Humanities

8 pages, 181 KB

Open AccessArticle

Performing Potency: Masculine Pride and the Refusal of Decline in Drama in English

by Akram H. Shalghin

Humanities 2026, 15(9), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15090119 - 25 Aug 2026

This article examines how drama in English portrays men who anchor their self-worth to sexual potency and masculine performance, particularly when that confidence faces direct challenge or the quiet pressure of ageing. Through sustained close reading of Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, [...] Read more.

This article examines how drama in English portrays men who anchor their self-worth to sexual potency and masculine performance, particularly when that confidence faces direct challenge or the quiet pressure of ageing. Through sustained close reading of Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the analysis traces how characters negotiate pride, vulnerability, and the defence of manhood through dialogue, pacing, and silence. Existing criticism has often approached these moments through historical or ideological lenses; this reading instead attends to the psychological negotiation visible in the text itself. Drawing on established work on gender performance and narrative identity, the article treats masculine pride not as a fixed cultural pattern but as a dramatic act that characters repeat, defend, and sometimes surrender. The theoretical tools serve the text rather than dictate it, allowing the plays to reveal how men construct, protect, and adjust their sense of virility when it is called into question. The findings emerge from careful attention to scene structure, verbal exchange, and the unspoken tensions that shape dramatic portrayal. Full article

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

15 pages, 272 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Art of Layering: Jewish Identity and the Formation of Socio-Intellectual Awareness in Anna Seghers’s Early Years

by Birgit Maier-Katkin

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 118; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080118 - 19 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article examines the intellectual discourse in the earlier writings of the German Jewish writer Anna Seghers (produced in the 1920s–40s) and reveals that her emerging focus on socio-political themes was not only motivated by an introduction to left-wing liberal ideas during her [...] Read more.

This article examines the intellectual discourse in the earlier writings of the German Jewish writer Anna Seghers (produced in the 1920s–40s) and reveals that her emerging focus on socio-political themes was not only motivated by an introduction to left-wing liberal ideas during her formative university years but was also informed by her Jewish upbringing. This essay traces aspects of Judaism and social awareness that surface in Anna Seghers’s correspondence, diary entries, dissertation, and literary work, as well as her involvement with the Heinrich Heine Club. Seghers’s search for an intellectual philosophical stance sought to address the synergy between the individual and society and to create stories that represent two distinct but intertwined narrative frameworks: a mythic dimension and a socio-political reality. The article shows how the various dimensions of intellectual, mythical, political, and personal aspects contribute to the formation of a layered writing style which allowed Seghers to negotiate the intersection of her Jewish identity and her communist convictions while exploring the social injustice suffered by the working class and pointing to the wedge that Nazi persecution drove between German Jews and German society. Full article

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

21 pages, 299 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Operational Logic of Ecocentrism and Its Critical Reflection: A Žižekian Analysis of Ideological Fantasy

by Huer Shuang, Jiajia Luo, Shenghua Lou and Dongqi Wan

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080117 - 18 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article examines Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ecocentrism through the lens of Lacanian ideology theory, asking how the ecological crisis is symbolically organized in contemporary discourse. Rather than treating ecocentrism as a coherent ecological doctrine, it approaches it as an ideological formation that [...] Read more.

This article examines Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ecocentrism through the lens of Lacanian ideology theory, asking how the ecological crisis is symbolically organized in contemporary discourse. Rather than treating ecocentrism as a coherent ecological doctrine, it approaches it as an ideological formation that shapes how environmental breakdown is interpreted, moralized, and acted upon. The article argues that appeals to “nature” often construct it as a normative horizon of balance, limit, or lost order through which crisis becomes intelligible in specific ways. It then traces the conceptual, subjective, and social operations through which ecocentrism acquires force: ecological disruption is narrated through images of harmony and violation, responsibility is individualized through guilt and obligation, and ecological concern is absorbed into green capitalist practices such as ethical consumption and managed environmental responsibility. In this way, ecocentrism can function not only as a language of ecological critique but also as a framework that obscures the historically specific political–economic processes driving environmental destruction. The article does not deny the urgency of the ecological crisis. Rather, it argues for a more materially mediated account of ecological politics, one that is more attentive to capitalist accumulation, infrastructural systems, and unequal social relations in producing socioecological harm. Full article

17 pages, 899 KB

Open AccessArticle

To Measure, or Be Measured Unto: What Is Humanism in the Face of Artificial Intelligence? Or: The Instructor Function

by Michael Bryson

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080116 - 15 Aug 2026

Abstract

This essay examines the potentially dire implications of artificial intelligence for the future of humanism, higher education, and the Humanities by introducing the philosophical conflict between Protagoras’ claim that humanity is the measure of all things and Plato’s competing assertion that the truest [...] Read more.

This essay examines the potentially dire implications of artificial intelligence for the future of humanism, higher education, and the Humanities by introducing the philosophical conflict between Protagoras’ claim that humanity is the measure of all things and Plato’s competing assertion that the truest standards of value reside outside human experience. It argues that this tension continues to shape contemporary posthumanist, deterministic, and institutional modes of thought, all of which subordinate human judgment to external authorities, structures, or technologies. Drawing on examples from literary theory, the history of online education, and recent AI initiatives within the California State University system, the essay contends that artificial intelligence threatens to accelerate the standardization of teaching, diminish faculty autonomy, and redefine education in managerial and technocratic terms, which redefine faculty as an unnecessary expense. In response, it advances an inclusive humanist framework that affirms the intrinsic value of human experience, creativity, and judgment while calling for renewed faculty governance, intellectual independence, and a reaffirmation of the Humanities as indispensable to democratic and educational life. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crossing Boundaries: Transdisciplinarity in the Humanities)

17 pages, 245 KB

Open AccessArticle

Living the Life of No One: Electroconvulsive Treatment as Mnemonic Metaphor

by Linus Nicolaj Carlsen

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 115; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080115 - 14 Aug 2026

Abstract

The article investigates how electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is represented in the following four literary works of the 21st century: October’s Child, Store Kongensgade 23, The Parakeet, and I Am What I Remember. The article argues that electroconvulsive therapy is treated [...] Read more.

The article investigates how electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is represented in the following four literary works of the 21st century: October’s Child, Store Kongensgade 23, The Parakeet, and I Am What I Remember. The article argues that electroconvulsive therapy is treated as a mnemonic metaphor that highlights not just its significance for individual experiences of memory loss following treatment and how such treatment elicits traumas that span generations, but also how ECT can be said to have a gendered bias. The article attempts to show how the practice of ECT is emblematic of a certain patriarchal tendency within psychiatry that obfuscates women’s chance of being heard. It makes the argument that ECT as a metaphor paradoxically works as a narrative catalyst that forces a practice of remembrance, and that this practice is in many ways a feminist project. As such, it offers a critical insight into psychiatric practices and shows the importance of giving voice to those who suffer from after-effects of psychiatric treatment. Finally, the article argues that ECT is a feminized metaphor that continues a figurative line of thought in Western social imagination, which entangles women, technology, and mental illness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literature and Health in the 21st Century)

20 pages, 301 KB

Open AccessArticle

Healing Machines? Medical Technology and Notions of Personhood in Two Swiss Hospital Narratives (Diggelmann, Ulrich)

by Mona Baie and Martina King

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080114 - 14 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article examines the narrative representation of high-technology clinical spaces and their challenging effects on the personhood of patient-protagonists in two Swiss hospital narratives: Walter Matthias Diggelmann’s Schatten (1979), a fictionalized autopathography on lung cancer, and Ulrike Ulrich’s Hinter den Augen (2013), which [...] Read more.

This article examines the narrative representation of high-technology clinical spaces and their challenging effects on the personhood of patient-protagonists in two Swiss hospital narratives: Walter Matthias Diggelmann’s Schatten (1979), a fictionalized autopathography on lung cancer, and Ulrike Ulrich’s Hinter den Augen (2013), which narrates an MRI examination. Combining classical narratology with the narratology of space, the paper delineates a shift from the twentieth- to the twenty-first-century text that moves from a critical representation of technologized hospital space as an antagonistic environment to a nuanced embrace of medical technology that intricately intertwines the machine and the self. As the analyses show, this shift from opposition to embrace of technology is accompanied and engendered by distinct structural characteristics: While both texts work with artistic forms of representing inner states, such as internal monologue and unreliable narration, their respective ‘poetics of the high-tech hospital’ diverge significantly, from a fundamentally dichotomous semantic setup (Diggelmann) to an integrative narrative based on formal mimesis (Ulrich). Focusing on how literary prose uniquely renders the experience of increasingly technologized hospital landscapes, the article contributes to literary scholarship at the intersection of the medical humanities, the cultural history of the hospital, and science and technology studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literature and Health in the 21st Century)

14 pages, 234 KB

Open AccessArticle

Dwelling in Dispossession: Caste, Ecological Alienation, and Solastalgia in Perumal Murugan’s Seasons of the Palm and Pyre

by R P Shruthi and G Christopher

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080113 - 13 Aug 2026

Abstract

This study examines how Perumal Murugan’s Seasons of the Palm and Pyre represent the relationship between caste, ecology, and psychological suffering through the concept of solastalgia. While solastalgia is often understood in relation to environmental destruction or climate-related loss, this study argues that [...] Read more.

This study examines how Perumal Murugan’s Seasons of the Palm and Pyre represent the relationship between caste, ecology, and psychological suffering through the concept of solastalgia. While solastalgia is often understood in relation to environmental destruction or climate-related loss, this study argues that Murugan’s narratives expand its meaning by showing how ecological distress can also arise from caste-based exclusion, spatial control, and the denial of belonging within one’s own surroundings. In these narratives, rural landscapes are not neutral settings but socially organised environments shaped by labour, hierarchy, surveillance, and everyday forms of violence. Through the experiences of Shorty and Saroja, the study shows how nature functions as a space that both sustains life and regulates access to it. From Dalit psycho-ecological perspectives, the study argues that ecological suffering in Murugan’s narratives is inseparable from the caste structures. The study further suggests that environmental justice in the Indian context must account for caste as a central force shaping ecological experience. Ultimately, Murugan’s narratives highlight that ecological grief is also social grief and that questions of land, place, and belonging are deeply tied to the structures of power, calling for a more inclusive understanding of ecological thought that recognises these entangled realities. Full article

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

19 pages, 12606 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Sound of Political Critique in Augusto de Campos’s Popcretos

by Marcelo Nogueira

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080112 - 11 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article examines the Popcretos, a series of collage works by Brazilian concrete poet Augusto de Campos, situating them within the broader trajectory of his experimental poetics and the political context of Brazil’s military dictatorship. While existing scholarship has focused primarily on [...] Read more.

This article examines the Popcretos, a series of collage works by Brazilian concrete poet Augusto de Campos, situating them within the broader trajectory of his experimental poetics and the political context of Brazil’s military dictatorship. While existing scholarship has focused primarily on the series’s visual and semiological dimensions, this article argues that sound operates as a structuring element across the Popcretos, shaping how images are arranged and meanings emerge. Drawing on sound studies scholarship and critic Carrie Noland’s concept of sound-sensitive visuality, the article traces how the tension between noise and silence informs de Campos’s work from his earliest poems through the concrete poetry movement’s political turn in the early 1960s. Close readings of three works from the series (“The Anti-Noise,” “An Eye for an Eye,” and “Hush!”) reveal how sonic categories are mobilized to critique cultural imperialism, mass media spectacle, and authoritarian censorship. The article concludes that the Popcretos exceed ocularcentrism, functioning also as a multisensorial form of “auditory writing” within its sonic–visual materiality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literature and Sound)

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17 pages, 235 KB

Open AccessArticle

Relearning the Political Alphabet: Levertov’s Language Ethics from Vietnam to the Present

by José Manuel Rodríguez Herrera

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080111 - 7 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article argues that Denise Levertov’s Vietnam-era poetry develops a poetics of language ethics: a formal practice through which words are tested against bodies, suffering, agency, and moral judgment. Focusing on “During the Eichmann Trial,” “Life at War,” and “Prologue: An Interim,” the [...] Read more.

This article argues that Denise Levertov’s Vietnam-era poetry develops a poetics of language ethics: a formal practice through which words are tested against bodies, suffering, agency, and moral judgment. Focusing on “During the Eichmann Trial,” “Life at War,” and “Prologue: An Interim,” the essay examines how Levertov exposes the bureaucratic, legal, and military languages that render violence administrable and morally tolerable. Drawing on Levertov’s poetics, postwar American poetics, Hannah Arendt’s account of moral thoughtlessness, and critical discourse analysis, it shows how quotation, fragmentation, lineation, apostrophe, parataxis, and bodily imagery resist abstraction and restore ethical perception. By situating these poems within the Eichmann trial, the Vietnam War, the Boston Five prosecution, and antiwar protest culture, the article presents Levertov’s work as a historically specific model of linguistic vigilance and poetic witness, one that remains alert to the ethical vulnerability of public language today. Full article

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

10 pages, 227 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Cybernetics of Gomi: Transhumanism, Materiality, and the Expulsion of the Subject in William Gibson’s The Winter Market (1986)

by Ahmet Uruk

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080110 - 6 Aug 2026

Abstract

Referred to by Julian Huxley in his 1957 work New Bottles for New Wine, transhumanism champions the use of science and technology to transcend human biological limits and attain a “posthuman” state. While science fiction frequently familiarizes audiences with these speculative dimensions, [...] Read more.

Referred to by Julian Huxley in his 1957 work New Bottles for New Wine, transhumanism champions the use of science and technology to transcend human biological limits and attain a “posthuman” state. While science fiction frequently familiarizes audiences with these speculative dimensions, William Gibson’s short story The Winter Market (1986) exposes the dehumanizing impacts of technological immortality and mind uploading in a cyberpunk world. Rather than presenting a seamless techno-utopian future, Gibson’s narrative centers on the concept of gomi—Japanese for trash or junk—to illustrate the literal and psychological expulsion of the human subject. Therefore, this paper argues that The Winter Market uses the material reality of gomi as its core structural and thematic focus, exposing how advanced capitalism and cybernetic technology reduce the organic body, human experience, and artistic expression to marketable, discarded commodities. Through a close reading of Gibson’s distinct language and narrative form, this study, ultimately, interrogates the trade-offs of technological transcendence, demonstrating how the pursuit of disembodied immortality culminates in alienation and the fragmentation of authentic identity. Full article

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

13 pages, 1977 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Transform’d in Shew, but More Transform’d in Mind”: Philip Sidney’s Adventures in Gender and Othering

by Pavel Drábek

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080109 - 6 Aug 2026

Abstract

Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, both in its incomplete, revised version (published 1590) and the original ‘Old Arcadia’, features a number of remarkable adventures that explore gender identities and identities that are redefined either from within or by the force of [...] Read more.

Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, both in its incomplete, revised version (published 1590) and the original ‘Old Arcadia’, features a number of remarkable adventures that explore gender identities and identities that are redefined either from within or by the force of external manipulation, deceit, coercion or error. Under the umbrella of the pastoral setting, in other places, in the ‘not here’, Sidney’s personas face troubles that ‘other’ who they are—to themselves and to others. “And let us see what power is the author of all these troubles: forsooth, love; love, a passion, and the basest and fruitlessest of all passions”. The troubles are never simple. In the words of one of the protagonists, who undergoes a complex case of gender shift: “For, indeed, the true love hath that excellent nature in it, that it doth transform the very essence of the lover into the thing loved, uniting and, as it were, incorporating it with a secret and inward working”. This essay explores the performative complexities of these secret and inward workings, drawing on theatrical versions of Sidney’s Arcadia and its cognate parallels: both from the early modern period and in recent performances and theatrical experiments. The essay theorises Sidney’s concept of ‘poesy’ from The Defence of Poesy and brings it in line with the notion of dramaticity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender and Otherness in the Humanities)

16 pages, 329 KB

Open AccessArticle

Hypodiegetic Witnessing and Relational Knowledge of Schizophrenia in Dominique Laporte’s Mon Fils, Schizophrène and Josie Méndez-Negrete’s A Life on Hold

by David Lombard

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080108 - 5 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article argues that parental memoirs of schizophrenia are fruitful sites for producing relational knowledge, a form of understanding that emerges through interactions among care recipients, caregivers, and clinicians rather than residing in any single epistemic agent. It analyzes Dominique Laporte’s Mon fils, [...] Read more.

This article argues that parental memoirs of schizophrenia are fruitful sites for producing relational knowledge, a form of understanding that emerges through interactions among care recipients, caregivers, and clinicians rather than residing in any single epistemic agent. It analyzes Dominique Laporte’s Mon fils, schizophrène and Josie Méndez-Negrete’s A Life on Hold as parental memoirs that narrativize knowledge about schizophrenia that often remain absent from clinical accounts. Building on the notions of narrative multiplicity and epistemic justice, the article shows how these memoirs redistribute epistemic authority across perspectives (psychiatrists’, caregivers’, and care recipients’). The article situates Laporte’s text as a testimonial memoir and Méndez-Negrete’s as an autoethnographic memoir, highlighting how both construct knowledge through caregiving. To account for their narrative strategies, it introduces the concept of hypodiegetic witnessing, which draws on Arthur Frank’s concept of witnessing and Mieke Bal’s theory of hypodiegetic narrative. Through storytelling practices such as pláticas, cuentos, intertextual references, and embedded stories, these memoirs mediate psychotic experience without claiming direct access to it. Rather than merely representing caregiving, parental memoirs generate and circulate relational knowledge, contributing to more epistemically just and polyphonic understandings of schizophrenia and mental illness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literature and Health in the 21st Century)

18 pages, 261 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Shared Imagination of Mental Illness: Exploring How We Are Haunted by Representations of Mental Illness in the Media

by Emma McKenzie

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 107; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080107 - 4 Aug 2026

Abstract

The following article investigates the way in which popular media in Western culture reinforces a shared imagination linked to the treatment and care of people experiencing mental health conditions that are often associated with horror, violence, and crime. These representations haunt our vision [...] Read more.

The following article investigates the way in which popular media in Western culture reinforces a shared imagination linked to the treatment and care of people experiencing mental health conditions that are often associated with horror, violence, and crime. These representations haunt our vision of what it means to receive a mental health diagnosis, instilling fear and negative perceptions of mental illness in our psyche. The violent and disturbing imagery that is often used to portray mental illness, and made for entertainment purposes, reinforces a shared subconscious fear that haunts our imagination. These portrayals of mental illness fail to bridge the gap between human trauma, a medical diagnosis and a positive return to the community. This article uses examples of popular media from the twenty-first century to demonstrate how imagery linked to the age of asylums persists in today’s representations of mental health experiences. These images are reinforced by mainstream news stories, which draw on the most sensational and frightening incidents of mental health episodes. In summary, this article will highlight the way that popular media is influenced by society and has the power to reshape our understandings of mental health experiences for the better. To do this, there is a need for positive change within the mental health system, and more balance within news stories about mental health conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Media, Cultural Memory and Hauntology)

16 pages, 2127 KB

Open AccessArticle

Nampo Joshi: Reconstructing the Life of the Woman Artist Behind Whistler’s Old Battersea Bridge

by Ayako Ono

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080106 - 3 Aug 2026

Abstract

This paper investigates the identity and circumstances of Nampo Joshi (南芳女史) (Ōzawa Nampo 大澤南芳, b. 1845; born Takei Tsuru), the woman artist who painted the kachō-ga (bird-and-flower painting) affixed to the reverse of James McNeill Whistler’s Blue and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (1871/1873, [...] Read more.

This paper investigates the identity and circumstances of Nampo Joshi (南芳女史) (Ōzawa Nampo 大澤南芳, b. 1845; born Takei Tsuru), the woman artist who painted the kachō-ga (bird-and-flower painting) affixed to the reverse of James McNeill Whistler’s Blue and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (1871/1873, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow). Completed in 1867, as the Edo period ended, Nampo’s work reached Europe with remarkable speed, raising the question of how a painting by a Japanese woman came into Whistler’s possession. Few historical documents directly pertaining to Nampo survive. However, she was the wife of the painter Ōzawa Nankoku (大澤南谷, 1844–?), and a systematic examination of records related to him—land registers, official gazettes, periodicals, exhibition catalogues, and diaries—reveals that the couple established themselves in Nihonbashi, the commercial centre of Tokyo. This broader archival investigation reconstructs who Nampo was: the socio-economic standing she and her husband achieved and the ways in which they extended their endeavours well beyond the traditional boundaries of their craft—participating energetically in the civic life of the new capital, in the exhibition culture of the Meiji period, and in educational and philanthropic activities. Crucially, the study demonstrates that masters deeply involved in Rangaku (Dutch Studies) networks advocating Japan’s opening to the world trained both artists and argues that this progressive intellectual milieu may provide essential context for understanding the swift acceptance of Nampo’s work in Europe. Full article

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

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16 pages, 243 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Norman… I Hate to Talk About Norman”: The Art of the Insult and Literary Friendship, Circa 1960

by Florian Sedlmeier

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 105; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080105 - 3 Aug 2026

Abstract

The essay rereads the literary field of the mid-twentieth century as structured by “the art of the insult”—a game the literati, exemplified by James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, are invested in. In essays and interviews, these writers engage in ad hominem verbal attacks [...] Read more.

The essay rereads the literary field of the mid-twentieth century as structured by “the art of the insult”—a game the literati, exemplified by James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, are invested in. In essays and interviews, these writers engage in ad hominem verbal attacks to test the limits of the socially sayable, which are also the limits of personal friendship. Existing scholarship has shown how the fraught relation between Baldwin and Mailer was marked by gender, race, and sexuality. Drawing on under-researched and newly accessible material, the article makes the case that these differences are superseded by the shared identity as literati who ground literary innovation in social provocation. The alliance culminates in their closing ranks to censor and legitimize the underlying scandal: Mailer’s physical assault against his wife Adele, whose autobiography the article considers in closing. Full article

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

9 pages, 199 KB

Open AccessArticle

What Is Left After Memory: Love, the Body, and the Unconscious in Little Fish

by Paul Longley Arthur and Isabel Smith

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 104; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080104 - 3 Aug 2026

Abstract

Chad Hartigan’s science fiction romantic drama Little Fish was released in 2020, soon after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the disease plaguing communities in Little Fish is not affecting people’s bodies but their minds—those who have contracted Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA) are [...] Read more.

Chad Hartigan’s science fiction romantic drama Little Fish was released in 2020, soon after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the disease plaguing communities in Little Fish is not affecting people’s bodies but their minds—those who have contracted Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA) are losing their memories. The story centres upon the experiences of one young couple as they anxiously witness the disease take hold of their community, loved ones, and eventually one another. The film explores relationships between memory and identity, and poses questions about the ways these processes interact with those of love and loss. Who are we once we begin to lose memories of our histories and ourselves? Who do we then become to our loved ones, with whom we have shared these memories and selves? What binds us together? The paper examines the film using concepts from memory studies, in particular psychoanalysis and philosophy, to argue that after conscious memory is gone, aspects of memory and identity remain through the body, the unconscious, and love. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Film, Television, and Media Studies in the Humanities)

15 pages, 3028 KB

Open AccessArticle

Graphic Music Memoir, Memory, and the Mixtape: The Hauntological Format of the Mixtape in Summer Pierre’s All the Sad Songs

by Amy McCarthy

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080103 - 27 Jul 2026

Abstract

Mixtapes are a form of autobiography and are a tool for storytelling. Summer Pierre’s graphic music memoir All the Sad Songs uses the mixtape to curate and deconstruct memories. Through a series of mixtapes discarded in her basement, Pierre details her relationships through [...] Read more.

Mixtapes are a form of autobiography and are a tool for storytelling. Summer Pierre’s graphic music memoir All the Sad Songs uses the mixtape to curate and deconstruct memories. Through a series of mixtapes discarded in her basement, Pierre details her relationships through music. The absence and presence of mixtapes haunt the narrative and create the scaffolding of Pierre’s memoir. This article explores how the hauntological nature of cassette tapes structures narrative in graphic music memoirs. Music memoirs are about identity building for the music memoirist and the reader. The graphic memoir differs from the traditional memoir format as the author must show as well as tell. Pierre’s graphic memoir demonstrates Pierre’s changing music identity through both text and illustrations. Memoir writing is a performative act, and the author, similar to the mixtape creator, is the curator of the narrative the memoir presents. By using a ‘dead media’ to aid life writing, Pierre presents her journey as a musician through a lifetime soundtrack. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Media, Cultural Memory and Hauntology)

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19 pages, 768 KB

Open AccessArticle

Virtual Worlds and Imagined Communities: Digital Folklore and Globalgothic in The Witcher 3

by Yongyu Quan

Humanities 2026, 15(8), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15080102 - 24 Jul 2026

Abstract

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), a role-playing game developed by CD Projekt RED, exhibits enduring appeal even ten years after its release. The game features European folkloric and Gothic aesthetics that highlight its uniqueness and gained good reception among global players. Yet, [...] Read more.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), a role-playing game developed by CD Projekt RED, exhibits enduring appeal even ten years after its release. The game features European folkloric and Gothic aesthetics that highlight its uniqueness and gained good reception among global players. Yet, the mechanism of this transnational and transcultural appeal is still insufficiently researched. This article challenges debates about the ephemeral nature of internet trends as digital folklore, analysing how regional folk traditions converge into cultural globalisation through interactive media such as video games. The main approach of this study is literary and cultural, adopting digital folklore theory, Globalgothic theory, and Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities. This article also examines in-game quests and landscape aesthetics as part of gameplay through close reading. This study finds that the game interprets regional folk traditions into universal Gothic themes through players’ participatory performance, decontextualised narrative design, and virtual world construction. A new form of digital folklore emerges in the Witcher Universe as an imagined community forms in the virtualised reality. At the same time, longstanding folkloric and literary traditions function as an anchor for this rejuvenated digital folklore and community. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Transdisciplinary Humanities)

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17 pages, 3023 KB

Open AccessArticle

Representing the Racial and Social “Other”: Portraits of Young Blacks at the Danish Court, 1650–1700

by Marina Vidas

Humanities 2026, 15(7), 101; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15070101 - 22 Jul 2026

Abstract

The article analyzes the constructions of the racial and social “other” in portraits of or for members of the Danish royal family held in The Royal Danish Collection at Rosenborg Castle and the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle. More specifically, it [...] Read more.

The article analyzes the constructions of the racial and social “other” in portraits of or for members of the Danish royal family held in The Royal Danish Collection at Rosenborg Castle and the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle. More specifically, it examines portraits of young Blacks who served at the Danish court and who were painted by Northern European artists in the second half of the seventeenth century. In these paintings, the young people are posed with Danish royals, or with animals with whom they are contrasted or likened. The first section interrogates primary documents dating from the second half of the seventeenth century for information concerning the status and various aspects of the lives of young Blacks at the Danish court, as well as the language used to describe them. These written sources provide a frame of reference for the subsequent interpretation of four paintings in the second section. It is argued that all four paintings convey the performative nature of Black servitude and exemplify how enslaved individuals were expected to appear and behave. When displayed within royal residences, it is put forth that these works functioned to promote the “othering” of court Blacks, reinforce the boundaries separating the Danish royal family from their attendants, and visually assert the monarchy’s superiority, authority, and control. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender and Otherness in the Humanities)

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