Andrew Russ argues in this book that a closer look at their philosophical underpinnings finds that Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault are much less "historical" in their methodology than is widely believed. Instead, they share a more "timeless" view, one indebted to principles ordinarily seen as timeless or transcendent

To what extent, and in what manner, do storytelling practices accommodate nonhuman subjects and their modalities of experience, and how can contemporary narrative study shed light on interspecies interactions and entanglements? In Narratology beyond the Human, David Herman addresses these questions through a cross-disciplinary approach to post-Darwinian narratives concerned with animals and human-animal relationships. Herman considers the enabling and constraining effects of different narrative media, examining a range of fictional and nonfictional texts disseminated in print, comics and graphic novels, and film. In focusing on techniques such as the use of animal narrators, alternation between human and nonhuman perspectives, the embedding of stories within stories, and others, the book explores how specific strategies for portraying nonhuman agents both emerge from and contribute to broader attitudes toward animal life. Herman argues that existing frameworks for narrative inquiry must be modified to take into account how stories are interwoven with cultural ontologies, or understandings of what sorts of beings populate the world and how they relate to humans. Showing how questions of narrative bear on ideas of species difference and assumptions about animal minds, Narratology beyond the Human underscores our inextricable interconnectedness with other forms of creatural life and suggests that stories can be used to resituate imaginaries of human action in a more-than-human world.

Animal characters abound in graphic narratives ranging from Krazy Kat and Maus to WE3 and Terra Formars. Exploring these and other multispecies storyworlds presented in words and images, Animal Comics draws together work in comics studies, narrative theory, and cross-disciplinary research on animal environments and human-animal relationships to shed new light on comics and graphic novels in which animal agents play a significant role. At the same time, the volume's international team of contributors show how the distinctive structures and affordances of graphic narratives foreground key questions about trans-species entanglements in a more-than-human world. The writers/artists covered in the book include: Nick Abadzis, Adolpho Avril, Jeffrey Brown, Sue Coe, Matt Dembicki, Olivier Deprez, J. J. Grandville, George Herriman, Adam Hines, William Hogarth, Grant Morrison, Osamu Tezuka, Frank Quitely, Yu Sasuga, Charles M. Schultz, Art Spiegelman, Fiona Staples, Ken'ichi Tachibana, Brian K. Vaughan, and others.

Modernism and the Anthropocene explores twentieth-century literature as it engages with the non-human world across a range of contexts. From familiar modernist works by D.H. Lawrence and Hart Crane to still-emergent genres like comics and speculative fiction, this volume tackles a series of related questions regarding how best to understand humanity’s increasing domination of the natural world.

Comics Studies Here and Now marks the arrival of comics studies scholarship that no longer feels the need to justify itself within or against other fields of study. The essays herein move us forward, some in their re-diggings into comics history and others by analyzing comics—and all its transmedial and fan-fictional offshoots—on its own terms. Comics Studies stakes the flag of our arrival—the arrival of comics studies as a full-fledged discipline that today and tomorrow excavates, examines, discusses, and analyzes all aspects that make up the resplendent planetary republic of comics. This collection of scholarly essays is a testament to the fact that comic book studies have come into their own as an academic discipline; simply and powerfully moving comic studies forward with their critical excavations and theoretical formulas based on the common sense understanding that comics add to the world as unique, transformative cultural phenomena.

One of the defining features of modernism lies in its far-reaching rethinking of the relation between the human and the non-human. In the present volume, this crucial aspect of modernism’s legacy is investigated from an authentically transnational perspective, taking an innovative stance on a diverse range of authors – from posthumanist classics such as Beckett and Woolf to Valentine de Saint-Point, Radoje Domanovic and Aldo Palazzeschi among others. On the one hand, this collection sheds new light on the modernist contribution to posthumanism, providing a valuable reference point for future studies on the topic. On the other, it offers a new take on the transnational dimension of modernism, highlighting unexplored convergences between modernist authors from several different national contexts.

It is a humble, affectionate invite to journey transcendence of consciousness and cognition, to experience novel-alternative realities of non-intuitive dimensionality, beyond visceral-intuitive propensities, for actualization of true potentials of this ephemeral-mortal life-living. Only those, who feel compassion, can love. Only those who love can accept. Those who accept can internalize novelty-alternativeness. Acceptance opens up portals of transcendence. Those who can transcend, qualify as architects of simulation of realities at the landscape of true humanism, above and away from entrenched pragmatism of animalism-tribalism. Only ‘those’ are invited. Animalism, tribalism and humanism are successive stages of potentials of accrued and compounding Information and its systematic processing in a human brain states. This progression of born and innate animalism to consciously acquired humanism is all about augmentation and proliferation of Data and its intelligent Processing. This Data in human brain states come from Experiences as well as Knowledge and above all, the very critical element of Self-Discipline, to process the growing loads of Data for conscious and conscientious simulation of noble and sublime realities, beyond innate-intuitive-visceral realities. Animalism, tribalism and humanism are successive life-living progression and maturity of Data (its processing) and Discipline. If both are almost missing or are very poor, it is Animalism. If Discipline is somehow there in some measure and Data is missing or is purely experienced based intuitive-visceral; it is Tribalism. If data and discipline both are in good quantity and quality, with objective-scientific knowledge of reality populating majority of Data and intuitive-visceral experiences are in sync with objective-holistic knowledge; it is seed of Humanism. However, this seed has to be matured and blossomed into full tree of humanism, by conscious-conscientious simulation of novel-alternative realities for experiencing-cognitions. This is what we are lovingly calling as initiation of journeying of transcendence. The classical dualism of situation is – my consciousness is designed to be very local and thrive in restrictive ambient milieus, subconsciously pursuing wired animalistic survival goals of safety, food and sex, through instinctive psychological tools of power and politics to compete well and succeed. My protagonist is instinctively ‘fashionable’ and viscerally wishes to stand in comforting company of majoritarianism of populism of ambient culture. It feels secure and thrilled to align with passion and propagation of mainstream; rather than stand lonely and be labeled a loser at best and a psychedelic at worst. On the other side; the same consciousness has the potential to consciously expand, rise above the local and align with infinite cosmic realities to experience and internalize plethora of shades of novel and alternative realities, without the trepidation of mainstream-populist labeling. These realities have no availability of the stardom of theatrics of populism and mainstream. These realities and their experiential-cognitive bliss is rather a suspicious possession, for which the populism-mainstream is vehemently unforgiving. It is worth repeating that this is what we are lovingly calling as initiation of journeying of transcendence. The human life-living art and aesthetics is to install and actualize the illusions of the simulations of love-compassion-fraternity as golden realities of life-living and render the realities of survival the status and situation of uncared illusions. The conscious processes of every man and woman to shift the roles of their subconscious from reality of survival to illusions-simulations of art-aesthetics and its success is the test of good and prosperous cultures. This is initiation of journeying of transcendence. This is road to humanism and its true potentials.

In a world awash in awesome, sensual technological experiences, wonder has diverse powers, including awakening us to unexpected ecological intimacies and entanglements. Yet this deeply felt experience—at once cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical—has been dangerously neglected in our cultural education. In order to cultivate the imaginative empathy and caution this feeling evokes, we need to teach ourselves and others to read for wonder. This book begins by unfolding the nature and artifice of wonder as a human capacity and as a fabricated experience. Ranging across poetry, foodstuffs, movies, tropical islands, wonder cabinets, apes, abstract painting, penguins and more, Reading for Wonder offers an anatomy of wonder in transmedia poetics, then explores its ethical power and political risks from early modern times to the present day. To save ourselves and the teeming life of our planet, indeed to flourish, we must liberate wonder from ideologies of enchantment and disenchantment, understand its workings and their ethical ambivalence, and give it a clear language and voice.

Some of the first figures the Nazis conscripted in their rise to power were rhetoricians devoted to popularizing the German vocabulary of Leben (life). This fascinating study reexamines this movement through one of its most prominent exponents, Ludwig Klages, revealing the philosophical-cultural crises and political volatility of the Weimar era.

Examines the life and writings of William Butler Yeats, including a biographical sketch, detailed synopses of his works, social and historical influences, and more.