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Vol. 1, Issue 1: When Did We Become Post/human?

Co-Editors:
Eileen A. Joy and Craig Dionne

This issue is designed as a dialogue with Katherine Hayles’s 1999 book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, and will feature medieval and early modern approaches to the question of the historicity of the post/human as an intellectual, social, cultural, philosophical, and scientific category of thought as well as a state of material reality. The issue will also demonstrate that contemporary discourses on the post/human raise a host of troubling questions relative to issues of embodiment, subjectivity, cognition, sociality, sexuality, spirituality, self-determination, collectivization, expression, representation, well-being, ethics, governance, technology, and the like for which pre- and early modern history and culture provide important resources for critical reflection. The issue will feature Katherine Hayles, Noreen Giffney, Andy Mousley, and Kate Soper as Respondents. Call for Papers.

Contributors:
Valerie Allen [John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York], Crystal Bartolovich [Syracuse University], Christopher Baswell [Columbia University], Bettina Bildhauer [University of St Andrews], Liza Blake [New York University], Jen Boyle [Hollins University], Jeffrey J. Cohen [George Washington University], Ruth Evans [University of Stirling], David Glimp [University of Colorado at Boulder], Jonathan Gil Harris [George Washington University], Anna Klosowska [Miami University of Ohio], Scott Lightsey [Georgia State University], Scott Maisano [University of Massachusetts Boston], Michael Edward Moore [University of Iowa], John Moreland [University of Sheffield], James Paxson [University of Florida], Karmen MacKendrick [LeMoyne College], Nicola Masciandaro [Brooklyn College, City University of New York], Susan S. Morrison [Texas State University-San Marcos], Masha Raskolnikov [Cornell University], Bryan Reynolds [University of California, Irvine], David Gary Shaw [Wesleyan University], Julie Singer [Washington University in Saint Louis], Daniel Smail [Harvard University], Karl Steel [Brooklyn College, City University of New York], Henry Turner [Rutgers University], Elly Truitt [Bryn Mawr College], John Twyning [University of Pittsburgh], Michael Witmore [University of Wisconsin at Madison], W.B. Worthen [Barnard College], Julian Yates [University of Delaware]

Respondents:
Noreen Giffney [University of Limerick], Katherine Hayles [Duke University], Andy Mousley [De Montfort University], Kate Soper [London Metropolitan University]

Review Essay author:
Suzanne Conklin Akbari

The issue will also include a review essay by Suzanne Conklin Akbari [University of Toronto] on: Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond; Jeffrey J. Cohen, Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles; Noreen Giffney and Myra J. Hird, eds., Queering the Non/Human; Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of Sensation; and Eileen A. Joy and Christine Neufeld, eds., Premodern to Modern Humanisms: The BABEL Project, special issue of Journal of Narrative Theory [vol. 37, no. 2: Summer 2007].

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Vol. 1, Issue 2: Open Issue

This issue will feature a cluster of essays on Bruce Holsinger’s book The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory by Stephanie Trigg [University of Melbourne], Louise D’Arcens [University of Wollongong], and Clare Monagle [Monash University], with a Response from Bruce Holsinger [University of Virginia]. Authors are invited to submit articles on any topics.

The issue will also include a review essay by Paul Strohm [Columbia University].

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Vol. 1, Issue 3: The Animal Turn

Co-Editors:
Peggy McCracken [University of Michigan] and ,Karl Steel [Brooklyn College, CUNY]

This issue will critically engage the question of the animal on a number of fronts by drawing together medieval studies of animals with the ongoing theoretical investigations of the question of the animal. Apart from literary studies, topics to be considered will include the collaboration between humans and nonhumans in medieval hunting practices, affect with and for companion animals in both medieval and postmedieval contexts, and the operations of the animal in medieval encyclopedias, theological doctrine, and other ‘non-literary’ written artifacts. “The Animal Turn” will distinguish itself from previous medieval work on animals in three chief points: first, by its methodological interaction and conversation with leading-edge posthuman philosophical and ethical studies (e.g. work by Ralph Acampora, Donna Haraway, Leonard Lawlor, and Cary Wolfe); second, by its interest in animals, not as walking allegory or mere tools, but as creatures sharing a material and discursive world in a variety of ways with the human animal; finally, by its interest in humans themselves as animals, which necessitates an investigation of the practices that attempted–and still attempt&ndsah;to cordon humans apart from all other life.

Contributors:
Susan Crane [Columbia University], Sarah Kay [Princeton University], Gary Lim [The Graduate Center, CUNY], James Paxson [University of Florida], Peter W. Travis [Dartmouth College]

Respondent:
Cary Wolfe [Rice University]

There will also be a review essay by Sarah Stanbury [College of the Holy Cross].