ABSTRACT

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.

 

 

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

An Ecology of Embodied VulnerAbility—Literary and Filmic Representations across the Globe

chapter 1|16 pages

Vulnerable Masculinity

Emotional Transcendence and the Re-Framing of the Bushidô in Takarazuka Revue's Performance Strategy

chapter 2|16 pages

Norma Desmond and Fedora Performing Vulnerability

Masking Age, Gendering Bodies, Transforming Selves

chapter 3|14 pages

Vulnerable Motherhood

The Precarious Mother in Unlikely Angel (2005) and Captive (2015)

chapter 4|15 pages

Vulnerable Children

Collective Resistance in Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)

chapter 5|15 pages

Vulnerability on Contemporary Stage

Embodying Gendered Precarity in Gary Owen's Iphigenia in Splott (2015) and In the Pipeline (2010)

chapter 6|13 pages

Poetics of Vulnerability

Stéphane Bouquet and Marie-Claire Bancquart Writing as Exploration of the Limits of Collective and Singular Bodies

chapter 7|16 pages

Vulnerable Encounters

Family Wounds, Illness, and Pain in Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom (2020)

chapter 8|16 pages

Vulnerability through the Invulnerable Transhuman Lens

Ethics and Disruption of Emotional Connections and Mental Affections in Maniac (2018)

chapter 9|16 pages

In Praise of Small Things

Vulnerable (Yet Resilient) Bodies in Madeline Bassnett's Under the Gamma Camera (2019)

chapter 10|14 pages

Recognizing Vulnerabilities in Rural Spain

Political and Literary Forms of Resistance

chapter 12|15 pages

Recording One's Vulnerability

Refugees' Experiences in the Auto-Documentaries #MyEscape (2016), Chauka Please Tells Us the Time (2017), and Midnight Traveler (2019)