Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature and Cinema uses health humanities and psychological humanities to explore literary and cinematic epiphanies. James Joyce first adopted the term “epiphany” from its religious use to articulate momentsof luminous intensity or “sudden spiritual manifestation.” This study develops and extends Joyce’s use of epiphany through a range of literary and cinematic examples, from William Shakespeare to Ruth Ozeki and from Yasujirō Ozu to Jim Jarmusch. This wealth of epiphanies in the arts is important from a health humanities perspective in that they provide access to aesthetic and sustainable experiences of well-being, joy, and human flowering. They also provide antidotes to aesthetics of anti-epiphany—a showing forth of terror, horror, and panic. Experiencing Epiphanies is accordingly both critical and affirmative, diagnostic and therapeutic. It uses critique to understand the increasing need for well-being in contemporary times, and it uses affirmation to develop underutilized resources in the arts for transforming, configuring, and refiguring our everyday lives.

"Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature and Cinema uses health and psychological humanities to explore literary and cinematic epiphanies. James Joyce first adopted the term "epiphany" from religious use to articulate moments in secular literature of luminous intensity or "sudden spiritual manifestation." This study develops and extends Joyce's use of epiphany through a range of literary and cinematic examples, from William Shakespeare to Sonia Sanchez and from Yasujirō Ozu to Jim Jarmusch. This wealth of epiphanies in the arts are important from a health humanities perspective in that they provide access to aesthetic experiences of wellbeing, joy, and human flowering. They also provide antidotes to aesthetics of anti-epiphany-a showing forth of terror, horror, and panic. Experiencing Epiphanies is accordingly both critical and affirmative, diagnostic and therapeutic. It uses critique to understand the increasing need for wellbeing in contemporary times, and it uses affirmation to develop underutilized resources in the arts for transforming, configuring and refiguring, our everyday lives"--

The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm. Beyond offering a theoretical and historical overview of mad studies, this Reader draws on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of artists, mad pride activists, humanities and social science scholars, and critical clinicians to explore the complexity of mental life and mental difference. Voices from these groups confront and challenge standard approaches to mental difference. They advance new structures of meaning and practice that are inclusive of those who have been systematically subjugated and promote anti-sanist approaches to counter inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination. Confronting modes of psychological oppression and the power of a few to interpret and define difference for so many, the Mad Studies Reader asks the critical question of how these approaches may be reconsidered, resisted, and reclaimed. This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.

In order to deeply understand a work of literature or film, one requires the emotional and spiritual experience of the sublime aesthetic power, through which one may glimpse the ultimate reality, as well as the thematic approach. This book, mainly from the perspective of literary criticism of postmodern ethics and kongan (koan)/hwadu Ch’an, Seon, and Zen Buddhism, guides the reader to not simply follow the conventional thematic approach, but to catch nondual, spiritual feelings while appreciating a given work. Through a meditative state, the reading or watching of such work would ultimately be a way of questing for spiritual enlightenment.

This multi-vocal assemblage of literary and cultural responses to contagions provides insights into the companionship of posthumanities, environmental humanities, and medical humanities to shed light on how we deal with complex issues like communicable diseases in contemporary times. Examining imaginary and real contagions, ranging from Jeep and SHEVA to plague, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, Posthuman Pathogenesis discusses the inextricable links between nature and culture, matter and meaning-making practices, and the human and the nonhuman. Dissecting pathogenic nonhuman bodies in their interactions with their human counterparts and the environment, the authors of this volume raise their diverse voices with two primary aims: to analyse how contagions trigger a drive to survival, and chaotic, liberating, and captivating impulses, and to focus on the viral interpolations in socio-political and environmental systems as a meeting point of science, technology, and fiction, blending social reality and myth. Following the premises of the post-qualitative turn and presenting a differentiated experience of contagion, this ‘rhizomatic’ compilation thus offers a non-hierarchised array of essays, composed of a multiplicity of genders, geographies, and generations.

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world's most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders? Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the uptake of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France and the US as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collective study examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema's popularity, and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema's influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.