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Title: Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics
Author: Laura Colombino
Publisher: Routledge
Year of publication: 2025
Volume in the series: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature
ISBN: 9781032660677

Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics addresses the philosophical issues that lie at the heart of Ishiguro’s fiction, shedding light on the moral condition of his characters – their sense of responsibility and pride in service, their attempts at self-determination and the value they assign to loyalty, love and friendship. Ethics in Ishiguro’s work is structured around the tension between the limits of the characters’ agency and their striving towards the good. On the one hand, they are tied to the existential condition of being in the world, which acquires a distinctively Heideggerian quality of thrownness; on the other, they aspire to the good in the Platonic sense. Ishiguro’s novels are shown to tackle fundamental ethical questions posed by ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato, and modern Western ones, from Adam Smith through Jean-Paul Sartre to Martha Nussbaum. What is the human soul? What is dignity? What does it mean to be human? These issues are expressed in his narrative world through the universal and timeless language of myths, allegories and images that are both ancient and modern as well as cross-cultural. The book makes use of onomastics and intertextuality to uncover unexpected layers of philosophical, literary and artistic allusions with which Ishiguro shapes his ethical concerns. 

Details: Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics – 1st Edition – Laura Colombino – Routledge

Title: British Theatre and Young People
Edited by: Uğur Ada
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032746876
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003470434
312 Pages

British Theatre and Young People gathers together new and original studies on the issues, theories, practices and perceptions which characterise British theatre about, for, by, and with young people in the 21st century. Interrogating the critical relationship between theatre and young people today, the book brings together perspectives on theatre about, for, by, and with young people and presents it as an art form in its own right. The first part of the book focuses on applied and socially engaged theatre practice with young people, illustrating the ways in which theatre can highlight inclusivity, well-being, community and politics among young people. Part two presents essays on adaptation and appropriation, generally looking at how classic texts have been adapted for young audiences. Finally, the last part of the book looks at the ways in which British Youth Theatre and practice in the UK has impacted regional and national theatre scenes. Highlighting this rich and active community and practice, this edited collection paints a picture of the state of theatre for and by young people in the UK today. British Theatre and Young People is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre studies and applied theatre with an interest in British theatre. 

The preview of the book has been published. You can check it out and download it for free. It is also available for pre-order on February 5, 2025. Item will ship after February 26, 2025.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003470434/british-theatre-young-people-u%C4%9Fur-ada

https://www.routledge.com/British-Theatre-and-Young-People-Theory-and-Performance-in-the-21st-Century/Ada/p/book/9781032746876

Title: Negotiating Age: Aging and Ageism in Contemporary Literature and Theatre
Edited by: Mária Kurdi
Publisher: Sciendo
Volume in the series: HJEAS Books
ISBN: 978-83-67405-44-7

Many societies in the world today are challenged by the rapidly escalating phenomenon of an aging population with its unique problems and needs that call for being addressed both in daily life and in research. From the end of the last century onward, age studies has developed as a comparatively new discourse within the humanities which, necessarily, tends to explore crosscurrents between aging, ageism, feminism, gender, class, dis/ability, and so on. Arguably, aging does not always refer to the state of being fairly advanced in years but can appear as the experience of any age group, underscoring the culturally constructed and inculcated nature of experiencing one’s age and its shaping contexts. This collection of essays published in the HJEAS Books series began as a themed block of five essays on age and aging in literature and theatre included in the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (2020.2). Six new essays and a note about a recent and very timely theatre event in Ireland were then added. The authors are from Britain, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Writers whose novels or works for the stage are discussed in the collection include Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, John M. Coetzee, Brian Friel, Ronald Harwood, Martin McDonagh, Frank McGuinness, Conor McPherson, Arthur Miller, David Mitchell, Tom Murphy, and Tennessee Williams. The essays draw on up-to-date theoretically and critically focused reference literature and on observations of critical gerontology and international age studies. The analyses demonstrate the importance of aging for writers, readers, and theatre audiences alike.

Open-Access link: https://sciendo.com/book/9788367405423

More about the series: https://sciendo.com/series/HJEAS-B

Title: Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities.
Edited by: Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, Conrad Scott.
Publisher: Routledge.
ISBN 9781032385914.

This edited collection, which is situated within the environmental humanities and environmental social sciences, brings together utopian and dystopian representations of pandemics from across literature, the arts, and social movements.

Featuring analyses of literary works, TV and film, theater, politics, and activism, the chapters in this volume home in on critical topics such as posthumanism, multispecies futures, agency, political ecology, environmental justice, and Indigenous and settler-colonial environmental relations. The book asks: how do pandemics and ecological breakdown show us the ways that humans are deeply interconnected with the more-than-human world? And what might we learn from exploring those entanglements, both within creative works and in lived reality? Brazilian, Indian, Polish, and Dutch texts feature alongside classic literary works like Defoe’s A Journal of a Plague Year (1722) and Matheson’s I Am Legend(1954), as well as broader takes on movements like global youth climate activism. These investigations are united by their thematic interests in the future of human and nonhuman relationships in the shadow of climate emergency and increasing pandemic risk, as well as in the glimmers of utopian hope they exhibit for the creation of more just futures.

This exploration of how pandemics illuminate the entangled materialities and shared vulnerabilities of all living things is an engaging and timely analysis that will appeal to environmentally minded researchers, academics, and students across various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.

About the editors:

Heather Alberro is a Senior Lecturer in Global Sustainable Development in the Department of History, Heritage and Global Cultures, Nottingham Trent University. She also serves as co-convenor for the Political Studies Association’s (PSA) environmental politics specialist group and as a member of the PSA’s Executive Committee.

Emrah Atasoy, an Associate Professor of English, is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (EUTOPIA-SIF COFUND) of the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), working in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

Nora Castle is currently a Lecturer at the University of Bonn. She received her PhD in 2023 from the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK, where she also completed an Early Career Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study.

Rhiannon Firth is a Lecturer in Sociology of Education at IoE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. She co-leads the MA modules Sociology of Education and Gender, Sexuality and Education, and is Program Leader for the MA in Sociology of Education.

Conrad Scott, PhD, is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, and is an Individualized Study Tutor for the University of Athabasca’s Honours English course “The Ecological Imagination,” where he holds a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Endorsement statements

“Fully globalized, immediately connected, yet still radically unequal in resources and protections, humanity has now become aware of itself as a species in a new, more urgent way: when pathogens and environmental disruptions strike, how can past experiences and their representations provide perspective, balance, and hope? This book provides answers.” (James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA)

“This book is a collection of diverse and passionately engaged explorations of the way we live now. It is imbued both with a sense of the traumas of (post)apocalypse and a hope that human and non-human species can find ways to survive into futures that are not simply continuations of a present scarred by pandemics, extinctions, and the eco-injustices of global capital. The essays here are international in scope, multiplex in their critical methodologies, and comprehensive in their coverage. They provide resources for thinking about how to move into futures in which, through this “breakdown,” we take our non-anthropocentric place as one of the many species co-existing in an ecosystem that encompasses all life on the planet.” (Veronica Hollinger, Editor, Science Fiction Studies, and Professor Emerita of Cultural Studies, Trent University, Canada)

“As the introduction describes, this timely book emerged out of a dark and precarious contemporary moment, in the world and in the field of utopian studies. By bringing together this collection of cutting-edge studies by such a diverse mix of scholars addressing one of the most disruptive and destructive events of recent times, the editors have delivered an insightful and impactful counterpoint to official and normative invitations to despair and capitulate. This volume is itself an act of utopian annunciation in the face of official denunciation. Read it, hope, and act.” (Tom Moylan, Professor Emeritus in the School of English, Irish, and Communication, and member of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, Ireland)

More: Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown

The book and/or individual chapters can be downloaded via the following link: Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown