The end of George W. Bush's imperial presidency means that the wreckage of the republic's political ideals is now subject to a vigorous reassessment. In essays by five senior scholars major works of American literature and film are analyzed in the context of a larger set of arguments about American injustice at home and across the empire.

The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, whose works include Return from the Stars, The Cyberiad, A Perfect Vacuum, and Solaris, has been hailed as a "literary Einstein" and a science-fiction Bach. The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem provides an inter-disciplinary analysis of his influence on Western culture and the creative partnering of art and science in his fiction and futorology by American and European scholars who have defined Lem scholarship. Rather than analyzing Lem sole...

A critical investigation of the dead ends, dead metaphors, dead bodies, and other historical constants of American politics.

From Literature to Biterature is based on the premise that in the foreseeable future computers will become capable of creating works of literature. Among hundreds of other questions, it considers: Under which conditions would machines become capable of creative writing? Given that computer evolution will exceed the pace of natural evolution a million-fold, what will such a state of affairs entail in terms of art, culture, social life, and even nonhuman rights?Drawing a map...

In a new approach to interdisciplinary literary theory, Literature, Analytically Speaking integrates literary studies with analytic aesthetics, girded by neo-Darwinian evolution. Scrutinizing narrative fiction through a lens provided by analytic philosophy, revered literary theorist Peter Swirski puts new life into literary theory while fashioning a set of practical guidelines for critics in the interpretive trenches.Dismissing critical inquirers who deny intention its key...

From Black Tuesday to the White House, from Plato to Robert Nozick, from Eugene Debs to Richard Nixon, from Peter Cornelis Plockhoy to the hippie communes of the Sixties, from universal basic income to utopian basic income, from proverbial wisdom to multilevel selection, from Big Data to paleomorality, from Prisoner’s Dilemma to social-engineering Israeli kindergartens, from time travel to gene engineering, from the pretzel logic of meritocracy to deaggressing humanity, American Utopia...

From Literature to Biterature is based on the premise that in the foreseeable future computers will become capable of creating works of literature. Among hundreds of other questions, it considers: Under which conditions would machines become capable of creative writing? Given that computer evolution will exceed the pace of natural evolution a million-fold, what will such a state of affairs entail in terms of art, culture, social life, and even nonhuman rights? Drawing a map of impending li...

Peter Swirski looks at American crime fiction as an artform that expresses and reflects the social and aesthetic values of its authors and readers. As such he documents the manifold ways in which such authorship and readership are a matter of informed literary choice and not of cultural brainwashing or declining literary standards. Asking, in effect, a series of questions about the nature of genre fiction as art, successive chapters look at American crime writers whose careers throw light ...

Through a discussion of diverse art and media such as apocalyptic thrillers, rap, and television, Swirski debunks the American political system, sieving out fact from a sea of bipartisan untruths. Engaging with close analysis and multiple case studies, this book forges a more accurate picture of contemporary American culture and of America itself.

"Of Literature and Knowledge looks ... like an important advance in this new and very important subject... literature is about to become even more interesting." – Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University.Framed by the theory of evolution, this colourful and engaging volume presents a new understanding of the mechanisms by which we transfer information from narrative make-believe to real life. Ranging across game theory and philosophy of science...

The United States today is afflicted with political alienation, militarized violence, institutionalized poverty, and social agony. Worst of all, perhaps, it is afflicted with chronic and acute ahistoricism. America insist on ignoring the context of its present dilemmas. It insists on forgetting what preceded the headlines of today and on denying continuity with history. It insists, in short, on its exceptionalism.American Utopia and Social Engineering sets out to ...

This book examines nobrow, a cultural formation that intertwines art and entertainment into an identifiable creative force. In our eclectic and culturally turbocharged world, the binary of highbrow vs. lowbrow is incapable of doing justice to the complexity and artistry of cultural production. Until now, the historical power, aesthetic complexity, and social significance of nobrow “artertainment” have escaped analysis. This book rectifies this oversight. Smart, funny, and iconoclastic, it ...