing Hawthorne’s portrayal of Miriam in dialogue with such visual representations, the essay highlights how the red jewel functions as a site of encoded cultural meaning. The analysis is further informed by feminist art theory (Griselda Pollock) and postcolonial critique (Edward Said), offering an interdisciplinary approach to questions of identity, marginalization, and symbolic resistance. While not claiming to offer a definitive reading, this article aims to open new interpretive possibilities by foregrounding the jewel’s narrative and symbolic significance. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing conversations in Hawthorne studies, Jewish cultural history, and the intersections of literature and visual art. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Comparative Jewish Literatures)

10 pages, 183 KB

Open AccessArticle

Shadows Beneath the Sun: Ethical Memory, Critical Humanism, and WWII Chongqing in Luo Weizhang’s Novel

by Qian Liu

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 185; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100185 - 23 Sep 2025

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Abstract

Luo Weizhang’s novel Under the Sun centers on a fictionalized writer who reconstructs the life of protagonist Huang Xiaoyang through encounters with his literary remains and the memories of those who knew him personally. Set against the backdrop of the WWII Japanese bombings [...] Read more.

Luo Weizhang’s novel Under the Sun centers on a fictionalized writer who reconstructs the life of protagonist Huang Xiaoyang through encounters with his literary remains and the memories of those who knew him personally. Set against the backdrop of the WWII Japanese bombings of Chongqing, the novel challenges dominant historical narratives by using the genre of historiographic metafiction and employing narrative strategies of counter-memory and postmemory. This paper reads Under the Sun as a literary performance of ethical remembrance: one that interrogates conventional notions of subjectivity, the fragile responsibility of narrating trauma, and the psychological toll of bearing witness across generations. Drawing on the framework of critical humanism, with its emphasis on relationality and ethical openness to the other, I argue that Luo’s novel reveals both the moral necessity and the psychic cost of engaging with histories of violence. In reframing the Chongqing bombings—long marginalized in global WWII memory—Under the Sun demonstrates how Chinese literature can expand the geography of remembrance and contribute to transnational debates on trauma, justice, and historical responsibility. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

13 pages, 259 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Our Old Houses Are Full of Ghosts”: Gothic and Utopian Visions in Violet Tweedale’s Theosophical Writings

by Emily M. Cline

Humanities 2025, 14(10), 184; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100184 - 23 Sep 2025

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Abstract

Violet Tweedale, granddaughter of the notable Scottish publisher Robert Chambers of Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, became a prominent figure in the spiritualist and subsequent theosophy movements when she formed a close association with H. P. Blavatsky. Writing in the transitionary period between Victorian [...] Read more.

Violet Tweedale, granddaughter of the notable Scottish publisher Robert Chambers of Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, became a prominent figure in the spiritualist and subsequent theosophy movements when she formed a close association with H. P. Blavatsky. Writing in the transitionary period between Victorian spiritualism and the Edwardian popularity of the esoteric and Eastern-inspired theosophy religion, Tweedale’s writings navigate between the true apparition narratives of Ghosts I Have Seen (1919) and the Arthur Conan Doyle-endorsed Phantoms of the Dawn (1928), with their emphasis on scientific inquiry championed by 19th-century psychical researchers, and novels such as Lady Sarah’s Son (1906) and The Beautiful Mrs. Davenant (1920) that emphasise the moral and philosophical promises of Blavatsky’s doctrine of spiritual progress. Tweedale’s turn-of-the-century supernatural writings illustrate the cultural and geographical shifts—from Tweedale’s native Scotland in the last decades of the Victorian era to the legacies of a Russian mystic’s New York-founded Theosophical Society—that influenced spiritualists’ increasingly global post-WWI relationships to both scientific futures and gothic pasts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nineteenth-Century Gothic Spiritualisms: Looking Under the Table)

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Humanities, Volume 14, Issue 10 (October 2025) – 22 articles

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