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Humanities
Volume 14
Issue 3
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Humanities, Volume 14, Issue 3 (March 2025) – 29 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787) is a peer-reviewed, scholarly, open access journal focused on the meaning of cultural expression and perceptions of human existence as seen through different interpretative lenses. It publishes articles and reviews as well as Special Issues on particular subjects. The journal’s core focus surrounds the question of human cultures and their narratives as expressed  in writing, speech acts, art, architecture, music, dance, and other ways of exploring human experience that involve telling a human story. Humanities provides an advanced forum for studies related to humanities, and a variety of perspectives are welcome—including interdisciplinary approaches—as long as they focus on narrative modes of human experience as outlined above.
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12 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
Loveable Lack: The Reimagined Wild of “Real” Bears
by Elizabeth Ritsema
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030067 - 19 Mar 2025
Viewed by 271
Abstract
The image of the bear and its relationship to the human undergoes many representations in children’s literature. Their bodies range from cute and squishable teddy bears to non-fiction representations of wild bears. For example, the lone polar bear, a popular visual device for [...] Read more.
The image of the bear and its relationship to the human undergoes many representations in children’s literature. Their bodies range from cute and squishable teddy bears to non-fiction representations of wild bears. For example, the lone polar bear, a popular visual device for expressing the “slow violence” of climate change, coined by Rob Nixon in 2011. This gray area then invites one to consider how these two opposing states influence one another in the context of conversations around climate change. Given the widespread adoption of the polar bear as an emblem of climate change, this article addresses how polar bear imagery is translated into modern children’s literature when it often draws on cute aesthetics. Cuteness then calls into question how ‘real’ bears have been reimagined into fictional settings and whether relationships between child and bear can provide commentary on inspiring environmental activism. I explore Hannah Gold’s The Last Bear and its sequel, Finding Bear, as borderline ecopedagogical texts which highlight the tension created when a typically cute subject is used to encourage environmental activism amongst its younger readerships. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
30 pages, 473 KiB  
Article
Phenomenology of Embodied Detouring
by Wendelin M. Küpers
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030066 - 14 Mar 2025
Viewed by 608
Abstract
This paper adopts a phenomenological and interdisciplinary approach to explore the embodied dimensions of place and movement as they pertain to travel and tourism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, this study examines how the living body intermediates experiences of place and [...] Read more.
This paper adopts a phenomenological and interdisciplinary approach to explore the embodied dimensions of place and movement as they pertain to travel and tourism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, this study examines how the living body intermediates experiences of place and performed mobility across various touring modalities. In particular, it introduces the concept of embodied “detouring” as a distinct form of relationally placed mobility. The paper further explores the notion of “heterotouropia” and its connection to detouring in addition to addressing the ideas of “other-placing” and “other-moving” as ways to engage in indirect pathways. The paper concludes by presenting the implications, open questions and perspectives related to detouring and sustainable forms tourism and mobilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism)
11 pages, 198 KiB  
Article
‘Enter Kent, Gloster, and Bastard’: Beginning King Lear and the Choice of the Audience
by Peter Holland
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030065 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 373
Abstract
The title page of the first quarto of Shakespeare’s 1608 King Lear foregrounds many things: Shakespeare’s name in the largest font used, an emphasis that this King Lear is “HIS”, the fascination with Edgar as “Tom of Bedlam” and the [...] Read more.
The title page of the first quarto of Shakespeare’s 1608 King Lear foregrounds many things: Shakespeare’s name in the largest font used, an emphasis that this King Lear is “HIS”, the fascination with Edgar as “Tom of Bedlam” and the fact that this is the play “As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall upon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes”. The particularity of that moment and its complex implications has been explored before, of course, but there are new ways to rethink that moment when the play met a particular gathering of spectators in a particular room on that day in the Christmas holidays. And, from that interaction, this article moves on to consider other performances that define such purposive positionings of the play. It is one thing to, say, perform King Lear in the repertory of the RSC and something very different to perform it, for example, to an audience of carers for the elderly as part of Theatre of War’s King Lear Project. As Kent and Gloucester begin the play, so King Lear negotiates with its audiences, usually made up of play-goers who have chosen the play and sometimes those who have been chosen by the play. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
17 pages, 239 KiB  
Article
The Untitled Othello Project: Theoretical Implications of Untitling
by Emily D. Bryan
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030064 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 531
Abstract
This essay analyzes The Untitled Othello Project (UOP) created by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Originating out of conversations around his play American Moor and coinciding with George Floyd’s murder and the period of racial unrest and reflection in the United States, UOP is a [...] Read more.
This essay analyzes The Untitled Othello Project (UOP) created by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Originating out of conversations around his play American Moor and coinciding with George Floyd’s murder and the period of racial unrest and reflection in the United States, UOP is a transformative approach to Shakespeare studies around issues of pedagogy and performance. Rooted in Cobb’s frustration with systemic racism and exclusion in the capitalist American theater as depicted in American Moor, UOP applies a method called “untitling”, a collaborative and reflective process of dismantling and reimagining Shakespeare’s Othello beyond its origins. This essay examines UOP’s interdisciplinary methods. As a collaborator and witness to UOP residencies at Sacred Heart University, I argue that the untitling methodology deploys phenomenological hermeneutics, reparative reading, and critical pedagogy, drawing on Ricoeur, Sedgwick, Boal, and Freire in the context of recent developments in critical race studies, especially through scholars of RaceB4Race and #shakerace. The untitling process requires slow, collective readings of Othello, focusing on identity, language, and the racist, patriarchal, and ableist social constructs propping up Shakespeare’s play. By inviting diverse voices—including actors, scholars, students, and audiences—to the table, UOP privileges the human beings in the room over the canonical text. UOP resists universalizing readings of Shakespeare’s play and, with a spirit of inquiry, encourages collaborative authority to lift up marginalized perspectives. This essay establishes UOP within the context of Shakespeare performance pedagogy, seeking to define its affordances for humanities study at the college level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
15 pages, 10097 KiB  
Article
The Disaster Empire in The Wandering Earth 2
by Ping Zhu
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030063 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1326
Abstract
This paper analyzes how the 2023 Chinese science fiction blockbuster The Wandering Earth 2 constructs what I call a “disaster empire”—a biopolitical system that seamlessly integrates authoritarian governance with capitalist logic through the constant threat of catastrophe. Through close readings of the film’s [...] Read more.
This paper analyzes how the 2023 Chinese science fiction blockbuster The Wandering Earth 2 constructs what I call a “disaster empire”—a biopolitical system that seamlessly integrates authoritarian governance with capitalist logic through the constant threat of catastrophe. Through close readings of the film’s reappropriation of the Chinese Moving Mountain fable, its treatment of human sacrifice, and its portrayal of digital afterlife, I argue that the film presents a troubling vision where crisis enables the formation of a homogeneous time-space where the patriarchal family, the nation-state, and bio-capital converge to form a massive, enduring system of domination. While the film has been celebrated for its socialist values of collective survival, I demonstrate how it actually embodies the convergence of authoritarianism and global capitalism in its most insidious form. Drawing on theories of biopower, affect, and dead labor from Marxist scholars, this paper reveals how The Wandering Earth 2 functions as a work of prescriptive realism that faithfully encapsulates the deep drive of authoritarian capitalism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Labor Utopias and Dystopias)
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12 pages, 223 KiB  
Article
Identifying Nothing: Anti-Realist Strategies for the Identity of Fictional Characters
by Jansan Favazzo
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030062 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 420
Abstract
According to fictional anti-realism, fictional characters should be excluded from the ontological inventory. Even though ficta are not assumed to be genuine entities, some issues concerning their identity seem to be genuine ones. Anti-realist philosophers may adopt three different strategies in order to [...] Read more.
According to fictional anti-realism, fictional characters should be excluded from the ontological inventory. Even though ficta are not assumed to be genuine entities, some issues concerning their identity seem to be genuine ones. Anti-realist philosophers may adopt three different strategies in order to deal with them: the Negation Strategy (i.e., such problems are not genuine ones), the Translation Strategy (i.e., such problems should be translated in terms of ficta-surrogates, genuine entities that replace ficta), and the Simulation Strategy (i.e., such problems should be handled within the pretense that ficta are genuine entities). In this paper, I shall argue in favor of the Translation Strategy as it shows some analytical advantages over its rivals, especially in treating the interplay between identity issues about ficta and ordinary narrative/interpretive practices. 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)
16 pages, 1051 KiB  
Article
Kafka’s Literary Style: A Mixed-Method Approach
by Carsten Strathausen, Wenyi Shang and Andrei Kazakov
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030061 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 493
Abstract
In this essay, we examine how the polyvalence of meaning in Kafka’s texts is engineered both semantically (on the narrative level) and syntactically (on the linguistic level), and we ask whether a computational approach can shed new light on the long-standing debate about [...] Read more.
In this essay, we examine how the polyvalence of meaning in Kafka’s texts is engineered both semantically (on the narrative level) and syntactically (on the linguistic level), and we ask whether a computational approach can shed new light on the long-standing debate about the major characteristics of Kafka’s literary style. A mixed-method approach means that we seek out points of connection that interlink traditional humanist (i.e., interpretative) and computational (i.e., quantitative) methods of investigation. Following the introduction, the second section of our article provides a critical overview of the existing scholarship from both a humanist and a computational perspective. We argue that the main methodological difference between traditional humanist and AI-enhanced computational studies of Kafka’s literary style lies not in the use of statistics but in the new interpretative possibilities enabled by AI methods to explore stylistic features beyond the scope of human comprehension. In the third and fourth sections of our article, we will introduce our own stylometric approach to Kafka, detail our methods, and interpret our findings. Rather than focusing on training an AI model capable of accurately attributing authorship to Kafka, we examine whether AI could help us detect significant stylistic differences between the writing Kafka himself published during his lifetime (Kafka Core) and his posthumous writings edited and published by Max Brod. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
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10 pages, 192 KiB  
Article
An Emergent Rebellion: Activist Engagement with Ann-Helén Laestadius’ Coming-of-Age Novel Stöld (Stolen: A Novel)
by Sofia Ahlberg and Suzanne Ericson
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030060 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 497
Abstract
This article is about how Elsa, a young Sámi girl in Ann-Helén Laestadius’ Stolen, learns to resist hate crimes that seek to sever her roots in traditional Indigenous herding practices. The nine-year old Elsa witnesses the killing of her personal reindeer and [...] Read more.
This article is about how Elsa, a young Sámi girl in Ann-Helén Laestadius’ Stolen, learns to resist hate crimes that seek to sever her roots in traditional Indigenous herding practices. The nine-year old Elsa witnesses the killing of her personal reindeer and is threatened into a decade-long silence by the killer. There are more attacks which we read as the violent enforcement of western linear time on traditional seasonal herding cycles. The novel charts Elsa’s coming-of-age as a rebel able to seek retribution not just for herself and her reindeer but also to fight for a vital future for her culture. We read Stolen together with “revolutionary theory” to show how imposed settler temporality is harmful to sustainable modes of living. We emphasise a range of eco-activist responses to the novel, among them rebel reading itself as one of several forms of political engagement available for the eco-rebel. We consider teaching Stolen at secondary school level focusing on how readers can practice risk-taking engagement with a text while learning “how to read our world now” in solidarity with Elsa’s struggle for her people’s survival within an ecologically and socially just future for all. Ultimately, Elsa’s emergent rebellion suggests forms of activism based on a commitment to ancestry, especially its future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
12 pages, 240 KiB  
Article
Do I Dare to Leave the Universe Alone? Environmental Crisis, Narrative Identity, and Collective Agency in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
by Jonas Vanhove and Simon De Backer
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030059 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 472
Abstract
Narrative identity, or the construction of a coherent life story to shape a sense of self, is a crucial aspect of identity formation. Narrative identity is impacted by the prevailing cultural narratives during the period of adolescence. This article, drawing on theory from [...] Read more.
Narrative identity, or the construction of a coherent life story to shape a sense of self, is a crucial aspect of identity formation. Narrative identity is impacted by the prevailing cultural narratives during the period of adolescence. This article, drawing on theory from literary studies and sociology, explores the impact of cultural narratives of environmental crisis and destruction on an emerging narrative identity in adolescents as represented in young adult literature. The selected novels—Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman, Green Rising by Lauren James, and Snowflake, AZ by Marcus Sedgwick—examine their protagonists’ agency and transformational potential. They foreground collective agency and human–nonhuman assemblages as possible responses to environmental crisis. Although two novels (Dry, Green Rising) affirm that narratives of environmental destruction engage the transformational potential of adolescents for society, the third novel (Snowflake, AZ) complicates this image and questions whether the impact of narratives of environmental crisis could be too overwhelming for adolescents to bear. The article concludes that the young adolescent protagonists adapt their narrative identity in response to environmental destruction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
16 pages, 641 KiB  
Article
The Development of Ecological Identities in Children’s Books: A Linguistic Approach to Character Positioning as Eco-Rebels
by Corinna Lüdicke
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030058 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 440
Abstract
Eco-rebels can provide readers a role model that encourages sustainable thinking and action in everyday life. The protagonists in ecological children’s and young adult literature (CYL) are mostly ignorant at the beginning. They learn as the story progresses and develop into environmentally conscious [...] Read more.
Eco-rebels can provide readers a role model that encourages sustainable thinking and action in everyday life. The protagonists in ecological children’s and young adult literature (CYL) are mostly ignorant at the beginning. They learn as the story progresses and develop into environmentally conscious individuals who are taken seriously and actively committed to protecting their environment. This article would like to present a linguistic method for analyzing how readers are guided in ecological CYL, allowing them to follow and understand the protagonist’s change towards becoming an eco-rebel. This study hypothesizes that the development of an ecological identity, although an individual evolution in the story, is a pattern of ecological CYL. The possibilities for identification that a text offers its reader must be considered as crucial for the experiences gained within the fiction framework to influence real consciousness and development processes. In this context, Bamberg’s identity dilemmatic spaces are used for the analysis, allowing the construction of identity in storytelling to be made tangible. These identity dilemmatic spaces have been expanded to include linguistic categories. The construction of the figure of the eco-rebel can thus be analyzed according to different linguistically based or narrative-based aspects like speech markings or the development of an agenda. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
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13 pages, 224 KiB  
Article
Franz Kafka’s “Das Urteil” (1913) as Media History: Writing–Cinema–AI
by Artun Ak
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030057 - 11 Mar 2025
Viewed by 692
Abstract
In this essay, I read Kafka’s 1913 story, “Das Urteil”, as positing an anachronistic media history, with Georg the son representing the older medium of writing, while his father stands in for the newer medium of cinema. The father–son conflict is thus refigured [...] Read more.
In this essay, I read Kafka’s 1913 story, “Das Urteil”, as positing an anachronistic media history, with Georg the son representing the older medium of writing, while his father stands in for the newer medium of cinema. The father–son conflict is thus refigured as an intergenerational media war. In addition, I suggest that the end of the story points toward a non-human mediation, which resembles artificial intelligence as imagined by Friedrich Kittler’s media theory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
11 pages, 218 KiB  
Article
Genre Hybridization: Cosmopolitanism as a Literary Approach in Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker
by Kanta Pruttawong
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030056 - 11 Mar 2025
Viewed by 500
Abstract
This study explores how Chang-Rae Lee, a Korean American writer, adeptly reworks the generic elements of spy fiction to serve as a conduit for interweaving his semi-autobiographical elements into Native Speaker, ultimately yielding a literary precondition sought by literary cosmopolitanism. The examination [...] Read more.
This study explores how Chang-Rae Lee, a Korean American writer, adeptly reworks the generic elements of spy fiction to serve as a conduit for interweaving his semi-autobiographical elements into Native Speaker, ultimately yielding a literary precondition sought by literary cosmopolitanism. The examination engages in a continuous search to identify literary preconditions that can address the challenges posed by prevailing power imbalances in discourse systems, which persist in impeding the progress of comparative exchanges toward a genuinely cosmopolitan literary ecology. It positions Lee’s literary practice within the landscape of U.S. literature, where he navigates similar challenges posed by the American publishing industry and the expectations of the reading public for ethnic writers to conform to formulaic representations that reinforce essentialist notions of identity. Analyzing Lee’s literary construction within this context reveals how his formal blend, in and of itself, not only subverts the role of genre as an ideological reinforcer but also empowers him to convey his authentic personal narratives without being reduced to a simplistic representation. This approach, therefore, ensures the preservation of authentic selfhood before embarking on further comparative literary exchanges. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Comparative Literature and World Literature: Toward a Global Cultural Community through a New Cosmopolitanism)
15 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
Is This the Gate?: J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and Its Operatic Adaptation
by Xingyu Lin
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030055 - 9 Mar 2025
Viewed by 454
Abstract
Premiered at the 2024 Adelaide Festival, Is This the Gate? is an opera excerpt composed by Nicholas Lens and set to a libretto written by J. M. Coetzee. It is adapted from the last section of Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello (2003), revolving around [...] Read more.
Premiered at the 2024 Adelaide Festival, Is This the Gate? is an opera excerpt composed by Nicholas Lens and set to a libretto written by J. M. Coetzee. It is adapted from the last section of Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello (2003), revolving around the eponymous character’s trial before the gate in the afterworld. This article explores the literary, musical and dramaturgical elements of Is This the Gate? and contends that the adaptation, despite its brevity and incompleteness, indexes and reworks some of the most important intertexts, localities and motifs that connect Coetzee’s early and late works. Allusions to Kafka and Dante frame the scenario for Costello in limbo—a state mirroring a writer’s late-in-life predicament—while references to Australia’s weather and fauna reflect Coetzee’s relationship to his South African roots and adopted home. Further, Costello’s conviction that she is “a secretary of the invisible” holds clues to Coetzee’s deployment of voices and fictional personae since his debut, Dusklands (1974). The last few acts of the opera excerpt evoke themes of desire and mortality that chime with Coetzee’s other Costello narratives, including his latest collection, The Pole and Other Stories (2023). The adaptation ends with Costello’s declaration of her subjectivity, which suggests a writer’s yearning and resolution to go beyond the threshold of life and death. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Music and the Written Word)
13 pages, 296 KiB  
Article
Curiosity and Artifice in Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Natural Philosophy
by Javier Patiño Loira
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030054 - 7 Mar 2025
Viewed by 640
Abstract
I examine the strategies through which Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a professor at Madrid’s Jesuit Reales Estudios, promoted the role of curiosity in natural philosophy. I argue that Nieremberg responded to anti-curiosity criticism by restating how the two primary meanings of “curiosity” in early [...] Read more.
I examine the strategies through which Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a professor at Madrid’s Jesuit Reales Estudios, promoted the role of curiosity in natural philosophy. I argue that Nieremberg responded to anti-curiosity criticism by restating how the two primary meanings of “curiosity” in early modern sources, “intellectual desire” and “diligence”/“care”, should relate to one another. By analyzing a set of works published in both Spanish and Latin between 1629 and 1635, I demonstrate that Nieremberg advocated a form of “curiosity” (in the sense of longing for knowledge) focused on what he called “nature’s artifice”, which constituted a specific facet of God’s “curiosity” (in the sense of attention or care in creation). In 1633, Nieremberg claimed that nature is nowhere more deserving of wonder than when it imitates art, actively challenging the way we understand the art–nature divide. I show that, by contrasting a superficial or external approach to nature with one that penetrates it in search of what is “artificial” about it, Nieremberg’s efforts at defining a virtuous and legitimate form of natural-philosophical curiosity involved re-negotiating the boundaries between natural philosophy and more ambivalent competing realms, such as aesthetics, rhetoric, and the occult sciences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)
11 pages, 1384 KiB  
Article
Redefining Black Beauty in a Children’s Book
by Erica Maxwell and Jessica Ann Alexander
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030053 - 7 Mar 2025
Viewed by 330
Abstract
This essay explores the journey of co-authoring the children’s book Beauty With A Birthmark (2022) inspired by my experiences as a Black mother and those of my Black daughter, the main character in the book. Our book examines themes of beauty and self-acceptance, [...] Read more.
This essay explores the journey of co-authoring the children’s book Beauty With A Birthmark (2022) inspired by my experiences as a Black mother and those of my Black daughter, the main character in the book. Our book examines themes of beauty and self-acceptance, challenging traditional beauty standards and promoting the need for continually creating space for Black main characters in children’s books. Our essay further highlights the underrepresentation of Black protagonists in childhood picture books, acknowledging the pivotal role of gatekeepers in the publishing industry. We also address the impact of inclusive literature in classrooms and school libraries as it relates to Black children’s self-esteem, appreciation of and exposure to diversity, and academic achievement. Through this lens, Beauty With A Birthmark fosters belonging and confidence among young Black readers, illustrating the far-reaching influence that representation in children’s literature embodies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)
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16 pages, 264 KiB  
Article
Intertextuality Is the Name of the Game: Melusine–Undine–Theophrastus Paracelsus–Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué–Christian Petzold: Water Spirits Are with Us, Throughout Time
by Albrecht Classen
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030052 - 6 Mar 2025
Viewed by 955
Abstract
The concept of intertextuality often remains a catchphrase for many different phenomena, but it is really a crucially important concept involving all narrative processes from the past to the present. What writer would not borrow from a plethora of sources, whether s/he does [...] Read more.
The concept of intertextuality often remains a catchphrase for many different phenomena, but it is really a crucially important concept involving all narrative processes from the past to the present. What writer would not borrow from a plethora of sources, whether s/he does it deliberately or unconsciously? In fact, we could identify literature as an infinite fabric of narrative threads, and the more closely we examine a literary work, and the denser its composition, the more we can recognize the essential weave it is composed of. This can be powerfully illustrated in the case of the many different narratives involving the water nixie Undine (or Melusine), who was already popular in the Middle Ages, then was discussed in the sixteenth century, subsequently entered the fantasy of Romantic writers, and has most recently become the subject of a major modern movie. The cultural-historical arc from the past to the present powerfully demonstrates the fundamental working of intertextuality on both the vertical and horizontal axes. Writing, whether creative or factual, constantly operates within a web of narrative exchanges. On this basis, we are on firm ground when we claim that ancient or medieval literature is just as important for us today as nineteenth- or twentieth-century literature as a source of inspiration and influence, shaping both our worldview and value system and this through an intertextual chain of narratives. Of course, we move (hopefully) forward in our own time, but many of the analytic tools available to us are historically grounded. Full article
13 pages, 262 KiB  
Article
Allying with Beasts: Rebellious Readings of the Animal as Bridegroom (ATU 425)
by Per Esben Svelstad
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030051 - 6 Mar 2025
Viewed by 583
Abstract
This article analyzes the French fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête” (“Beauty and the Beast”), the German folk tale “Das singende springende Löweneckerchen” (“The Singing Springing Lark”), and the Spanish folk tale “El lagarto de las siete camisas” (“The Lizard with the [...] Read more.
This article analyzes the French fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête” (“Beauty and the Beast”), the German folk tale “Das singende springende Löweneckerchen” (“The Singing Springing Lark”), and the Spanish folk tale “El lagarto de las siete camisas” (“The Lizard with the Seven Shirts”) from the vantage point of feminist fairy tale studies and posthumanism. In particular, the article discusses the ways in which the female protagonists and their enchanted, beastly husbands become-with-each-other. The relationships between the female protagonists and their husbands are here taken as indicative of a recognition of the necessary, but often complex and disharmonic, allyship between the human and the nonhuman. The tales showcase different degrees of feminist potential and different ways of acknowledging such transcorporeal interrelations. Moreover, while they arguably transmit patriarchal and aristocratic lessons, their potential for challenging anthropocentric thinking emerges in an affirmative reading. Hence, this article seeks to demonstrate the eco-activist potential of the Western fairy tale tradition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
14 pages, 228 KiB  
Article
Slow Violence and Precarious Progress: Picturebooks About Wangari Maathai
by Sinéad Moriarty
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 50; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030050 - 6 Mar 2025
Viewed by 510
Abstract
Rob Nixon in his 2011 book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor writes “[i]n a world permeated by insidious, yet unseen or imperceptible violence, imaginative writing can help make the unapparent appear” (p. 15). Nixon talks about the power of literature [...] Read more.
Rob Nixon in his 2011 book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor writes “[i]n a world permeated by insidious, yet unseen or imperceptible violence, imaginative writing can help make the unapparent appear” (p. 15). Nixon talks about the power of literature to render spectacular environmental violence which has become mundane and thus largely invisible. He points to the writing of Kenyan environmentalist and politician Wangari Maathai as work which captures the notion of slow violence. In her writing, Maathai creates the sense of urgency that Greta Gaard argues is a key boundary condition for an ecopedagogy of children’s literature. This article explores seven illustrated biographies of Maathai. The article interrogates the extent to which the books capture what Rob Nixon describes as “slow violence”, that is violence that occurs slowly, over time, and which is often overlooked. The article also introduces the term precarious progress to describe the fragile nature of the change initiated after slow violence. Finally, the article also draws on Val Plumwood’s writing on place attachment and “shadow places” to explore how the Kenyan landscape is depicted as not mere object but subject in these texts and the way in which they work to foster a consciousness of place in their child readers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
18 pages, 268 KiB  
Article
Alterations of the Fictional Line: Possible Encounters Between Authors and Complex Characters
by Francesca Medaglia
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030049 - 4 Mar 2025
Viewed by 550
Abstract
This essay aims to examine the transformation of the traditional boundary between actantial roles inside fiction in literature and transmediality, to understand how this shift enables potential encounters between complex characters. This study focuses on contemporary complexity novels, where characters attempt to break [...] Read more.
This essay aims to examine the transformation of the traditional boundary between actantial roles inside fiction in literature and transmediality, to understand how this shift enables potential encounters between complex characters. This study focuses on contemporary complexity novels, where characters attempt to break free from their author-creators, as they offer a particularly compeling dynamic for investigation. It will examine this type of complex narration while also exploring the fluidity of contemporary storytelling in literature and transmediality, which introduces innovative narrative structures. Novels that reflect on the relationship between authorship and characters provide valuable insights from both a theoretical-literary and transmedia perspective, which deserve to be examined in light of the changes in the structure of contemporary narratives. 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)
16 pages, 258 KiB  
Article
“If I Ain’t a Man Anymore, How’s That Different from Just Being Dead?”: The Postfeminist Gothic in Lovecraft Country
by Colleen Tripp
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030048 - 2 Mar 2025
Viewed by 686
Abstract
Bridging the horrors of the Black American experience with the literary legacies of the postfeminist Gothic, Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country comments on the deformation of time and space for Black women. Reflecting the historic preoccupation of the Gothic with the social anxieties of [...] Read more.
Bridging the horrors of the Black American experience with the literary legacies of the postfeminist Gothic, Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country comments on the deformation of time and space for Black women. Reflecting the historic preoccupation of the Gothic with the social anxieties of gender and sexuality, many of Lovecraft Country’s chapters center on economically or socially mobile Black women and respond to the contemporary conditions of the postfeminist Gothic and intersectional discourses of race, class, and gender. In the end, Lovecraft Country signals White patriarchal colonial geography as weird and represents its Black women characters as figuratively undead modern subjects due to intersectional oppression. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Legacy of Gothic Tradition in Horror Fiction)
32 pages, 429 KiB  
Article
Alienation, Synchronization, Imitation: Kafka, Then and Now
by Wolf Kittler
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 47; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030047 - 28 Feb 2025
Viewed by 509
Abstract
In this article, I have tried to measure the distance that separates us from Kafka by trying to register both the things that we still have in common with him and his time, and the many things that have changed in between. The [...] Read more.
In this article, I have tried to measure the distance that separates us from Kafka by trying to register both the things that we still have in common with him and his time, and the many things that have changed in between. The first section is an analysis of the story “A Visit to a Mine” in terms of the new accident prevention techniques instituted by the welfare state at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. The second section deals with the new concepts of time and space that emerged in the age of electric and electro-magnetic media. And the third section is an attempt to write a short history of imitation from Descartes to Darwin, Kafka, Turing, and, finally, to the Large Language Models that we now call Artificial Intelligence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
12 pages, 188 KiB  
Article
Cultivating Complexity in an Age of Digital Dominance and Binary Oppositional Thinking
by Amy Nolan
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030045 - 28 Feb 2025
Viewed by 436
Abstract
The work represented in the following essay explores meaning-making in the context of creating in a digitally saturated culture. The digital imperative, with its binary oppositional structure (ones and zeroes), has increasingly asserted itself as the only option, from learning management systems (LMSs) [...] Read more.
The work represented in the following essay explores meaning-making in the context of creating in a digitally saturated culture. The digital imperative, with its binary oppositional structure (ones and zeroes), has increasingly asserted itself as the only option, from learning management systems (LMSs) to nearly all financial transactions, to the deepening gulfs between very rich and very poor, to increased extremes in left- and right-wing politics, and has deepened an already-entrenched binary oppositional thinking in creativity, nature, identity, and how we imagine the future itself, i.e., the extinction ending versus the techno-utopia. Binary oppositional thinking persists when people want simple, direct answers to complex questions. We are living in such a time when anxiety and grief over climate change have left many people with deep uncertainties about the future. How might an embrace of complexity and creativity help us transmute binary oppositional thinking in the face of these challenges? Through personal and scholarly narrative, this study addresses this question through an exploration of narrative experiences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Effects of Binary Thinking in the Arts and Humanities)
23 pages, 16792 KiB  
Article
Badass Mom Art: Motherhood Untold in My Kind of Crazy
by Lorinda Jean Peterson
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030046 - 27 Feb 2025
Viewed by 528
Abstract
Graphic memoir and feminist mothering theory are at the heart of my research-creation paper “Badass Mom Art: Motherhood Untold in My Kind of Crazy”, which brings feminist mothering theory into conversation with traumatic mothering stories. The research-creation comprises a series of sequential [...] Read more.
Graphic memoir and feminist mothering theory are at the heart of my research-creation paper “Badass Mom Art: Motherhood Untold in My Kind of Crazy”, which brings feminist mothering theory into conversation with traumatic mothering stories. The research-creation comprises a series of sequential graphic stories from my 2023 memoir My Kind of Crazy and a drawing series, Mothering Myths: (Re)imaginings and (Re)visions. These narratives re-imagine trauma’s impact on my maternal generations and illustrate the feminist shift from the 20th century patriarchal institution of motherhood that creates mothers as powerless and oppressed to 21st century matricentric mothering that empowers mothers through agency, autonomy, authenticity, and authority. Through comic’s conventions of frames, gutters, and the ability to manipulate time, the stories—my grandmother’s, my mother’s, and mine—detail specific traumatic experiences that impact our abilities to mother; they also reveal my perspective on events according to my perceptions and beliefs as an adult creating our stories. These are real stories of mothers unfolding in images and words. The article foregrounds Western patriarchal mothering myths of the ideal mother and the generations of feminist activists and scholars, including Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly, who have worked to change how society perceives mothers. Feminist poet Adrienne Rich’s seminal text Of Woman Born (1986) differentiates between the idea of motherhood and the concept of mothering; she encourages mothers to be mother outlaws by mothering outside patriarchy’s institution of motherhood’s rules and prescriptions. O’Reilly first questioned why maternity was not understood as a subject position nor theorized as other subject positions regarding the meeting of gendered oppression and resistance in her 2016 text Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice. Rich’s and O’Reilly’s proposed mother-centered practice permeates and is key to my art and critical work. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feminism and Comics Studies)
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19 pages, 340 KiB  
Article
The Sophistic Esprit Français: Sophistry and Elite French Humanistic Education
by Jonathan Doering
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030044 - 26 Feb 2025
Viewed by 532
Abstract
This essay examines the role of sophistic practices in elite French humanistic education, specifically “omniloquacity”, the ability to speak about any given subject. Drawing together intellectual history, cross-cultural comparisons, and educational testimonies, the essay elaborates a “pedagogical” version of sophistry in this French [...] Read more.
This essay examines the role of sophistic practices in elite French humanistic education, specifically “omniloquacity”, the ability to speak about any given subject. Drawing together intellectual history, cross-cultural comparisons, and educational testimonies, the essay elaborates a “pedagogical” version of sophistry in this French context that differs from more traditional “vocational” sophistries. Although I focus on the mid-twentieth century, I also consider earlier upheavals and Jesuit influences that shaped an agonistic culture of sophistic performances, challenging competitions, and ultimately, a certain esprit français associated with elite humanistic education. The history of rhetoric in France does not end with the demise of the rhetoric class in 1902, and takes on new meanings when considering the sophistic practices that outlived its nominal death. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Greek Sophistry and Its Legacy)
15 pages, 257 KiB  
Article
“Conjoined Destinies”: The Poetics and Politics of Black Migrations in Jason Allen-Paisant’s Self-Portrait as Othello
by Hannah Regis
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030043 - 24 Feb 2025
Viewed by 383
Abstract
Jason Allen-Paisant in Self-Portrait as Othello moves unflinchingly through complex histories and genealogies that widen to include Jamaica, Venice, Italy, France, and elsewhere and to locate the duppy manifestations of an unburied past in the pervasive precariousness of Black life. Across his poems, [...] Read more.
Jason Allen-Paisant in Self-Portrait as Othello moves unflinchingly through complex histories and genealogies that widen to include Jamaica, Venice, Italy, France, and elsewhere and to locate the duppy manifestations of an unburied past in the pervasive precariousness of Black life. Across his poems, he tracks the chaotic reverberations of intergenerational traumas that persist across time, space and collective memory. This paper contends that the poet, through his use of allusion evident in his grafting and borrowings of other stories, literary syncretism, the symbolism of foreignness and its mysterious power, back and forth journeys through Europe and into homelands (Jamaica), procures an integrated circuit of Black meaning and kindred relations. This interconnectedness lays bare the sociohistorical conditions that have and continue to circumscribe and assault Black lives and deconstructs the perpetuity of anti-Black systems in the modern Western world. For all his worldly travels, the poet-narrator situates himself in an interstitial zone where each crossroad leads to new possibilities and affirmative energy. Allen-Paisant thus offers a way to reconcile a vicious history of Black xenophobia while procuring moments and processes to make peace with rupturous spaces, which necessitates a return to his homeland. However, homecoming complicates the search for self and the idea of return draws him into a dialogue with the fragmented inheritances of his past. He ultimately achieves coherence and fresh understandings through images of sterility and barrenness which he re-purposes as a foundation to make bold leaps of faith across uncertain chasms. This paper thus argues that for the poet of the African diaspora, who aspires to recover a long and complex spiritual history, the interface between domestic and international dramas highlights the luminous transcendence embodied in the journey along complicated routes and the steadfast pursuit of ideas that illuminate the deepest insights about identity, culture and the Black experience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rise of a New World: Postcolonialism and Caribbean Literature)
18 pages, 325 KiB  
Article
Romeo and Juliet in Korea: Love and the War
by Yu Jin Ko
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030042 - 24 Feb 2025
Viewed by 606
Abstract
Romeo and Juliet remains one of the most frequently performed plays of Shakespeare in Korea, one reason for which is obvious: the feud between the Capulets and Montagues resonates with the continuing division of Korea into North and South. Indeed, many productions of [...] Read more.
Romeo and Juliet remains one of the most frequently performed plays of Shakespeare in Korea, one reason for which is obvious: the feud between the Capulets and Montagues resonates with the continuing division of Korea into North and South. Indeed, many productions of the play in South Korea since the Korean War (1950–53) have made direct and indirect allusions to the political reality of division. Nothing defines Korea so much as division and the desire to overcome that division. With this context in mind, my essay will examine four representative but unique productions of the play from the War period to the twenty-first century: a women’s musical theater adaptation during the War that was a popular success; a production by the Mokwha Repertory Theatre from the early 2000s that alludes directly to the state of division into North and South, and which has toured the globe; a 2009 musical theater version by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea that emphasizes regional rivalries; and a 2022 production that sets the play in the DMZ. However, while exploring the depiction of division in these productions, I will focus in particular on how marriage is understood in relation to national division and the possibility of reconciliation. I will argue that the productions bring attention to the intersection of the social and political practices that sustain division. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
19 pages, 4687 KiB  
Article
The Sounds of Silence: Perspectives on Documenting Acoustic Landscapes at the Intersection of Remoteness, Conservation and Tourism
by Jonathan Carruthers-Jones, George Holmes and Roger Norum
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 41; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030041 - 21 Feb 2025
Viewed by 528
Abstract
The humanities are often criticised for lacking a way through from the complexity they reveal to the challenges they might hope to address. In the face of the accelerating biodiversity crisis, we present two projects that aim to respond to the limitations and [...] Read more.
The humanities are often criticised for lacking a way through from the complexity they reveal to the challenges they might hope to address. In the face of the accelerating biodiversity crisis, we present two projects that aim to respond to the limitations and lack of interdisciplinary conversations in conservation and in humanities research. At field sites in Finnish Lapland and the French Pyrenees, we document how conservation humanities research can be used to develop a more pragmatic and integrated transdisciplinary approach to conservation in remote and fragile landscapes. Firstly, we show how sound and soundscapes are important subjects of study in both conservation biology and the humanities. We also highlight their importance to conservation planners and policy makers seeking to preserve biodiversity and landscape characteristics, as well as our social values thereof, which, together, are critical to their survival. Secondly, we demonstrate how integrated conservation humanities methods can lead to rich local-level insights on key conservation themes that can then be scaled via existing large-scale acoustic monitoring and spatial datasets to support decision making across much larger areas. Finally, we highlight how the participatory mapping approach at the core of our integrated methodology shows potential to generate change in the real world and meet the classic operationalisation challenge that academia faces. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perspectives on Conservation Humanities)
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14 pages, 242 KiB  
Article
Vegetal Modes of Resistance: Arboreal Eco-Rebellion in The Lord of the Rings
by Lykke Guanio-Uluru
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030040 - 21 Feb 2025
Viewed by 443
Abstract
This article posits that a fictional eco-rebel might be not just a human (child or young adult), but also a plant, revolting against the destruction of its dwelling place. The argument is furthered by way of a literary analysis of arboreal agency in [...] Read more.
This article posits that a fictional eco-rebel might be not just a human (child or young adult), but also a plant, revolting against the destruction of its dwelling place. The argument is furthered by way of a literary analysis of arboreal agency in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, building on perspectives from critical plant studies. Departing from a closer look at the etymological roots of the term “eco-rebel”, the article highlights previous work on plants in Tolkien’s epic, with an emphasis on trees, before engaging in close reading and analysis of three instances of arboreal hostility and rebellion in The Lord of the Rings. Ultimately, the article argues that Tolkien has created a novel kind of eco-rebel, with a basis in his acknowledgement of plant agency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)
13 pages, 271 KiB  
Article
Restoring Realism to the Fairytale, or, the Banal Optimism of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Mes Contes de Perrault
by Ian Williams Curtis
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030039 - 20 Feb 2025
Viewed by 443
Abstract
This article examines Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Mes Contes de Perrault (2014) as a multilayered instance of literary appropriation. Ben Jelloun’s stories, which relocate Charles Perrault’s classic French fairytales to the Arab world, represent not only a subversive challenge to French cultural hegemony (as [...] Read more.
This article examines Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Mes Contes de Perrault (2014) as a multilayered instance of literary appropriation. Ben Jelloun’s stories, which relocate Charles Perrault’s classic French fairytales to the Arab world, represent not only a subversive challenge to French cultural hegemony (as has been argued) but can also be read as a complex engagement with the history of French folktales and their literary adaptations. This study posits that Ben Jelloun’s project restores elements of realism to Perrault’s tales that were lost when the author adapted folk stories for the French court. By reintroducing themes of bodily suffering, desire, and quotidian struggles, Ben Jelloun reconnects these tales with their folk origins. Examining Ben Jelloun’s “appropriation”—his word—in the context of Perrault’s own adaptations, this study offers new insights into the circulation and transformation of folktales across cultures and literary traditions. It contributes to ongoing discussions about literary and cultural appropriation and the place of the fairytale genre in today’s world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Depiction of Good and Evil in Fairytales)
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