On the design of mental organisms -- The aggregate spectator : 125 years of sights, sounds and moving pictures -- Dante, damnation, and the undead : how the conception of hell has changed in literature from the Inferno to the zombie apocalypse -- Nomina nuda tenemus : Jonathan Safran Foer, finding meaning within empty names or (re)construction of deconstruction -- Sucker Punch : a carnivalesque steampunk fairy tale -- The graphic novel : teaching and producing texts -- Genre fiction and the academy : interview with author Michael Arnzen by Chun Lee -- Milton Tube : theoretical implications and practical uses of Paradise Lost web adaptations -- The Frenchman at the kitchen table : the influence of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida on Bachelder's modern American literary family -- Chris Bachelder's consumers and corporations : Bear v. Shark and the price of technology -- "Not a man among us can remember" : societal warnings of Frankenstein in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
The dynamic, precarious relationship between technology and imagination, or more broadly, between the sciences and the humanities, is a thrilling crux, offering possibilities scholars and artists of previous generations might have only hoped for in the most abstract way. No longer is technological advancement confined to the laboratory or to the pages of speculative fiction; it is an accepted, expected aspect of modern existence, including contemporary art, performance and literature. From the ways we communicate to the ways we create, technology has become a conduit as well as an inspiration for imaginative innovation
