Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mediating Vulnerability meditates on the creative and destructive powers of vulnerability in literary form.

To experience vulnerability is to experience the tension between ruin and creativity: a vulnerable species faces extinction but also evolution, and a vulnerable person risks both irreparable harm and transformative connection. Mediating Vulnerability explores how this tension plays out across contemporary literary studies. Examining a variety of approaches to the destructive and remediating powers of genre, the authors consider how vulnerability intersects a range of representational forms including high-profile fiction by Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy as well as lesser-known graphic novels, video games, television, and photography.