Bøger af Heather Duerre Humann

Intelligent machines have long existed in science fiction, and they now appear in mainstream films such as Bladerunner, Ex Machina, I Am Mother and Her, as well as in a recent proliferation of literary texts narrated from the machine's perspective. These new portrayals of artificial intelligence inevitably foreground dilemmas related to identity and selfhood, concepts being reassessed in the 21st century. Taking a close look at novels like Ancillary Justice, Aurora, All Systems Red, The Actuality, The Unseen World and Klara and the Sun, this work investigates key questions that arise from the use of AI narrators. It describes how these narratives challenge humanist principles by suggesting that selfhood is an illusion, even as they make the case for extending these principles to machines by proposing that they are not so different from humans. The book examines what is at stake with nonhuman narration, the qualities of AI narratives, and what it might mean to relate to a narrator when the voice adopted is that of an AI.

In recent decades, science fiction in both print and visual media has produced an outpouring of story lines that feature forms of simulated reality. In combination with tech-driven tensions, this study shows that our collective sense of living in politically uncertain times propels the popularity of these story lines.

A figure from ancient folklore, the doppelganger continues to reemerge in literature, television and film. The modern-day doppelganger (""double-goer"" in German) is typically depicted in a traditional form adapted to reflect present-day social anxieties. Focusing on a broad range of narratives, this volume explores 21st century representations in novels, TV shows and movies.

Since the middle of the last century, views on gender norms have shifted dramatically. This examination of 20th and 21st century crime novels reveals what these narratives say about gender identity and gender expression and how they contributed to the evolution of detective fiction.

The literary tradition begun by Zora Neale Hurston in the 1930s has since flourished and taken new directions with a diverse body of fiction by more contemporary African-American women writers. This book examines the treatment of domestic violence in Hurston''s Their Eyes Were Watching God , Gayl Jones''s Corregidora, Gloria Naylor''s The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills, Alice Walker''s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Bye and Love, Terry McMillan''s Mama and A Day Late and a Dollar Short, and Octavia Butler''s Seed to Harvest. These novels have given voice to oppressed and abused women. The aims of this work are threefold: to examine how female African American novelists portray domestic abuse; to outline how literary depictions of domestic violence are responsive to cultural and historical forces; and to explore the literary tradition of novels that deal with domestic abuse within the African American community.