Category: Publications

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book chapter by Rubén Peinado-Abarrio in Women Who Write Animals, published by Brill.

Titled “An Animal State”: the Human-Dog Entity in Drifts (2020), the chapter offers a compelling posthumanist reading of Zambreno’s novel, centring on the intimate relationship between the autodiegetic narrator and her dog, Genet. Through this bond, the study explores how the text gestures toward a human–dog assemblage that challenges conventional distinctions between human and more-than-human animals.

Drawing on critical posthumanist and feminist frameworks, the chapter examines how experiences such as pregnancy, care, and cohabitation lead to a dissolution of bounded subjectivity. In particular, it engages with the concept of “decreation” to show how the narrator’s sense of self is reconfigured through relationality and shared affect. The domestic space emerges as a multispecies community in which meaning is produced collectively, rather than through hierarchical or utilitarian human–animal relations.

By foregrounding the animal subject and its entanglement with human experience, this work contributes to ongoing debates in posthumanist theory, animal studies, and feminist literary criticism. It also highlights how literary form itself can become a site for imagining alternative modes of being and belonging.

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004754584-017

We warmly congratulate Rubén on this thoughtful and original contribution!

We are delighted to announce that our Principal Investigators, Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual, have published two Open Access chapters in the Handbook of Literary Criticism and Ethics (Brill).

This reference volume brings together leading international scholars to examine the intersections between literature and ethics across historical periods, theoretical traditions, and emerging critical paradigms. The contributions by our PIs engage directly with one of the most pressing intellectual developments of our time: the posthuman turn.

In Chapter 26, “The Ethics and Literature of Cybernetic Posthumanism, Transhumanism and the Technological Other in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (pp. 616–640), Sonia Baelo-Allué explores the ethical implications of cybernetic posthumanism and transhumanism in an era defined by the convergence of physical, biological, and digital technologies.

The chapter examines how techno-human assemblages challenge traditional binaries between human and machine, self and other, organic and artificial. Through the analysis of contemporary literature, it addresses key debates surrounding human enhancement, artificial intelligence, distributed cognition, and the reconfiguration of posthuman identity. Literature, the chapter argues, becomes a crucial site for negotiating the ethical dilemmas emerging from the blurring of the human and the technological other.

🔗 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004715516_028

In Chapter 27, “Critical Posthumanism, New Materialism and the Ethics of Inclusion in Speculative Fiction” (pp. 641–664), Mónica Calvo-Pascual situates the posthuman turn within the broader context of escalating techno-scientific development, globalised capitalism, and environmental crisis in the Anthropocene.

Engaging with critical posthumanism, environmental and animal studies, and new materialism, the chapter foregrounds an ethics of inclusion grounded in post-anthropocentric understandings of agency and responsibility. The analytical section focuses on speculative fiction by Larissa Lai and Rivers Solomon, demonstrating how contemporary narratives imagine alternative relational futures in response to ecological degradation and the threat of the Sixth Extinction.

🔗 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004715516_029

Taken together, these two chapters highlight the centrality of literature in shaping ethical reflection in times of technological acceleration and environmental crisis. They contribute significantly to ongoing debates in posthumanist theory, literary ethics, artificial intelligence studies, and the environmental humanities.

We warmly congratulate Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual on these outstanding contributions to the field.

We are thrilled to announce the publication of a special issue on Posthumanism in Estudios Norteamericanos, edited by our very own Rubén Peinado Abarrio and Ana Chapman. This issue brings together cutting-edge research that interrogates the limits of humanism, the ethics of emerging technologies, and the complex entanglements of humans, nonhumans, and machines in contemporary culture.

Several members of our research team have contributed outstanding articles to this issue. Here’s a closer look at their work:

1. Critical Perspectives on the Already Posthuman World – Rubén Peinado Abarrio & Ana Chapman
This introduction to the special issue frames posthumanism not as a futuristic abstraction but as a lens to analyze present realities. It explores how posthuman theory reshapes our understanding of bodies, technology, and identity.
🔗 Read the full article

2. Black Utopia and Body Agency in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts – Mónica Calvo Pascual
Mónica’s article examines how Solomon’s novel imagines alternative social and bodily arrangements, highlighting non-normative identities, kinship, and posthuman relationality. It’s a vital contribution to discussions on Black utopian futures and speculative fiction.
🔗 Read the full article

3. Transgressing the Code of Desire: Queering the Posthuman in Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous – Laura Larrodera-Arcega
Laura explores how Autonomous challenges heteronormative codes and envisions queer, trans, and bio-engineered bodies in posthuman futures. The article demonstrates how speculative fiction destabilizes traditional categories of identity and desire.
🔗 Read the full article

4. “Hope to Do Some Good, No Matter How F*ed Up You Are”: Ecoterrorism, Trauma and Ecological Affect in The Ministry for the Future – Laura García Soria
Laura’s ecocritical study examines climate affect, ecological trauma, and radical environmental activism in Robinson’s novel. Her work highlights how posthumanist perspectives can illuminate our relationship to ecological crisis and ethical responsibility.
🔗 Read the full article

This special issue provides a rich, multi-faceted exploration of posthumanism, demonstrating how the field continues to reshape literary studies, critical theory, and cultural analysis. From queer and Black utopian futures to ecological crises and the ethics of technological entanglements, the contributions highlight the diverse ways posthumanism challenges and extends our understanding of the human in the contemporary world.

We are delighted to announce the publication of The Posthuman Condition in 21st Century Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Insights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), which our team members María Ferrández-Sanmiguel, Esther Muñoz-González, Carmen Laguarta-Bueno have co-edited.

The full volume can be accessed here:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-83701-2

Some of the chapters are available open access.

Table of Contents:

• Recent Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the Posthuman: An Introduction
  By  María Ferrández-Sanmiguel, Esther Muñoz-González and Carmen Laguarta-Bueno
  
• “We Are the Borg. Resistance Is Futile”: Reflections, Numbness, and Transhumanism in the Star Trek Universe
  By Francisco Collado-Rodríguez
  
• Posthuman Cognitive Ecologies and AI Moral Agency in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice
  By Ruxandra Teodorescu
  
• “A Better Future Is in Your Hands”: Transhumanism and Feminism in The Power (TV Series 2023)
  By Rocío Carrasco-Carrasco
  
• Indenture Rights for All: Challenging the Human Status Quo in Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous
  By Laura Larrodera-Arcega
  
• “World Without End”: A Reading of Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army as an Eco-Feminist Postapocalyptic Dystopia
  By Susana Onega
  
• Outfacing the “In” Face: The Posthuman Wound and the Defacing of Relationality in Joma West’s Face
  By Ana Chapman
  
• Beyond the Human/Nonhuman Binary: Fluid Borders in A.S. Byatt’s Onto-Tales
  By  María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro
  
• Reassembling Skins and Bones: Indigeneity and Posthumanism in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms
  By  Giulia Magro
  
• Beyond the Anthropocentric Gaze: The Nonhuman Animal as Object/Subject of Vision in Cinema
  By Luca Lunardi and Fabiano D’Este
  
• Humanism as Prosthesis: Science Fiction as Ceremony
  By  Sherryl Vint
  
• Phenomenalogy and the Neo-Apollonian: New Critical Proposal and Aesthetic Trends for the Posthuman
  By Miriam Fernández-Santiago
  
• Posthumanism and Grace: Pre-texts for an Improbable Relation
  By Ivan Callus

We invite you to explore these thought-provoking contributions and hope they inspire meaningful discussions and further research.

New publications alert! The special issue “Recent Reflections on the Posthuman Condition in American Literature and Culture” has just been published by the European Journal of American Culture with several contributions by our team members. All in open access!

Our co-PI Sonia Baelo-Allué contributes the article “The posthuman trauma novel: Reconfiguring subjectivity in Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This (2021)”. Check it out here!

Our co-IP Mónica Calvo-Pascual contributes the article “Ethico-onto-epistem-ology and traumatic memories in Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Sorrowland”. Access it here!

Our predoctoral student María Abizanda-Cardona presents part of her thesis research in the article “Beyond SF: Reading the posthuman in crime fiction”. Take a look here!

Plus, the special issue is introduced by our team members Esther Muñoz-González, María Ferrández-San Miguel and Carmen Laguarta-Bueno, who’ve done a fantastic job at putting together the volume. Check it out here.

Definitely an interesting publication for researchers interested in critical posthumanism in literature.

New publications alert!

Check out our team members’ contributions to the latest issue of the Journal of English Studies.

Francisco Collado Rodríguez writes about Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Adjustment Day in “Echoes from ‘Fight Club’: Categorical Thinking, Narrative Strategies, and Political Radicalism in Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Adjustment Day‘”.

Esther Muñoz González discusses Margaret Atwood’s work in “Discussing the Feminist Agenda in Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Novels: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘MaddAddam‘.

And last but not least, don’t miss Carmen Laguarta-Bueno’s work on mind uploading in “Mark McClelland’s ‘Upload’ (2012): The Perils of Leaving Biology behind to Achieve Virtual Immortality“.

The edited volume Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature has just been published by Routledge. Co-edited by our team member Miriam Fernández-Santiago, it includes contributions by Francisco Collado-Rodríguez, Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual (“Vulnerability and Risk in Larissa Lai’s Critical Dystopias”), among others.

The Introduction and the chapters by Sonia Baelo-Allué (“Technological vulnerability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”), Francisco Collado-Rodríguez (“When Immortality Becomes a Burden”), and Mónica Calvo-Pascual (“Vulnerability and Risk in Larissa Lai’s Critical Dystopias”) are available open access here. Read also the abstract and see the full table of contents.