Humanities Bulletin

Publisher’s Note on Number 9.1

Victor Alexandru Pricopi — 2026-09-16

Humanities Bulletin Issue 9.1 (officially designated as the May 2026 issue) was published in September 2026 due to the transition from our previous publisher to independent management. We sincerely appreciate the patience, dedication, and support of our authors, reviewers, members of the Advisory Board, and readers during this transition.

Jungian Archetypal Creation Symbolism in Wittgenstein’s Earlier and Later Philosophies

Richard McDonough — 2026-09-16

Wittgenstein suggests in Culture and Value that he puts a certain kind of lock on his works to “keep certain people” out because they will not understand the “spirit” of his work and do not have the “key”. Mainstream philosophers who focus on propositions and arguments tend to regard the imagery and symbolism in philosophical works as tangential to the core philosophical project. In fact, Wittgenstein’s works, both early and late, are filled with much of the same archetypal symbolism emphasized by Carl Jung, symbolism also found in Augustine, who influenced them both. The paper surveys Wittgenstein’s Jungian archetypal symbolism generally but focuses on the ancient archetypal cosmological creation symbolism in Zettel (para. 608) which suggests that language and thought might emerge from chaos or even nothingness at the centre. The paper also discusses Wittgenstein’s interpretation of his own “second dream” as involving alchemical, rather than Christian, symbolism because alchemy employs the same ancient cosmological creation symbolism. On this basis, the paper argues that Wittgenstein’s philosophy, on analogy with Jung’s psychology of transformation, is fundamentally a philosophy of transformation, of mere matter into language and thought or of a base human life into a “cosmic life.”

The Building Blocks of Scientific Knowledge: Neurath and Carnap on Protocol Sentences

Joshua Anderson — 2026-09-16

In this paper, I discuss the protocol sentence debate between Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. Despite their differences, both Carnap and Neurath maintain that protocol sentences play an essential role in the goals and purpose of philosophy. Particularly, they believe that philosophy should be focused on trying to advance scientific knowledge, and both thinkers see protocol sentences as the building blocks of science. The paper will consist of three main parts. First, I will present Otto Neurath’s account of protocol sentences as explained in his essay, “Protocol Sentences.” The second portion of the paper will explain Rudolf Carnap’s account of protocol sentences as presented in his essay, “On Protocol Sentences.” The third portion of the paper will compare and contrast the two versions of protocol sentences.

Original Sin, Collective Responsibility, and Complicity in Wrongdoing

Gregory Mellema — 2026-09-16

Many reject the Augustinian doctrine of original sin on the grounds that it is not fair that all of us should be subject to penalty for no other reason than that the earliest human beings sinned. In this essay, I put forward an interpretation of this doctrine that largely removes the stigma of perceived unfairness. Doing so requires an investigation into two areas of ethical theory, collective responsibility and complicity in wrongdoing.

Against the Asian Century

Jason Morgan — 2026-09-16

Discourse surrounding a supposed “Asian Century” has gained much prominence in recent decades, especially as Asian nations and peoples have become wealthier and more militarily and politically powerful. However, the fundamental precepts of any “Asian Century,” as a heuristic device, are non-Asian and antithetical to how Asia has been lived in the past and continues to be lived in the present. By “Asia,” I do not mean an integrated, pan-Asianist whole so much as a place where western European ideologies do not have the same organizing power as in those ideologies’ homeland. In particular, the idea of an “Asian Century” is Hegelian, which is a philosophy alien to most of Asia. In this paper, I interrogate the Hegelian bases of the notion of globally-alternating “centuries” and suggest, in closing, that survey work on Asian values may be a way to disrupt the totalizing discourse of any “Asian Century.”

On the Aesthetics of Chinese Hip Hop: How Street Dance is Transformed by Traditional Chinese Culture into an Art

Erika Lujza Nagy — 2026-09-16

This article is about Chinese-style street dance: how it develops its own characteristics. In the first part, the distinguishing features of Chinese hip-hop are discussed briefly. The second part is about Chinese-style street dance: traditional Chinese culture absorbed hip-hop; therefore, the pervasive moral atmosphere of the ethics-oriented society penetrated it. The analysis of dance performances allows us to conclude that cultural fusion works as a basic method of Chinese-style street dance and that the concept of aesthetic metaphysics of the Chinese aesthetic tradition lays the foundations for Chinese-style street dance, especially its aesthetics. Thus, China is able to reinterpret its ancient culture in a modern way.

The Concept of Elegance as a Virtue and Way of Life in Classical Islamic Thought

Mehmet Aydın — 2026-09-16

Although elegance is a concept that has been extensively explored by classical Islamic philosophers and thinkers, it has been largely neglected in modern academic studies. However, the conception of elegance in classical Islamic philosophy and thought offers significant opportunities for overcoming the tension between modernism’s rigid rationalism and postmodernism’s relative and rule-free structure, particularly in the re-establishment of the relationship between the individual and society. This study approaches elegance not merely as an aesthetic quality, but as a comprehensive ethical-aesthetic framework that integrates knowledge, ethics, reason, eloquence, art and beauty, and aims to highlight the potential this framework holds for contemporary thought. In this context, the study analyses the views on elegance of Washshā’, al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī, al-Muḥāsibī and Zakariyyā al-Rāzī. It is argued that the concept of elegance in classical Islamic thought—which integrates science, ethics, rhetoric, art and beauty—offers new possibilities for resolving the tension and opposition between the universalist rationality of modernism and postmodern thought’s critique of rationality. Viewed from this perspective, it is concluded that, thanks to the aesthetic appeal and transformative power of elegance, rational communication between high culture and low culture can take place without any coercion or domination.

Slow Violence and Gendered Survival: Trauma, Precarity, and the Ethics of Endurance in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

Awatef El Idrissi Boukhris — 2026-09-16

Breaking away from traditional forms of trauma studies that conceptualize trauma as an event, this paper aims to re-examine the representation of trauma in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane (2003) through the lens of “slow violence.” By foregrounding its gendered dimensions and its inscription in everyday life, the article suggests that trauma, as depicted in the novel, is not an event but a process, normalized by migration, gendered forms of survival, and postcolonial marginality. Building on the work of leading trauma theorists, like Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman, along with more recent theories from Rob Nixon and Stef Craps, this study shows how Nazneen’s experiences of domestic confinement, linguistic alienation, and economic vulnerability reveal the cumulative effects of structural violence. It also illustrates how Ali’s narrative strategies of silence and fragmentation, and Hasina’s epistolary voice clearly indicate the invisible nature of slow trauma across different geographical and social contexts. Finally, the paper argues that Nazneen’s development and empowerment redefine agency as a form of endurance, emphasizing negotiation and persistence rather than rupture. Hence, it offers an ethical reading of survival that resists prevailing narratives of trauma and recovery in postcolonial studies.

Exploring the Representation of Non-Normate Bodies in Firdaus Kanga’s Trying to Grow: A Critical Disability Studies Analysis

Ali Derakhshani — 2026-09-16

The present article focuses its attention on the representation of physical disability in Firdaus Kanga’s coming-of-age novel Trying to Grow. To this end, the analysis draws upon the theoretical framework of critical disability studies and the scholarly work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. The study explores how the novel sheds light on the stigmatization and marginalization of individuals with non-normate bodies in a cultural milieu which is saturated with ableist beliefs and practices. The article also argues that disability is not a homogeneous phenomenon. Applying an intersectional lens, this research illustrates how disability intermingles with other markers of identity such as class, gender, and ethnicity, generating distinct realities of disablement. The analysis further holds that Trying to Grow departs from conventional patterns of disability representation by resisting reductive literary tropes that have traditionally framed disabled characters. By giving narrative agency to its non-normate protagonist, the novel questions dominant conceptions of disability and presents it instead as a complex embodied experience. The article also positions Trying to Grow as a representative work of disability fiction—a subgenre of literature that tries to claim narrative voice and space for disabled people.

Mother-Daughter Relationships in Francesca McDonnell Capossela’s Trouble the Living

Brittany R. Blomquist — 2026-09-16

Francesca McDonnell Capossela’s recent novel, Trouble the Living, encompasses the experiences of conflict and emigration across three generations of women. Within the context of the “troubles” in Ireland during the 1990s and the random acts of violence of the early 2000s in America, Capossela explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships. This essay focuses on the author’s depiction of this relationship, both as a cycle of connections and separations, as well as a guiding force for each character’s interaction with violence. Situated among literary references to Irish mythology and the Irish conflict, Capossela’s women embody the features of heroines and fighters, with motherhood positioned as its own form of battle. In addition to the relationships of mothers and daughters among the characters, there is the relationship that all of the women in the novel have with “mother” Ireland. Here, too, the cycle of connections and separations exists, with the ebb and flow of the relationship with one’s country determining choices of engagement with conflict and decisions to leave or return home.

“She Would Carry This into the Sea”: Bodies of Water and Aqueous Imaginaries in Ysabelle Cheung’s Patchwork Dolls

Carissa Ma — 2026-09-16

This essay reads three stories from Hong Kong-based writer Ysabelle Cheung’s debut speculative fiction collection Patchwork Dolls (2026) — “Please, Get Out and Dance,” “Mycomorphosis,” and “To My Great-Granddaughter, Who Will Find This Letter When I Am Dead” — through Astrida Neimanis’s hydrofeminist framework. The essay argues that Cheung’s collection stages water as a relational substance that dissolves the fantasy of the bounded, autonomous body, enables collaborative worlding across species and time, and sustains an ethics of care attentive to human and more-than-human life alike. In “Please, Get Out and Dance,” a group of political resisters found a seafloor community, enacting a hydrocommons that connects bodies across species and deep time. In “Mycomorphosis,” the pervasive dampness of a sealed apartment enables a fungal-aquatic becoming that dissolves the perceived boundary between the human and the nonhuman. In “To My Great-Granddaughter,” water in cooking and ritual circulates as the vital conduit of watery inheritances and responsivity. Together, the three stories cultivate what Neimanis calls “aqueous imaginaries” — ways of imagining embodied life as intimately and inseparably tethered to water and to the more-than-human world.

A Study on Madness through Victorian Literature

Rita Anabel Jerez Monagas — 2026-09-16

The Victorian era is characterized by its great technological as well as scientific advancements, which will eventually have a significant impact on society. This paper will explore the representation of madness through different Victorian works, specifically, “Green Tea” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Woman in White by William Wilkie Collins. The aim of this essay is to understand how authors made use of the complexities of the mind in order to criticize Victorian society and the new anxieties that emerged among the population. This will be accomplished through a close reading of the three narratives, taking into consideration the historical background. The analysis will begin with an introduction to the Victorian era and the rise of madness, it will continue with the body which will be divided into three different aspects—all supported by scholars—and it will finish with an overall conclusion, which suggests how this use of madness in gothic literature was purely a coping mechanism for the authors who feared the unknown. Furthermore, it will function as a means of criticizing the highest moral values that characterized the period.

Reclaiming Female Subjectivity: An Irigarayan Reading of Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls

Ghazaleh Lotfi — 2026-09-16

This article aims to highlight the Irigarayan strategies that Pat Barker’s women in her revisionist masterpiece, The Silence of the Girls (2018), can utilize in order to resist being commodified in warstricken conditions and reclaim their subjectivity. The questions that this study tackles to answer are: Are the slave women able to resist commodification? How do certain strategies utilized by the slave women function in resisting commodification and reclaiming their sense of individuality? Will this resistance against commodification enable them to undermine patriarchy? To answer these questions, a feminist theoretical framework is incorporated, and Irigaray’s theories are investigated in the selected feminist revisionist text. Barker depicts women’s commodified status and their subjection to patriarchal roles as slaves and war spoils and, simultaneously, grants them voice and agency to undermine the patriarchal economy of the Same. This article elucidates that in spite of being subjugated to the patriarchal system, they can adopt Irigarayan strategies—appropriating a revisionist mythological narrative, establishing a female culture and utilizing mimicry—in order to resist commodification, defy patriarchy and reclaim their voice and individuality.

“Shoring Ghazals Against the Ruins”: A Comparative Modernist Reading of Eliot in Hafez

Amirreza Allahyari — 2026-09-16

Often revered as the pinnacle of classical Persian lyric poetry, Hafez Shirazi is traditionally viewed as a quintessential classical poet whose sonnets embody the timeless elegance of Sufi mysticism, romantic longing, and rhetorical mastery rooted in medieval Islamic literary traditions. However, conventional interpretations often emphasise his adherence to tradition, thereby underestimating certain proto-modernist features in his oeuvre, such as deliberate ambiguity, structural fragmentation, ironic detachment, heightened subjectivity, and the destabilisation of truths and normative structures. Informed by T. S. Eliot’s notions of “Objective Correlative” and “Mythical Method,” the present study comparatively examines selected “ghazals” from Hafez’s corpus against emblematic poems from Eliot’s canon, such as The Waste Land and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” through close textual and thematic analysis, focusing on selections rich in semantic ambiguity, interpretive openness, and structural rupture. This study aims to address three central issues: the elements in Hafez’s poetry that correspond to Eliot’s poetic strategies for evoking emotional states; Hafez’s pioneering elements that echo modernist disruptions in Eliot’s fragmented narratives and ironic voices; and the ways in which Hafez mediates between classical Persian conventions and modernist sensibility. The analysis also incorporates comparative scholarship on “negative capability” and “rhythmic unity” to strengthen the cross-cultural argument and addresses potential charges of anachronism by demonstrating formal and affective convergences. This research frames Hafez as a harbinger of modernism, concluding that his poetry emerges as proto-modernist, where symbols and situations systematically evoke complex emotions, subverting classical norms and fostering fragmentation. This study reveals that while rooted in 14th-century Iran, Hafez anticipates modernism’s sensory precision, thus underscoring his enduring significance in linking Eastern lyrical traditions with Western modernist innovations and inviting broader explorations of cross-cultural poetic resonances.

Droplets of Milk: Lactation and Midwifery

Sachie M. Dominguez — 2026-09-16

For centuries, midwives and women have been put to shame by men and the Church. People were ignorant when it came to the biological functions of the human body. Faced with high mortality rates within an era of political unrest, the common folk desperately looked for someone to blame for the constant death both during and shortly after childbirth; as midwives were a common occupation in regions with little medical/economic support, one whose position often led them to witness death, midwives become the likely scapegoat for the high infant mortality rates. The contemporary social circumstances would be ripe for the people to turn on midwives due to a wild mixture of radical zealots, paranoid commoners, and oppressed members of the population. The feudal population would go even further by expanding their blame on mothers. So maddening was the craze to find a scapegoat, that mothers were condemned and accused of witchcraft should any form of perceived harm come to the child, whether or not they actually had any hand in the matter.