Embodied VulnerAbilities in Literature and Film

Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández, Miriam Fernández-Santiago, Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández, Miriam Fernández-Santiago

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032268446
• eBook ISBN: 9781000956177
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Embodied VulnerAbilities in Literature and Film includes a collection of essays exploring the ways in which recent literary and filmic representations of vulnerability depict embodied forms of vulnerability across languages, media, genres, countries, and traditions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The volume gathers 12 chapters penned by scholars from Japan, the USA, Canada, and Spain which look into the representation of vulnerability in human bodies and subjectivities. Not only is the array of genres covered in this volume significant— from narrative, drama, poetry, (auto)documentary, or film— in fiction and nonfiction, but also the varied cultural and linguistic coordinates of the literary and filmic texts scrutinized—from the USA, Canada, Spain, France, the Middle East, to Japan. Readers who decide to open the cover of this volume will benefit from becoming familiar with a relatively old topic— that of vulnerability— from a new perspective, so that they can consider the great potential of this critical concept anew.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface: Framing Vulnerable Embodiments as Precarity’s Product
• Introduction: An Ecology of Embodied VulnerAbility—Literary and Filmic Representations across the Globe
• 1 Vulnerable Masculinity: Emotional Transcendence and the Re-Framing of the Bushidô in Takarazuka Revue’s Performance Strategy
• 2 Norma Desmond and Fedora Performing Vulnerability: Masking Age, Gendering Bodies, Transforming Selves
• 3 Vulnerable Motherhood: The Precarious Mother in Unlikely Angel (2005) and Captive (2015)
• 4 Vulnerable Children: Collective Resistance in Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
• 5 Vulnerability on Contemporary Stage: Embodying Gendered Precarity in Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott (2015) and In the Pipeline (2010)
• 6 Poetics of Vulnerability: Stéphane Bouquet and Marie-Claire Bancquart Writing as Exploration of the Limits of Collective and Singular Bodies
• 7 Vulnerable Encounters: Family Wounds, Illness, and Pain in Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom (2020)
• 8 Vulnerability through the Invulnerable Transhuman Lens: Ethics and Disruption of Emotional Connections and Mental Affections in Maniac (2018)
• 9 In Praise of Small Things: Vulnerable (Yet Resilient) Bodies in Madeline Bassnett’s Under the Gamma Camera (2019)
• 10 Recognizing Vulnerabilities in Rural Spain: Political and Literary Forms of Resistance
• 11 Vulnerability, (In)Hospitable Politics, and Ethical Encounters in The Visitor (2007)
• 12 Recording One’s Vulnerability: Refugees’ Experiences in the Auto-Documentaries #MyEscape (2016), Chauka Please Tells Us the Time (2017), and Midnight Traveler (2019)
• Index