Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre

Mediating Vulnerability meditates on the creative and destructive powers of vulnerability in literary form.

To experience vulnerability is to experience the tension between ruin and creativity: a vulnerable species faces extinction but also evolution, and a vulnerable person risks both irreparable harm and transformative connection. Mediating Vulnerability explores how this tension plays out across contemporary literary studies. Examining a variety of approaches to the destructive and remediating powers of genre, the authors consider how vulnerability intersects a range of representational forms including high-profile fiction by Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy as well as lesser-known graphic novels, video games, television, and photography.
 

Anneleen Masschelein is associate professor of literary and cultural Studies at KU Leuven.

Florian Mussgnug is professor of Italian and comparative literature at University College London.

Jennifer Rushworth is associate professor of French and comparative literature at University College London.