With the support of recent theorizing in evolutionary biology and anthropology, this essay refurbishes the term archetype for reuse, recognizing that it signals a painful cognitive failure. Examples are taken from The Terminator movies and pictures of the annunciation to Mary.

With the support of recent theorizing in evolutionary biology and anthropology, this essay refurbishes the term archetype for reuse, recognizing that it signals a painful cognitive failure. Examples are taken from The Terminator movies and pictures of the annunciation to Mary.

The article discusses the relationship among philosophical and cognitive theories of understanding intentionality, pointing to particular strengths and weaknesses which bear on their usefulness to literary studies. My claim is that their gaps and their complementarity can be seen with particular clarity when they are used to describe interpretive…[Read more]

Iconotropism is a gargantuan overgeneralization hypothesizing that people are hungry for pictures and feed on them, metabolize them, turn them into nourishment. The study examples are Raphael’s Transfiguration and Titian’s Diana and Actaeon. It is a contribution to embodiment theory and cognitive cultural history.

It is apparent that George Eliot’s novels were heavily engaged with development in natural history; her metaphors made use of and reflected on mid-1800s discussions of evolution and taxonomy. In this essay, research in science history and Eliot studies leads to evidence of how, in Felix Holt (1866), Eliot was influenced by evolutionary s…[Read more]

This is an afterword to Movement in Literature: Exploring Kinesis Intelligence, ed. by Kathryn Banks and Timothy Chesters. (Palgrave 2018). It is intended to advance further work on kinesic intelligence by connection some of what has already been written about how the forms of fiction appeal to what human bodies know about action with what can be…[Read more]

This is an afterword to Movement in Literature: Exploring Kinesis Intelligence, ed. by Kathryn Banks and Timothy Chesters. (Palgrave 2018). It is intended to advance further work on kinesic intelligence by connection some of what has already been written about how the forms of fiction appeal to what human bodies know about action with what can be…[Read more]

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe as well as a political organizer. This interview outlines what fascism is, the history of anti-fascist resistance, the debate surrounding free-speech, anti-imperialism, World War II, and the Trump Era.

Mark Bray is a political organizer and historian…[Read more]

A book review of The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017) by John Dourish

The chapter analyzed the debates on parliamentarism in the late Russian Empire and revolutionary Russia and explored how the idea of parliament helped intellectuals locate Russia globally. The establishment of the legislative State Duma and the adoption of the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire during the Revolution of 1905–1907 seemed to m…[Read more]

Addressing the entangled histories of deliberative decision making, political representation, and constitutionalism in several geographic and temporal contexts, this Special Issue offers nuanced political and intellectual histories and anthropologies of parliamentarism in Eurasia. It explores parliaments and quasi-parliamentary formations and the…[Read more]

The influential Tamil writer Pudumaippittan turned to the short story to theorize the relationship between literature and society in the late-colonial era. He used the genre’s brevity to compress his portrayals of well-known female types—such as widows, prostitutes, and goodwives—into singular emotional events. This enabled Pudumaippittan to evoke…[Read more]