This research proposes that augmented reality technologies have the capabilities of intertwining natural spaces, material spaces, and networked (or immaterial) spaces together through the author's original idea of the between, which can in turn be used to further explore rhetorical discourse and im/materiality and bolster emerging discourse within the digital humanities. By using a variety of contemporary research on diverse topics within augmented reality and the humanities, such as the inside/outside model...   ⇨ Read more

This essay will serve the double purpose of investigating the aesthetic dimensions of Thoreau’s environmental philosophy as depicted in his classic memoir Walden (1854) while examining the philosophical and political implications of its tendency to break down the boundaries between natural and technological landscapes. Although critics have tended to identify Thoreau as deeply rooted in an Emersonian transcendentalist tradition viewing nature as an organized and holistic “whole”, I will argue that Thoreau’s...   ⇨ Read more

Within science fiction the parasite has long provided a way to engage with bodily fears, however in recent years, our perceived relationship with these kinds of organisms have become increasingly cognitive and existential. Parasites that influence their host’s thoughts and behaviour such as the Cordyceps fungus have become favourite topics for nature documentaries and science podcasts. This familiarity has given rise to narratives that utilize the parasite as an allegory of control, authority, and free will....   ⇨ Read more

The aim of this essay is to examine the evolution of quantitative studies and the changes that occurred within their usage, portraying the international case as well as debating upon the existence and the relevance of a Romanian case. Given the fact that quantitative studies have become increasingly visible in literary studies during the last decades, due to various influences such as Franco Moretti’s theoretical branch or Matthew L. Jockers’ macroanalysis and its appropriation in digital humanities, a...   ⇨ Read more

Having emerged in the late nineteenth century, the novel is a relatively new genre in Turkish literature. However, this belatedly-introduced genre offers rich material to explore patterns of gender identity construction. This paper proposes to discuss the understudied role of gender representations in the formation of the Turkish novelistic canon. My argument is centered around a basic question: Does our understanding of a text change if we focus on the male characters, instead of the heroine, in one of the...   ⇨ Read more

Bathhouses have a strong presence in Iranian folklore and Persian literature. In parallel with literature, there are illustrations in which the topic of bathhouses is exhibited. This paper focuses on a 16th century Persian miniature painting in which the location of a public bathhouse is used as a place of occurrence of a homosexual love story. On the one hand, bathhouses as places of “purification”, and, on the other hand, corporeal bodies as agency of tactile experience create a novel dialectic between the...   ⇨ Read more

The turn of the current century has witnessed the re-negotiation of materiality and the growing ascendancy of the virtual, the immaterial over the real or tangible. Though it would be presumptuous to claim that the virtual has totally assumed control over the real, it can be asserted that the figure of the wall as a transfusion between the real/virtual and the self/other has emerged between the two. Based on constructions of textuality articulated by theorists such as Roland Barthes and Friedrich Nietzsche, and...   ⇨ Read more

The present article analyses the social function of comedy in the age of building the Romanian modern culture, from an ethical perspective. The importance of the social role of comedy is underlined by its unparalleled prominence and productivity as a literary form, even surpassing the novel in this respect. Martha Nussbaum notes that all societies need "the spirit of comedy" in order to manage the disgust in front of what is new, different, unacceptable or simply other. Taking this cue, the analysis follows the...   ⇨ Read more

While Arundhati Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things (1997) mostly focused on the tragic outcomes of the rigid Indian caste system and found its place in the tradition of Marquezian magic realism and Salman Rushdie’s mythical and exotic portrayal of India, her second novel offers a complex description of a divided society. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) bears the mark of Roy’s vast experience in the field of political and environmental activism, her militant approach towards social injustice. The...   ⇨ Read more

This paper aims to bring to the reader’s attention three perspectives on the American dream, as seen through the eyes of the main characters in three novels: In America by Susan Sontag, Amerika. The Missing Person by Franz Kafka and the more recent Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar. The perspectives are different – from Maryna’s story of failure and success as an actress in America in 1876, to Karl Rossmann’s escape from Europe and incomplete adventure in America, to AK’s sexual experiences that mark the...   ⇨ Read more

Niklas SALMOSE and Eric SANDBERG (eds.), Once Upon a Time: Nostalgic Narratives in Transition, Stockholm: Trolltrumma Academia, 2018, 142 p. ISBN: 9789198392944.

Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, Timotheus Vermeulen (eds.), Metamodernism. Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, ISBN 978-1-7834-8960-2, 245 p.

Gross, Alan G. The Scientific Sublime. Popular Science Unravels the Mysteries of the Universe. Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 9780190637774, 314 p.

Delia UNGUREANU, From Paris to Tlön. Surrealism as World Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, ISBN 978-1-5013-3321-7, 332 p.