This study explores gender roles and social norms in women’s involvement in war by comparing and contrasting The Ballad of Mulan and The Rose of Versailles. The study examines the characters of Mulan and Lady Oscar and proposes that women do not gain entry into the male-dominated military institutions by challenging the patriarchal system, but rather by assimilating into the military norm of masculinity on a conditional basis. While both characters are symbolically undermining restrictive gender norms, they must take on masculine behaviors, identities, and values in order to succeed in the institution. The study shows that patriarchy allows women’s participation in the military in a conditional manner, by adaptation and not by structural change. The analysis draws from a feminist perspective, social role theory, and social cognitive theory. It focuses on the interplay between the institutions of patriarchy, gendered military expectations, and individual agency. Feminist theory accounts for the continued existence of patriarchy in military settings, social role theory looks into the role of gender norms in the recruitment and promotion processes, and social cognitive theory looks at how self-efficacy helps women overcome institutional barriers. The study utilizes a qualitative comparative method using a close textual analysis of relevant scenes that include recruitment, military training, peer relations, promotion, and gender revelation in both texts. The results show that Mulan and Lady Oscar make symbolic gains in the military realm, but ultimately their experiences reveal the structural constraints to inclusion in the patriarchal military system.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the dissolution of its ideological framework generated a profound crisis of orientation for individuals whose identities had been shaped by collectivist modes of existence. This article offers a new reading of Minus by the Siberian novelist Roman Senchin as a representation of existential boredom and the erosion of meaning in the post-Soviet condition. Through close readings of spatial settings, narrative structure, and characters’ behavior, the article demonstrates how the novel portrays a pervasive identity crisis marked by social dislocation and temporal stagnation. It traces the characters’ attempts to construct meaning through shifting forms of labor, routine, and spatial substitution—such as the theater and the hostel—which ultimately underscore a persistent existential impasse. While grounded in existential philosophy, particularly the works of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, the analysis also situates boredom and meaninglessness within broader discussions of modernity, alienation, and post-ideological disorientation. In doing so, the article argues that Minus not only presents a distinct Russian and Siberian articulation of post-Soviet reality but also participates in wider philosophical and cultural debates concerning the crisis of meaning in late modernity.
This study analyzes Bai Fengxi’s First Bathed in Moonlight, a post-Mao Chinese play, through Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory framework. While trauma narratives in women’s literature often depict women as victims or resisters within the unfolding of traumatic memory, this research highlights their multiple and shifting identities. Using qualitative narrative analysis and coding, the article illustrates how traumatic experiences are narrated, recalled, and transmitted across generations, and how the multiplicity of women’s identities and roles in the process conveys specific gender ideologies. The findings demonstrate that female characters are not confined to binary roles but occupy a broader, fluid spectrum that includes perpetrators, rescuers, and bystanders, in addition to victims. A key finding is that the drama positions trauma not as individual misfortune but as a manifestation of systemic oppression arising from an interplay of economic structures, social conventions, educational deprivation, and familial discipline. Furthermore, the study articulates a dual path to healing: self-redemption, achieved by reinterpreting traumatic memory, and redemption by others, which the play links to social and political hierarchies and the possession of structural power. Through its inclusive narrative stance and empathetic treatment of female characters, the play creates space for collective witnessing and foregrounds the interconnectedness of women’s experiences. By focusing on a dramatic text, this research sheds light on a form of literary expression often overlooked in scholarship on Asian women’s literature and demonstrates the applicability of the postmemory framework to post-Mao Chinese drama, contributing new insights into the intersections of gender, trauma, and cultural memory.
Cognitive Film Theory (CFT) illuminates how cinematic techniques redistribute cognitive labor from literary interiority to viewer inference, emotional calibration, and cultural memory reconstruction in Tamil historical film adaptations. This article demonstrates how Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: I and II (2022–2023) masterfully engineer cognitive–cultural remediation via schema disruption, restricted alignment, affective ellipsis, and trauma-inflected narrative fragmentation elevating Kalki Krishnamurthy’s epic into a dynamic participatory memory site for contemporary Tamil spectatorship. By integrating Bordwell’s cue-based comprehension, Smith’s alignment/allegiance framework, and Tan’s emotion templates with Erll’s remediation theory and Caruth’s trauma narratology, the analysis of four pivotal scenes unveils Ratnam’s formal strategies that powerfully cue viewer-driven meaning-making in Ponniyin Selvan scholarship. The study propels adaptation studies forward by operationalizing the cognitive–phenomenological dimension of historical cinema and reconfiguring regional Indian film analysis as a vibrant dialogue among mediated memory, embodied spectatorship, and cultural identity formation. These findings establish Ponniyin Selvan as a paragon of audiovisual media as “memory machines,” adeptly remediating collective historical consciousness through active viewer participation.
Poetry by women, especially about food, often moves beyond the actual act of support to disclose on the richer tales of care, loss, identity, and survival. This study elucidates how women poets use culinary imagery and home rituals as therapeutic expressions of emotional resilience and happening. Through a literal reading of Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, and Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poems, the research examines how cooking, tasting, and feeding are the ways through which matrilineal knowledge is rescued, mounting loss is addressed, and broken selves are stocked. This article examines how food-themed writing functions as a mode of incarnated authorship within the textual matter of poetic therapy, narrative healing, and feminist literary theory. Culinary poetics enable women poets to refigure attributes that are long mapped with gendered silence and labor as places of poetic resistance, self-restoration, and healing emotion. The kitchen is not patterned as confinement within its walls but as the space of poetic resistance and self-healing.
As is often the case, space is understood in quantitative dimensions and excludes emotions. This article employs Geocriticism as a qualitative analysis to elevate the importance of emotions in understanding people–place relationships. While exploring the spatial dynamics of the coastal spaces of Zanzibar and Mombasa in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel Desertion, the study examines how people respond to these spaces emotionally. As a historically traversed space, the geographies of these spaces host possibilities of varied identity crises. In reflecting upon how a space is cluttered with emotions and transformed into a place, this study affirms that space is not just a quantitative phenomenon, but is saturated with emotions, leading to the creation of multiple perceptions of the space. The study also shows that the profound political dimensions and power hierarchies within spatial structures are responsible for shaping subjective experiences of space, thereby determining the people–space relationship and the creation of varied identities of space.
Refugee memoirs capture the vicissitudes of refugees battling hostile asylum and immigration policies. Currently, Australian life writing has become a forte for refugee writers to critique neo-imperialist policies. However, the experiences of the Rohingya refugees remain underrepresented. Ealom, in his memoir, Escape from Manus Prison: One Man’s Daring Quest for Freedom, exemplifies his refugee experiences, focusing on his life in an Australian offshore detention center. Rather than remaining a passive victim, Ealom positions himself as an agential figure and critiques the deterrence ideology of the Australian offshore detention center, rooted in the vilification and dehumanization of asylum seekers. Drawing on the theories of critical refugee studies (CRS), affect theory, and life writing scholarship, the study examines the lived realities of militarized detention, extended temporality, and political exclusion. The memoir enacts strategic performativity in navigating the carceral regime and becomes a form of testimonial resistance against the erasure of refugee subjectivity. This study situates Ealom’s memoir as a CRS text that critiques the limitations of the juridical–political definition of refugee and promotes refugeetude, a political consciousness of being a refugee. The refugee memoir establishes itself as a potent site for life-making practices, enabling an epistemology rooted in livability and durability
Pedru and the Big Boom (henceforth PBB), published in 2021, blends the writing of Nandita da Cunha and the impactful illustrations of Niharika Shenoy to tell the story of Pedru, a young boy in the fictional Indian village of Rotnagaon, and the village’s plight following the sudden arrival of Digdeep Explorer, a mining company pursuing iron ore. This article scrutinizes PBB through green criminology, arguing that mining and its ill effects in Rotnagaon constitute an environmental crime. It examines how the story maps the perceptible as well as invisible violence of capitalist extraction upon people and the land. Furthermore, the article positions the child protagonist, Pedru, as a passive crime witness who evolves into an accidental activist and a green crime fighter, studying how the author has used the playful motif of Khoj, an exploratory outdoor game in the text, to bring out the theme of child agency. It also assesses the transition of individual agency to collective resistance leading to restorative justice against the green crime. Ultimately, this study proposes that PBB offers a critical intervention in children’s literature by integrating ecocritical perspectives of socio-political urgency into fiction, where the stakes are not merely moral but planetary.
This research aims to examine the psychological journey of Stevens, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, through Carl Jung’s theory of individuation. Through the lens of Jungian archetypes such as Persona, Shadow, Anima/Animus, and Self, it explores Stevens’ inner conflicts and traces the key stages in his individuation process. The study suggests that Stevens ultimately moves toward completing his individuation process by integrating his conscious and unconscious selves, which allows him to partially reconcile his fragmented identity and attain both self-awareness and emotional wholeness. This study adds to the discussion about human psychological transformation in literature within the boundaries of social constructs. It not only helps us understand Stevens’ complicated character but also investigates bigger issues like identity crisis, repression, and the search for completeness. It shows us how internal struggles can lead to meaningful transformation. This study contributes to the ongoing broader discourse on the intersection of literature and psychology by examining human struggles with identity and self-realization.
Geography in literature addresses the representation of space and place in the literary text. The article demonstrates theoretical discourse on space by differentiating liminal space and subaltern space. Geographical analysis shows how the tribal community remains in the subaltern space, while Dalit people move from the subaltern space to the liminal space, as indicated in the selected text. The selected texts are Bama’s Karukku, which portrays experiences of the Dalit community, and Mahasweta Devi’s Douloti the Bountiful, which brings out the marginalization of the tribal community. Liminal space denotes the transitional space, which speaks about both sufferings and how they are moving from agony through geographical continuity. Subaltern space refers to the space of domination; it exposes how tribal people remain in subaltern space through geographical discontinuity. Karukku primarily focuses on the liminal existence of Dalits within the dominant caste system, where they are neither fully inside nor fully outside. Douloti the Bountiful , on the other hand, highlights the subalternity of tribal communities, who are often geographically and culturally isolated from the mainstream. This study advances our knowledge of the various experiences of marginalized communities in India and the spatial aspects of social exclusion. The significance of the study is explicit; geography is not merely a representation but an active tool of social subjugations. The comparative study differentiates how the Dalit community moved to a liminal space through geographical continuity, while the tribal community remained in a subaltern space due to geographical discontinuity. This highlights how geography mediates caste and tribal subjugation, revealing distinct trajectories in Dalit and tribal viewpoints.
This article studies Yann Martel’s Life of Pi using ideas from postcolonial cultural studies suggesting that the Pacific Ocean serves as a place where different types of knowing and understanding meet and widely established Western ideas about truth are questioned. Instead of just seeing the book as a story about survival or a religious one, this study places Pi Patel’s trip on the ocean within the context of colonial knowledge, sea power, and the movement of cultures. Using postcolonial theory (Said, Bhabha, and Spivak), trauma studies, and narrative philosophy, the article claims that survival in Life of Pi is physical, ethical, and about knowledge. Pi’s way of telling stories using different perspectives, like having both animal and human stories, is a survival method. It goes against the idea that there should be only one provable truth, which is often pushed by bureaucratic systems. When the Japanese officials insist on one consistent story, it shows how colonial ways of thinking still exist. These ways of thinking value logic and proof over faith, memory, and what things mean to people. By focusing on the mixing of cultures, faith, and multiple stories, Martel’s book supports storytelling as a morally important reaction to trauma and uncertainty. The ocean is not just a passive setting but an active place where knowledge is questioned and reshaped. In the end, the article makes the case that Life of Pi suggests a moral way of understanding truth that is based on humility, using imagination, and accepting different cultures.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno proposed the concept of pseudo-individualization to describe the functioning of the cultural industry. Later, Adorno explicitly developed it in the context of popular music. This article reconstructs Adorno’s concept of pseudo-individualization in the context of popular music and the rise of “prosumption culture.” The study uses a conceptual and theoretical framework to analyze platform architectures and digital cultures, highlighting specific instances that substantiate the (re)construction of Adorno’s critique. The article argues that digital platforms, in their promise of unprecedented choice and personal autonomy, have re-established and intensified standardization through algorithmic governance and data-driven infrastructures. The analysis focuses on three parameters: algorithmic governance and personalization, music consumption on digital platforms, and digital prosumption and pseudo-creativity. It articulates how recommendation systems, curated playlists, and “algo-torial power” through behavioral profiling create an illusion of preferred music taste while simultaneously enforcing commercial homogeneity. The study further explores pseudo-creativity, in which user-generated content (UGC) and participatory practices are shaped by “visibility labor” and mimetic behavior. Finally, the article concludes by reconstructing the intensified prevalence of pseudo-individualization in the digital age, showing that prosumers with no intentions reproduce standardized patterns of consumption and production and transform the listener into an affective, unpaid laborer of platform capitalism. Thus, it validates Adorno’s critique of the cultural industry in contemporary conditions of platform capitalism.
In recent years, discussions surrounding gender equality, labor justice, and bodily autonomy have become central to the global development agenda, particularly within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth. Literary texts can serve as critical cultural arenas through which these social issues are reflected, negotiated, and reinterpreted. This study, therefore, examines the relationship between aesthetic transformation, work separation, and the reinterpretation of women’s body economy in contemporary Madurese fiction. The research uses qualitative textual analysis of five novels: Damar Kambang by Muna Masyari, Tanjung Kemarau by Royyan Julian, Istana Para Kuli by Yahya Umar, Matahari di Atas Gilli by Lintang Sugianto, and Silsilah Duka by Dwi Ratih Ramadhany. The analysis is grounded in Michel Foucault’s theoretical perspective, particularly his concept of power relations and bodily discipline, combined with the analytical notion of body economy to understand how women’s bodies become sites of social regulation and symbolic value. The findings reveal that the female body in these narratives functions as a socially regulated domain shaped by reproductive expectations, familial authority, and gendered labor divisions. Women’s participation in formal labor is frequently subordinated to domestic and reproductive responsibilities, reflecting a cultural separation of work that structures the social meaning of the female body. At the same time, the novels aesthetically transform these social realities into narratives that expose subtle forms of negotiation, resilience, and reinterpretation by female characters.
This study examines how the nexus between trauma, memory, and identity within digital spaces in Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This elucidates the societal impact of life “in the portal”—an immersive digital world where public and private selves become indistinct. It analyzes how the narrative reflects the psychological ramifications of online immersion, where identity formation and memory are subjects to constant online visibility and performativity. The study scrutinizes the novel’s portrayal of digital trauma through fragmented consciousness, mapping the protagonist’s struggle with memory loss and identity dislocation through close textual analysis and an interdisciplinary framework combining trauma theory, digital culture studies, and identity theory. Employing qualitative content analysis, the study also incorporates secondary insights from digital sociology and psychoanalysis to explore how Lockwood’s depiction corresponds to real-world experiences of digital-induced alienation. The outcome indicates the erosion of privacy and the impact of digital mediation on personal and collective memory, demonstrating how digital spaces heighten psychological and emotional vulnerability and destabilize identity. The study, thus, emphasizes the necessity to critically examine the effects of the digital environment on mental health and self-perception, offering broader implications for understanding the poetics of trauma in the digital age.
This study examines the development of Computational Literary Studies (CLS) between 2000 and 2025, tracing its publication patterns, leading contributors, geographical reach, funding landscape, and thematic directions. Drawing on the Scopus database, the analysis focuses on 295 English-language journal articles and applies scientific performance measures together with science-mapping techniques. Co-occurrence analysis, full counting, and network visualization generated through VOSviewer provide the basis for identifying trends in the field. The results indicate a significant increase in publication activity after 2019, suggesting a growing reliance on computational tools within literary scholarship. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities appears to be the most active publication venue, with the United States contributing the largest share of research output, followed by several European countries and China. Patterns of institutional affiliation and funding indicate a strong presence of European research bodies, particularly Horizon 2020 and the European Research Council. The thematic mapping points to two broad orientations: one centered on technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), deep learning, and language models, and another grounded in humanities-based approaches, including digital humanities, distant reading, and stylometry. Transitional clusters—most notably, text mining and sentiment analysis—bridge these orientations, illustrating the increasing convergence between computational techniques and literary interpretation. Overall, the study offers a detailed overview of the CLS research landscape and provides an evidence-based reference for shaping research priorities, curriculum design in digital humanities, and future scholarly directions.
Hegemonic masculinity, as observed in today’s society, impacts the lives of both men and women. This concept has been widely studied across various fields of research, and this article focuses on the hegemonic masculine figure and the subordinate men portrayed in the film The Book of Life (2014). The study unearths the present hegemonic masculine figures in the film and their effect on subordinate men. Using a qualitative approach, this article utilizes scenes, instances, and dialogues to study hegemonic masculinity. This study concludes by showing that certain traits of hegemonic masculinity, such as physical performance, bravery, power, strength, stamina, aggressive behavior, and cultural dominance, affect Manolo and his emancipation from ancestral and cultural conditioning. Bullfighting being the Sanchez family tradition, Manolo is forced to pursue it rather than his musical interests. Through Carlos Sanchez, Manolo’s father, and Joaquin Mondragon, Manolo’s friend, the film emphasizes the hegemonic masculine characters. This article concludes that individuals regain their innate identity by breaking away from the patterns of hegemonic masculinity in their lives and society. The article also sheds light on how the acceptance of the hegemonic masculine figure plays a major role in helping subordinate men to attain acceptance within their society and culture.
This review examines, through a comparative feminist lens, the feminine figures in Greek and Egyptian mythologies as representations of patriarchal hegemony and potential subversion. Greek heroines like Pandora and Medea destabilize yet ultimately reinforce Olympian hierarchies, while Egyptian goddesses such as Isis and Hathor, and queens such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra exercise restorative power that challenges pharaonic norms. Integrating scholarship on archetypes, worship, and sociocultural reflections, the study juxtaposes the collective, male-dominated structures present in Greek mythic punitive tropes with Egypt’s ceremonial performative empowerment. The article traces punishment motifs from Medea’s act of infanticide to Sekhmet’s ceremonial containment, emphasizing multiplicitous cultural attitudes toward female rage. Historical queens like Cleopatra extended mythic credibility into political reality, in contrast to Greek queens’ confined status as archetypal perils. Demeter’s submissive maternal grief stands as a stark contrast to Nut’s cosmic celestial sovereignty, revealing contrasting maternal ideologies in fertility archetypes. Analysis of modern reinterpretations exposes how feminist retellings of Greek mythology focus on rendering voices to the marginalized women characters, whereas Egyptian mythical retellings prioritize mythic extensions wherein history is integrated with mythology. This review advances existing feminist myth criticism by proposing a transnational resistance framework that explores female coalitions as archetypes across Greek and Egyptian mythologies, thus advancing a single-tradition analyzes toward comparative feminist mythmaking. Methodological limitations include reliance on primary texts over archaeological evidence, while research gaps necessitate studies on digital retellings and intersectional approaches integrating race and class. These narratives remain central for understanding enduring gender hierarchies, urging global re-readings for gender equity.
French studies currently stands at a critical juncture where traditional Eurocentric paradigms are being challenged by emergent global perspectives. This interdisciplinary study aims to reconceptualize the field through an African Futurist lens, offering alternative epistemological frameworks that decenter Western hegemonic discourses while fostering cultural sustainability. Situated at the intersection of Francophone studies, digital humanities, African literary theories, and sustainability humanities, this study contributes to the growing body of scholarship on decolonial approaches to language and cultural studies. Through frameworks like Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and Pan-Africanism, this analysis draws on indigenous knowledge systems. The findings highlight how the integration of Afrofrancofuturism can serve as a practical framework for decolonizing and modernizing French studies curricula. This research reveals how Afrofrancofuturistic perspectives can transform French studies by emphasizing pluriversality, temporal fluidity, and cultural consciousness. This reimagining of French studies not only enriches the discipline through diverse cultural narratives but also establishes a more equitable, forward-looking framework that acknowledges the vital role of African intellectual traditions in shaping global Francophone futures.
The dramatic, infamous uprisings known as the “Arab Spring” have changed greatly the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and the world order since 2011. Activists and influencers took advantage of communication technologies and social media to create digital platforms and archives at the height of conflict. As such, cultural activism and digital archiving prove to be crucial rebellion tools that not only shape public opinion, by unfolding the events as they occur on the ground but also uncover the extent to which literature and art could endorse values of liberty and democracy when digitized and archived. Interestingly, these resounding events have motivated the literary and artistic production in the Arab world that might be described as an “aesthetic uprising,” referring to the booming of literature and arts of all genres during that period. The events function as a powerful force that enhances the creative depth of writers, rendering the act of writing an ultimate expression of resilience. This article explores the transcultural identity of the “Arab Spring” through a close analysis of its literary portrayals and examines the linguacultural echoes that emerged from those political events.
Sexual violence against female santri (students) in Indonesian pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) remains a deeply entrenched yet often silenced issue, exacerbated by patriarchal power structures and religious authority. These santri typically range in age from early adolescence to late teens, with many entering pesantren as young as 12 or 13 years old, which heightens their vulnerability to coercion and abuse by teachers (ustadz) and kyai who hold considerable religious and disciplinary authority. This study critically investigates the diverse coercive modalities engaged by perpetrators, archetypally pesantren leaders such as kyai, ustaz, or their relatives, to exploit religious legitimacy and institutional power for sexual manipulation. Based on an analysis of media reports and survivor accounts, the study identifies fourteen distinct coercive tactics, including appeals to spiritual blessings (berkah), virginity tests, false promises of marriage, financial incentives, threats, and manipulations grounded in religious myths or doctrinal obedience. These tactics serve to justify abuse, compel victim compliance, and prevent disclosure, thereby perpetuating cycles of silence and impunity within pesantren environments. The complexity and multiplicity of these modalities highlight how sexual violence in pesantren is not only a personal crime but also a systemic problem linked to the abuse of religious authority and gendered power relations. This research accentuates the crucial need for legal reforms, institutional accountability, and culturally sensitive interventions to protect santri and dismantle abusive practices. By shedding light on these coercive strategies, this article contributes to broader discussions on gender-based violence in religious educational settings in Indonesia, aiming to promote securer, more equitable pesantren communities.
