literature

Issue 7.3 - Special Issue "The Global Contemporary and the Ecological" Previous Issues

The Traumatised Shaman: The Woman Writer in the Age of Globalised Trauma

Arya Aryan on Hilary Mantel, the woman-writer, and trauma

Issue 7.3 - Special Issue "The Global Contemporary and the Ecological" Previous Issues

Infrastructural Futures in Chinese Science Fiction

Andy Hageman July 1, 2019 No Comments China Chinese Sci-fi Chinese science fiction future futures Infastructural criticism literature science fiction speculative fiction

Andy Hageman explores the topic of infrastructure in Chinese Science Fiction.

Issue 4.1 Previous Issues

Litter, Landscape and The Road

Antony Mullen February 27, 2015 No Comments contemporary fiction contemporary literature Cormac McCarthy Cultural Landscapes dystopia literature post-9/11 literature post-apocalyptic fiction postmodernism trauma

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) presents a dystopian vision of a near-future world in which most organic vegetation has died and human life is becoming increasingly rare. It is not unusual for dystopian fiction to …

Issue 4.1 Previous Issues

Reconsidering Quarantine in Invasion Narratives

Jacob Murphy February 27, 2015 No Comments contemporary literature Epidemic fiction globalisation Invasion literature Max Brooks Medical Fiction Quarantine science fiction Zombies

The academic and public interest in supernatural invasion narratives has increased exponentially in the 20th and 21st centuries. According to Terrence Rafferty of The New York Times, the fascination with the zombie apocalypse …

Issue 2.4 - Special Issue "Thatcher's Legacies" Previous Issues

The Allure of the 1980s

Christopher Vardy July 21, 2013 1 Comment 1980s 1984-85 miners' strike Anthony Cartwright Cathi Unsworth contemporary British history contemporary fiction David Peace Denise Mina dystopia End of History Gordon Burn Irvine Welsh literature Nineteen Eighty Three nostalgia post-industrial landscapes retro-memory Rubik's cubes Skagboys Thatcherism Trainspotting trauma

When we remember, represent or consume the recent past, we often do so through the alluring prism of nostalgia. In Ali Smith’s short story ‘astute, fiery, luxurious’…

Issue 2.3 Previous Issues

Recovering Nostalgia in Nature Writing

Deborah Lilley May 13, 2013 1 Comment ecocriticism Edgelands Findings Fredric Jameson Granta Green Letters Kathleen Jamie landscape Linda Hutcheon literature Mario Shoard Michael Symmons Roberts nature writers Nature writing Nicholas Dames pastoral Paul Farley Robert McFarlane Svetlana Boym Waterlog

In Edgelands (2011), Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts explain their intention to ‘put aside our nostalgia for places we’ve never really known’ and instead seek…

Issue 2.2 Previous Issues

Explorations in the Ergodic

Ash Ogden March 26, 2013 5 Comments Ayn Rand computer games digital cartographies digital culture digital media Donna Haraway ergodic literature Eric Zimmerman Espen J. Aarseth Gaming Literacy House of Leaves identity Indra Sinha literature Mark Z. Danielewski new media Night of January 16th subjectivity The Cybergypsies videogames studies

As our lives become more networked, people are engaging more and more with structures. But they are not merely inhabiting these structures – they are…

Issue 2.2 Previous Issues

Re-Writing Belfast

Caroline Magennis March 26, 2013 2 Comments 2013 Arts Council of Northern Ireland BBC Belfast bisexuality Ciaran Carson City Hall flag protests Fat Lad Glenn Patterson Good Friday Agreement Good Vibrations Healing through Remembering Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity John Millar Lapsed Protestant literature Northern Star post-conflict Northern Ireland pre-Troubles Era RMS Oceanic Robert McLiam Wilson Stewart Parker Studies on Hysteria The International The Mill for Grinding Old People Young Titanic Quarter Transitional Justice Institute Ulster Journal of Archaeology United Irish Rebellion University of Ulster

In April 2012, the Northern Irish writer Glenn Patterson published his eighth novel, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young, with Faber. The book is the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s first ever…

Issue 2.1 Previous Issues

Diverse Suburbias

Rowena Clarke January 12, 2013 1 Comment A Gesture Life A. M. Holmes Aloft Chang-rae Lee contemporary fiction David Lynch demographics Gary Shteyngart immigrant incorporation in Suburban America Ira Levin Jack Finney Jeffrey Eugenides Jhumpa Lahiri Junot Diaz literature Native Speaker New York Peter Weir Rick Moody suburbia suburbs Tom Perotta twenty-first-century American fiction Westchester

Rowena Clarke Since the nineteen fifties, when suburban living began to establish itself as the new norm, representations of suburbia in American culture have…

Issue 1.6 Previous Issues

Extraordinary Renditions: Voicing Opposition to War

Alex Latter November 1, 2012 1 Comment Abu Ghraib Afghanistan Allan Jankins Andrea Brady Carol Ann Duffy Dante Descent George W. Bush Inferno Iraq literary criticism literature poetic voice poetry Quid Saw Fit terza rima The Guardian Tony Blair twenty-first-century poetry violence war

Andrea Brady’s recent poem ‘Saw Fit’ and Alan Jenkins’ ‘Descent’ explicitly address the historical context of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq…