Publications Archive - Department of Humanities

Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction

Posted on 23 July 2024

Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction brings cinema studies, queer theory, and psychoanalysis into novel configuration around the concept of negative life, a sundering of human and nonhuman relations. Engaging a philosophical and cinematic corpus that rejects the pastoralism of “entanglement” or “enmeshment,” Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay counter ecocritical pieties and cut a new path for theory. They examine films by Julian Pölsler, Kelly Reichardt, Lee Isaac Chung, […]

The European Legacy

Posted on 21 February 2023

Stanley Tweyman, guest editor, The European Legacy, Volume 27, Issue 3-4 (Taylor & Francis, 2022) This Special Issue of The European Legacy focuses on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, first published in Latin as Meditationes de Prima Philosophia in Paris, in 1641. The ten articles appearing in this issue address various topics, which in addition […]

Searching for the Messiah Unlocking the "Psalms of Solomon" and Humanity's Quest for a Savior

Posted on 21 February 2023

Barrie Wilson, Searching for the Messiah: Unlocking the Psalms of Solomon and Humanity’s Quest for a Savior (Pegasusbooks, 2020) SEARCHING FOR THE MESSIAH is an historical introduction to the Jewish concept of the messiah and its subsequent transformations in Christian and secular culture. Publishers Weekly writes “Wilson explores the meaning of messiahship in this entertaining and […]

Israel and the Diaspora: Jewish Connectivity in a Changing World

Posted on 21 February 2023

Carl S. Ehrlich, Robert A. Kenedy, Uzi Rebhun, eds., Israel and the Diaspora: Jewish Connectivity in a Changing World (Springer, 2022) This collected volume is based on the proceedings of a symposium held in 2018 at York University, Canada, which was held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Israel. This symposium highlighted contemporary Jewish identity, […]

Masaniello: The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary

Posted on 21 February 2023

Thomas V. Cohen, Translator, Masaniello: The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary (Amsterdam UP, 2023) This is a translation and new edition of Masaniello. La sua vita e il mito in Europa (Rome, 2007), the first historical biography of the leader of the revolt that broke out in Naples in 1647–48. Initially, its main objectives were the […]

The Mini-Cycle

Posted on 21 February 2023

Allan Weiss, The Mini-Cycle (Routledge, 2021) The Mini-Cycle examines a genre that has not been identified, let alone studied, before: the short story cycle made up of only two or three stories. The conventional story cycle comprises around eight or ten linked short stories, enough to fill a volume; the mini-cycle, on the other hand, […]

The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature

Posted on 21 February 2023

Allan Weiss, The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature (Routledge, 2021) The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature is a short history of Canadian science fiction, fantasy, and other fantastic genres from the early nineteenth century to the contemporary period. It focuses on important contexts, authors, texts, and themes, highlighting the diversity of voices and […]

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced down the British Empire

Posted on 21 February 2023

Alicia Turner, The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced down the British Empire, with Brian Bocking and Laurence Cox (Oxford UP, 2020) The Irish Buddhist tells the story of a poor Irishman who worked his way across America as a migrant worker, became one of the very first Western Buddhist monks, and traveled the length […]

Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics

Posted on 21 February 2023

S.D. Chrostowska, Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics (Stanford UP, 2021) A pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to humanity's looming existential challenges. Utopia in the Age of Survival […]

Relation and Resistance: Racialized Women, Religion and Diaspora

Posted on 21 February 2023

Becky R. Lee and Sailaja Krishnamurti, eds. Relation and Resistance: Racialized Women, Religion and Diaspora (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021). This edited volume explores the multifaceted ways that women in diaspora communities have shaped, challenged and transformed religious identities and practices in Canada’s complex cultural landscape. Contributors reflect on the experiences of racialized and Indigenous women connected […]