Humanities

21 pages, 303 KB

Open AccessArticle

Passports of the Soul: Crossing Borders and Remembering the Self in Post-Communist Europe

by Lidia Mihaela Necula

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010018 - 19 Jan 2026

This article explores how Herta Müller and Paul Bailey transform the apparatus of state bordering, i.e., passports, permits and catechisms, into metaphors for an interior struggle between flight and belonging. In The Passport, The Land of Green Plums and Bailey’s Kitty & [...] Read more.

This article explores how Herta Müller and Paul Bailey transform the apparatus of state bordering, i.e., passports, permits and catechisms, into metaphors for an interior struggle between flight and belonging. In The Passport, The Land of Green Plums and Bailey’s Kitty & Virgil, emigration is portrayed not as departure alone but as a prolonged contest between the body that moves and the spirit that lingers. Those who cross borders geographically remain anchored, often painfully, in the mental and moral landscapes of the home they leave behind. The paper examines how documents, bodies, and languages become shifting frontier zones where identity is repeatedly issued and withdrawn, shaped by the pressures of memory, exile, and biopolitical control. Müller’s vision, written from within Romania’s history, and Bailey’s, refracted through an English consciousness yet partly set in Romania, converge in a poetics of witness that treats exile as both wound and testimony. Ultimately, these works suggest that identity survives in the liminal space between motion and remembrance where thought halts at its own threshold, memory traces its faint watermark, and the self bears its unspoken credential. Full article

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

34 pages, 6013 KB

Open AccessArticle

Extending Digital Narrative with AI, Games, Chatbots, and XR: How Experimental Creative Practice Yields Research Insights

by Lina Ruth Harder, David Jhave Johnston, Scott Rettberg, Sérgio Galvão Roxo and Haoyuan Tang

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010017 - 16 Jan 2026

Abstract

The Extended Digital Narrative (XDN) research project explores how experimental creative practice with emerging technologies generates critical insights into algorithmic narrativity—the intersection of human narrative understanding and computational data processing. This article presents five case studies demonstrating that direct engagement with AI and [...] Read more.

The Extended Digital Narrative (XDN) research project explores how experimental creative practice with emerging technologies generates critical insights into algorithmic narrativity—the intersection of human narrative understanding and computational data processing. This article presents five case studies demonstrating that direct engagement with AI and Extended Reality platforms is essential for humanities research on new genres of digital storytelling. Lina Harder’s Hedy Lamar Chatbot examines how generative AI chatbots construct historical personas, revealing biases in training data and platform constraints. Scott Rettberg’s Republicans in Love investigates text-to-image generation as a writing environment for political satire, documenting rapid changes in AI aesthetics and content moderation. David Jhave Johnston’s Messages to Humanity demonstrates how Runway’s Act-One enables solo filmmaking, collapsing traditional production hierarchies. Haoyuan Tang’s video game project reframes LLM integration by prioritizing player actions over dialogue, challenging assumptions about AI’s role in interactive narratives. Sérgio Galvão Roxo’s Her Name Was Gisberta employs Virtual Reality for social education against transphobia, utilizing perspective-taking techniques for empathy development. These projects demonstrate that practice-based research is not merely artistic production but a vital methodology for understanding how AI and XR platforms shape—and are shaped by—human narrative capacities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Literature and Game Narratives)

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21 pages, 3014 KB

Open AccessArticle

A Peritextual Study of the Decadent Cover Art Choices for Arthur Schnitzler’s The Road into the Open

by Méghan Elizabeth Hodges

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010016 - 15 Jan 2026

Abstract

In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), we are cautioned not to judge a book by its cover. Yet, the marketing team at every publisher knows that we, the audience, inevitably do just that. In the case of Arthur Schnitzler’s The [...] Read more.

In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), we are cautioned not to judge a book by its cover. Yet, the marketing team at every publisher knows that we, the audience, inevitably do just that. In the case of Arthur Schnitzler’s The Road Into the Open (1908), various editions have featured paintings or drawings by contemporary Austrian artists, including Max Kurzweil, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele, as the cover art. Schnitzler’s novel initially emerges in Pre-World-War-I Austria, a society grappling with political instability, fears about moral decline, and a preoccupation with neuroses. The anxious society that produced Schnitzler, Kurzweil, Klimt, and Schiele has been considered a representation par excellence of fin-de-siècle decadence. Following Gerard Genette’s Paratexts, I inquire as to the effect(s) of cover art and the competing visions of the novel they represent. This study responds to the following questions. How have publishers used or misused decadent imagery in (re)productions of Schnitzler’s novel? What meaning can be made from the use of the works by Kurzweil, Klimt, and Schiele as cover art? What contribution does each work make to our understanding of the Austria in Schnitzler’s novel? How does the reception of the author complement or compete with the reception of each painter? Full article

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

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19 pages, 247 KB

Open AccessArticle

Cultural Conceptualisation in Northern Albanian Gheg: Karl Steinmetz in a Diachronic Perspective and Youth Questionnaire Data

by Ilda Hoxha and Edlira Bushati

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010015 - 15 Jan 2026

Abstract

This article offers an interdisciplinary ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic reading of Karl Steinmetz’s early twentieth-century travel accounts from the northern Albanian highlands and links them to contemporary Albanian youth’s attitudes toward tradition. Through close analysis of his depictions of space, social organisation and oral [...] Read more.

This article offers an interdisciplinary ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic reading of Karl Steinmetz’s early twentieth-century travel accounts from the northern Albanian highlands and links them to contemporary Albanian youth’s attitudes toward tradition. Through close analysis of his depictions of space, social organisation and oral practice, the study examines how tower, household, clan, honour, blood, revenge, hospitality and priest are lexically and discursively encoded as “word-concepts” structuring local worldviews. Methodologically, it combines textual analysis with a questionnaire administered to respondents aged 15–17 and 18–21 about the relevance of traditions today. The findings show that Steinmetz’s materials provide an early, systematic corpus on Northern Gheg Albanian, where linguistic variation is closely linked to customary law and collective identity; contemporary youth still value honour, hospitality, family solidarity and “besa”, while distancing themselves from the normative force of the Kanun and reinterpreting traditional codes in more individualised, rights-oriented terms. The article argues that Steinmetz’s work remains a crucial resource for understanding the diachronic interplay of language, culture and identity in northern Albania and for analysing how cultural models are transformed among younger generations. Full article

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

16 pages, 267 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Suicidal Archive: From Di Benedetto’s Los suicidas to Guerriero’s Los suicidas del fin del mundo

by Catalina Quesada-Gómez

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010014 - 15 Jan 2026

Abstract

This essay offers a comparative reading of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Los suicidas and Leila Guerriero’s Los suicidas del fin del mundo through the lens of the “suicidal archive.” Drawing on literary criticism, trauma studies, and biopolitical theory, it explores how both works transform [...] Read more.

This essay offers a comparative reading of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Los suicidas and Leila Guerriero’s Los suicidas del fin del mundo through the lens of the “suicidal archive.” Drawing on literary criticism, trauma studies, and biopolitical theory, it explores how both works transform suicide into a problem of representation, where writing functions as an aesthetic mediation against the chaos of reality. In dialogue with the ideas of Mbembe, De Martelaere, and Caruth, I argue that Di Benedetto and Guerriero move beyond the rational frameworks of scientific or journalistic discourse to probe the ethical and affective dimensions of suicidal acts. While Di Benedetto’s text renders repetition as a metaphysical and introspective structure, Guerriero’s transforms it into a collective, polyphonic archive of trauma. In both cases, literature emerges as a symbolic space of containment that, rather than closing off meaning, keeps the wound open. Ultimately, the essay concludes that the suicidal archive does not seek to explain or domesticate death but to inhabit its enigma—affirming writing as an act of resistance against silence and disappearance. Full article

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

16 pages, 232 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Art of the Environment in Interactive Walking Simulation Narratives: How GenAI Might Change the “Game”

by Andrew Klobucar

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010013 - 13 Jan 2026

Abstract

This article critically examines the growing interest in what most contemporary scholars consider still a new and underdeveloped mode of environmental storytelling in video games. Different models of games that provide strong narrative techniques within highly detailed, environmentally sophisticated land/soundscapes have been released [...] Read more.

This article critically examines the growing interest in what most contemporary scholars consider still a new and underdeveloped mode of environmental storytelling in video games. Different models of games that provide strong narrative techniques within highly detailed, environmentally sophisticated land/soundscapes have been released over the last decade by well-known studios like Fullbright Productions, Giant Sparrow and Campo Santo. This new perspective will draw several critical questions formed from prior research in several foundational articles, the area of game studies and several journals directed at the question of how game spaces function as narrative devices. For example, an early 2016 article by John Barber for the Cogent Arts and Humanities, “Digital storytelling: New opportunities for humanities scholarship and pedagogy” was one of the first essays to explore how Fullbright’s well-known game Gone Home utilizes spatial design, object placement, and ambient details to convey stories without explicit narration. Gone Home, according to Barber and many others, continues to emphasize environmental storytelling as a form of semiotic communication—one where the “text” is the game world itself, inviting players to read and interpret more complex layers of literary meaning. Contemporary scholars have built on these more foundational studies to consider how AI and procedural generation further complicate narrative agency and structure in digital spaces, enabling the current study to consider what could be considered a distinctly post-AI theoretical perspective based upon these primary determinants: (a) how game environments may dynamically adapt narratives in response to player interaction and algorithmic input, and (b) the evolving notion of narrative agency in digital spaces where human and machine contributions intertwine in AI systems. The two chief aims of this proposal are thus to reconsider traditional environmental storytelling within new innovative, post-GenAI narrative frameworks and, looking at contemporary insights from leading examples in the field, deepen current academic understandings of narrative spaces in games from new narratological perspectives. Studies in this area seem uniquely valuable, given the rapid development of GenAI tools in creative content production and what appears to be a new epoch in narrative engagement in all interactive media. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Literature and Game Narratives)

26 pages, 292 KB

Open AccessArticle

“So He Set a Royal Diadem on Her Head”—Queen Esther in Contemporary American Jewish Midrashic Poetry

by Anat Koplowitz-Breier

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010012 - 6 Jan 2026

Abstract

Feminist poets and scholars have transformed Queen Esther from a relatively silent biblical figure into a complex literary character, yet systematic analysis of their interpretive strategies remains limited. This study examines how these poets employ feminist hermeneutical frameworks to reimagine Esther’s experiences and [...] Read more.

Feminist poets and scholars have transformed Queen Esther from a relatively silent biblical figure into a complex literary character, yet systematic analysis of their interpretive strategies remains limited. This study examines how these poets employ feminist hermeneutical frameworks to reimagine Esther’s experiences and choices. Using a close-reading methodology, the analysis applies Alicia Ostriker’s hermeneutical modes (suspicion, desire, and indeterminacy) and Wendy Zierler’s hermeneutics of identification to poems by Janet Ruth Heller, Carol Barrett, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Stacey Zisook Robinson, Jill Hammer, Enid Dame, Yala Korwin, and Bonnie Lyons from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The poems organize into three thematic categories: transformation and identity formation during Esther’s preparation for queenship; the interior and moral costs of her heroic actions; and retrospective reflections comparing her strategic compliance with Vashti’s direct defiance. The analysis reveals that these poets challenge traditional binary oppositions between the two queens, positioning both strategic accommodation and direct refusal as legitimate forms of feminist resistance within patriarchal structures. By giving Esther a first-person voice and exploring her interior life, these works create a new literary midrash that addresses contemporary concerns about women’s agency while maintaining deep engagement with Jewish textual tradition. Full article

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

18 pages, 1608 KB

Open AccessArticle

Smoke Poetics: The Wapping Coal Riot, the Marine Police, and Romantic Forms of Urbanity

by Jesslyn Whittell

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010011 - 5 Jan 2026

Abstract

This paper reads coal as a metonym for London’s social fabric in the writings of police theorist Patrick Colquhoun, the archival reports on the Wapping Coal Riot, and the anti-carceral poetry of William Blake. In 1798, at the behest of the West India [...] Read more.

This paper reads coal as a metonym for London’s social fabric in the writings of police theorist Patrick Colquhoun, the archival reports on the Wapping Coal Riot, and the anti-carceral poetry of William Blake. In 1798, at the behest of the West India Committee, Colquhoun had developed the first modern police force, the Thames River Police, which predated Robert Peel’s metropolitan police by over 20 years. Colquhoun’s “Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames” (1800) centers on coal in his case for policing. In his argument, coal’s energy economies link domestic affairs with the entire metropolis, making policing a city-wide problem, one that merits public support (and public funding). In reading Colquhoun’s treatise as an example of the entanglement of policing and fossil fuel power, I discuss the relevant literature from the energy humanities that connects fossil energy to the larger extractive ideologies of empire. I also demonstrate how Colquhoun’s figuring of coal builds on but alters portrayals of coal in Jonathan Swift and Anna Barbauld. The final section of this discussion demonstrates how Blake’s Jerusalem (1820) indexes dispersed, atmospheric systems of carceral power and summons dynamic, unpoliceable crowds. Blake’s smoke poetics sketch a limit of generalization, one that recoups figures of pollution and waste to riot against the systems that produce them. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anglophone Riot)

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16 pages, 258 KB

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The Cosmic Extension of Fin: Aesthetics of Perceptual, Reflexive and Sensual Temporality in Nabokov’s Ada

by Juan Wu

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010010 - 5 Jan 2026

Abstract

Fin-de-siècle decadence—marked by symbolism, dandyism, aesthetic withdrawal, and defiance of bourgeois norms—has long been reimagined beyond its original European contours. Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle exemplifies this transformation by extending decadent aesthetics into the domains of modern physics, perception, and [...] Read more.

Fin-de-siècle decadence—marked by symbolism, dandyism, aesthetic withdrawal, and defiance of bourgeois norms—has long been reimagined beyond its original European contours. Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle exemplifies this transformation by extending decadent aesthetics into the domains of modern physics, perception, and experimental temporality. While Ada is often read as a retreat into aestheticism, this paper argues that Nabokov reconfigures decadence through a radical engagement with time, science, and sensual consciousness. Through Van Veen’s philosophical treatise “The Texture of Time”—a burlesque of Bergsonian introspection—Nabokov constructs a vision of purified, de-spatialized, and self-reflexive time that destabilises the boundary between decadent and modernist aesthetics. The novel fuses metaphysical decadence with Bergsonian duration, creating a poetic meditation on temporality as both perceptual and sensual experience. Through intricate linguistic play—anagrams, palindromes, and recursive narrative structures—Nabokov fashions a labyrinthine temporality that mirrors the paradoxes of the decadent imagination: time that is linear yet cyclical, finite yet infinitely recurrent. Positioning Ada within broader debates on the afterlife of decadence, this paper examines how Nabokov preserves the movement’s aesthetic essence while transforming it through scientific analogy and linguistic experimentation. Ada simultaneously honours and subverts decadence, reimagining its hedonism and nostalgia within a cosmological framework that renders temporality itself a site of aesthetic play and metaphysical desire. Full article

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

8 pages, 209 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Betrayal” and Faithfulness in Translation as Intercultural Mediation. Ethical Dilemmas and Strategies in South-Eastern Literary Discourse

by Carmen Andrei

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010009 - 5 Jan 2026

Abstract

This paper offers a series of reflections and observations derived from my experience as a (semi-) professional literary translator and as a teacher of translation studies. I openly recognise the subjective nature of any meta-reflection on the ethical challenges faced by the translator [...] Read more.

This paper offers a series of reflections and observations derived from my experience as a (semi-) professional literary translator and as a teacher of translation studies. I openly recognise the subjective nature of any meta-reflection on the ethical challenges faced by the translator as an intercultural mediator. After briefly examining several central theses that have been defended, illustrated, and adopted to produce a translation that is politically correct from both a professional and deontological standpoint, I then list and analyse the major obstacles to the reception of a novel featuring “Romanian subject matter” written by a French author: cultural, historical, and political allusions as well as culinary and civilizational culture-specific elements. The examples come from Lionel Duroy’s novels Eugenia (2018) and Mes pas dans leurs ombres (2023), which revisit the pogroms of Iași, Bucharest, Bessarabia, and Ukraine, leading to the extermination of the Jewish population (1940–1941)—a significant and painful chapter of Romanian history, often overlooked or silenced. These cases enable us to argue more convincingly for the strategies, techniques, and procedures that can be considered when translating a text laden with profound cultural and ideological significance, aiming to help the Romanian/French and Francophone reader to understand sensitive realia and listen to History. Full article

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

16 pages, 1222 KB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

“If There Isn’t Something I Can *Do* out Here, I’m Going to Lose My Mind”: Confrontational Coziness and Degrowth in Wanderstop

by Melissa Kagen

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010008 - 31 Dec 2025

Abstract

In Ivy Road’s new game Wanderstop (March 2025), the player character is so burned out from their lifetime as a workaholic warrior that they find themselves trapped and forced to serve tea in a charming, purgatorial teashop until they finally learn how to [...] Read more.

In Ivy Road’s new game Wanderstop (March 2025), the player character is so burned out from their lifetime as a workaholic warrior that they find themselves trapped and forced to serve tea in a charming, purgatorial teashop until they finally learn how to rest and recover. This article analyzes the game through its two core verbs—wander and stop—both of which the player first resists and then eventually accepts. With wander, the game forces the player into a jarring experience of presence, using a defamiliarization technique I term ‘confrontational coziness’—an experience of safety, abundance, and softness taken to such an extreme it becomes uncomfortable. With stop, the game uses ideas from the anti-capitalist philosophy of degrowth to engage the player in the challenge of not doing rather than doing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Literature and Game Narratives)

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18 pages, 326 KB

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Grant Allen’s Folk Horror Mediation of the Science and Spiritualist Debate

by Ian M. Clark and Brooke Cameron

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010007 - 29 Dec 2025

Abstract

This essay reads Grant Allen’s “Pallinghurst Barrow” as folk horror about the late-Victorian spiritualist debates. We read Allen’s story as not only sympathetic to spiritualism, but also as critical of the gendered and genred politics of fin-de-siècle scientific materialism which would preclude such [...] Read more.

This essay reads Grant Allen’s “Pallinghurst Barrow” as folk horror about the late-Victorian spiritualist debates. We read Allen’s story as not only sympathetic to spiritualism, but also as critical of the gendered and genred politics of fin-de-siècle scientific materialism which would preclude such occult experiences—or what we frame as feminine ways of knowing. In both form and content, “Pallinghurst Barrow” challenges masculine science by foregrounding the powerful influence (on Rudolph, the protagonist) of the Gothic ghost story (“gipsy” Rachel’s cautionary tale, repeated by young Joyce). Allen’s interest in the folkloric origins of religion can be traced back to Herbert Spencer’s “Ghost Theory,” a proto-sociological explanation for the cultural construction and transmission of myth (or spirits). A lifelong friend and devotee of Spencer, Allen employs his mentor’s sociology as a way to make sense of non-material forces, including the ghost story circle and its production of Gothic awe or wonder (the wonder tale). Ultimately, then, Allen’s infamous folk horror reads as an allegory of late-Victorian spiritualist debates and, more importantly, as a defence of feminine modes of knowledge and myth-making through collective story-telling. Full article

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

18 pages, 298 KB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Memories, Places, Objects: Memory Transmission in Monica Csango’s Fortielser (2017)

by Madelen Brovold

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010006 - 29 Dec 2025

Abstract

Materiality has emerged as a significant theme in Holocaust literature as well as in Holocaust studies scholarship, highlighting the pivotal role of physical objects. This materiality has been conceptualized in various ways in recent scholarship, including «testimonial objects», «objects of return», and «artifacts [...] Read more.

Materiality has emerged as a significant theme in Holocaust literature as well as in Holocaust studies scholarship, highlighting the pivotal role of physical objects. This materiality has been conceptualized in various ways in recent scholarship, including «testimonial objects», «objects of return», and «artifacts of memory». Building on this conceptual framework, the article analyzes the ways in which transgenerational memory transmission is thematized in Monica Csango’s memoir Fortielser. Min jødiske familiehistorie («Concealments. My Jewish Family History», 2017), investigating what memorial functions material places and objects—in particular inherited objects—serve in the transmission and representation of memory within the narrative. The central question the article addresses is: Which places and objects are central to the narrative’s representation of memory, and in what ways do they mediate memory and trauma? The article suggests that postmemory transforms physical objects and places spaces into sites of remembering and mourning, enabling transgenerational continuity and memory transmission in Fortielser. These findings underscore the central role of material and spatial mediums in sustaining intergenerational remembrance, suggesting that inherited artifacts and projected spaces constitute vital modes of memory transmission, or «acts of transfer», within parts of Jewish Norwegian second- and third-generation literature. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memories of World War II in Norwegian Fiction and Life Writing)

12 pages, 236 KB

Open AccessArticle

Proto-Spiritualist Masculinities in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’

by Lin Young

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010005 - 24 Dec 2025

Abstract

This paper examines Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1883 story The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’ in light of his later intersecting interests in spiritualism and masculinity. Conan Doyle uses the Arctic as a space where scientific and spiritual ways of viewing the world struggle to [...] Read more.

This paper examines Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1883 story The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’ in light of his later intersecting interests in spiritualism and masculinity. Conan Doyle uses the Arctic as a space where scientific and spiritual ways of viewing the world struggle to co-exist, comparing ship doctor Ray’s official journal with the ‘superstition’ of the crew, examining the role of spiritual belief in an increasingly scientific age. The paper examines how the story focuses these themes through the lens of masculinity. By reading Ray and Craigie as embodiments of possible British futures—that of scientific rationality and Romantic spirituality, Ray’s rationality is ultimately confounded and unsettled by the spectral events of the story, leaving him haunted by the events on board the ship, unable to resolve them or prevent Craigie’s death. Meanwhile, Craigie’s Romanticism leads him to embrace the spectral, but at the cost of his own life. As a result, Conan Doyle depicts both definitive worldviews as ultimately cold and desolate, neither wholly sustaining on their own terms. The ghost, as a result, becomes key to determining what sort of man ought to usher in the future—whether we recognize it as having a rational explanation or a sublime supernatural one. Full article

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

15 pages, 440 KB

Open AccessArticle

E-Legitimate Offspring: Tracing Literary and Ludic Convergence

by David Ciccoricco

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010004 - 22 Dec 2025

Abstract

We can trace the convergence of electronic literature and narrative games through a focus on critical methods and experiential frameworks rather than relying on typologies or ontologies. This article offers examples of digital literary works that we experience across a literary–ludic continuum. The [...] Read more.

We can trace the convergence of electronic literature and narrative games through a focus on critical methods and experiential frameworks rather than relying on typologies or ontologies. This article offers examples of digital literary works that we experience across a literary–ludic continuum. The first section traces some historical markers of convergence between electronic literature and narrative games with reference to conference keynotes from the institutional history of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). The next sections will present two case studies. The first, Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer is a narrative game that benefits from a literary-critical method and rewards interpretative insights. The second, This is a COVID-19 Announcement by Peter Wills, is an analysis of a playable simulation that indulges the pleasures of iterative ludic engagement against a backdrop of narrative (yet not plot-centric) comforts. Just as literature enriches games and games enrich literature, the critical methodologies and imaginative experiences they engender can be mutually productive when understood across a continuum of literary and ludic practice. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Literature and Game Narratives)

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16 pages, 8607 KB

Open AccessArticle

Weaving the Lines for Nishiki-e: Creativity of Craftsmen in Pre-Modern Japan

by Momoka Takahashi

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010003 - 22 Dec 2025

Abstract

This paper aims to re-examine the roles of engravers and printers in the producing process of Nishiki-e, multicolored woodblock prints made in 18th–19th century Japan. Previous research has privileged the creative ideas of artists while regarding the craftsmen’s work as mere reproduction. In [...] Read more.

This paper aims to re-examine the roles of engravers and printers in the producing process of Nishiki-e, multicolored woodblock prints made in 18th–19th century Japan. Previous research has privileged the creative ideas of artists while regarding the craftsmen’s work as mere reproduction. In contrast, this paper re-evaluates the Nishiki-e production process, comprising publishers, painters, engravers, and printers, as a “meshwork,” a concept proposed by anthropologist Tim Ingold. By examining documents and specific works from three perspectives of imagery, coloring, and texture, this paper argues that the engravers and printers were also deeply involved in selecting lines and colors in the finished work. It reveals that Nishiki-e were products woven through the correspondence between humans and materials, reflecting economic factors and spectators’ pleasure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space Between: Landscape, Mindscape, Architecture)

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14 pages, 242 KB

Open AccessArticle

Split Fiction: Gaming, Authorship, and Corporate Extraction in the Age of AI

by Anastasia Salter and John T. Murray

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010002 - 21 Dec 2025

Abstract

This article examines Split Fiction, a cooperative video game that engages with themes of authorship, creativity, and artificial intelligence in the digital age. The game presents aspiring authors whose creative ideas are extracted by a corporate machine—a metaphor for contemporary generative AI [...] Read more.

This article examines Split Fiction, a cooperative video game that engages with themes of authorship, creativity, and artificial intelligence in the digital age. The game presents aspiring authors whose creative ideas are extracted by a corporate machine—a metaphor for contemporary generative AI systems. Through its mandatory two-player cooperative mechanics and genre-shifting gameplay, Split Fiction explores tensions between human creativity and automated generation, individual authorship and corporate extraction, and procedural rhetoric versus narrative meaning. We analyze how the game’s mechanical variety, intertextual references, and meta-narrative structure comment on the current landscape of AI in creative industries, particularly as director Josef Fares’s ambivalent statements about AI complicate straightforward readings of the work as purely anti-AI critique. The game ultimately offers a nuanced exploration of creative labor futures in an age where the boundaries between human and machine authorship grow increasingly uncertain. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Literature and Game Narratives)

22 pages, 2564 KB

Open AccessArticle

Between Erotic Representation and Minority Identity: The Cultural Role of Sabu in Japanese Gay Magazines

by Soojung Park

Humanities 2026, 15(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15010001 - 21 Dec 2025

Abstract

Despite the censorship imposed by the GHQ in postwar Japan, the period saw the launch of numerous fetish magazines featuring explicit sexual expression. These magazines sometimes complied with the censorship of sexual expression and sexual norms and resisted it at other times. This [...] Read more.

Despite the censorship imposed by the GHQ in postwar Japan, the period saw the launch of numerous fetish magazines featuring explicit sexual expression. These magazines sometimes complied with the censorship of sexual expression and sexual norms and resisted it at other times. This niche print culture enabled the emergence of Japanese gay magazines like Sabu (1974–2002), the primary focus of this paper. Although previous studies have described Sabu primarily as a hardcore SM magazine, this paper argues that it also functioned as a space for articulating gay identities and resisting social discrimination. Through a close analysis of the magazine’s reader correspondence sections, the study demonstrates how Sabu emphasized personal acts of coming out and expressions of solidarity in response to the AIDS epidemic. Furthermore, it shows that Sabu sought to diversify stereotypical representations of gay men by attempting a crossover with the male–male romances created by and for women. By examining Sabu as a case study, this paper re-evaluates the magazine’s place in the history of Japanese gay magazines and explores how such publication employed erotic representations as a medium for the articulation and strengthening of minority identities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scandal and Censorship)

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13 pages, 229 KB

Open AccessArticle

From Parasite to Symbiont: Cyborg Identity, Ecological Agency and Posthuman Freedom in Suarez’s Daemon and Freedom™

by Ozden Dere

Humanities 2025, 14(12), 243; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14120243 - 18 Dec 2025

Abstract

This article examines Daniel Suarez’s techno-thrillers Daemon (2006) and Freedom™ (2010) as works of speculative fiction that critically engage with themes of posthuman identity, algorithmic governance, and ecological agency. Rather than portraying artificial intelligence as a dystopian threat, the novels imagine the [...] Read more.

This article examines Daniel Suarez’s techno-thrillers Daemon (2006) and Freedom™ (2010) as works of speculative fiction that critically engage with themes of posthuman identity, algorithmic governance, and ecological agency. Rather than portraying artificial intelligence as a dystopian threat, the novels imagine the Daemon, which is a self-replicating system launched upon its creator’s death, as an infrastructural force that reorganizes global systems of power, labor, and survival. Through a posthumanist reading, drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, and N. Katherine Hayles, this article interprets the Daemon not as malevolent code, but as an ecological actor embedded in material networks, capable of fostering adaptive forms of life and governance. By reading Suarez’s fiction through the lens of posthuman ecocriticism and infrastructural media theory, the article offers a model for understanding freedom, not as a static right, but as a relational capacity earned through participation in sympoietic systems. It argues that speculative fiction can function as a cartographic tool, mapping not only future technologies but future ontologies. Full article

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