We live in an age of optimization. Norms of beauty and performance are relentlessly getting harder to achieve without modifying the psychophysiology of human beings. Humans are faced with choices and demands regarding increasing and reducing the size, mass, and weight of different body parts and the modification of the way they function. The normal no longer means the common, it means the optimal. From special diets and extreme workouts to silicon injections and from plastic surgery to brain chips, the human body is transforming into a workshop for different arts and technologies. The cosmetic surgery market, for example, is worth more than 57 billion dollars and is expected to continue to grow very fast. Cosmetic and performance body enhancements are a thriving market and many resources are being invested in them by individuals and corporations. Enhancement and modification have always been controversial. Cultures differed in their responses to modified and enhanced bodies and body parts. Even within the same culture, some modifications were accepted or even encouraged while others were considered undesirable or even sinful. 

This collection aims to explore how these ambivalent attitudes are reflected in literature and cinema through the study of several works from different cultural contexts and historical periods. It seeks to investigate the origins, manifestations and implications of these attitudes across cultures and historical contexts. Therefore, the editors invite contributions that tackle one of the following topics (or any related topics):

Topics to be Covered

Ethical and Legal Quandaries

The intersection of Enhancement, Technology, Race and Gender (Special Focus on Muscularity, Masculinity, Abjection, and Femininity).

Desired/Desiring Enhanced Bodies ((Auto)Eroticism and Voyeurism)

Hybrid Bodies

Economy of Optimization

Human-Machine Interaction and Integration

Environmental Issues

Human Nature and Enhancement

Food and Artificial Enhancement

Fashion, Fandom, and Fan Studies

 Body Horror

 Social Justice, Vulnerability, Identity and Enhancement

Heroism and Body Enhancement

Enhancement in / and Science Fiction, Biofiction, Nuclear Fiction and Climate Fiction

Enhancement in / and Classical Literature and Mythology

Enhancement and Prosthetics

Enhancement and Religion

Interested authors should submit a 250 abstract along with a 200-word bio note to aqib007javeed@gmail.com/a.parry@psau.edu.sa no later than 20th March 2025. Authors will be notified whether their abstract is accepted by March 27, 2025.

Full Papers are due on the 15th of July, 2025 and the chapters should not exceed more than 6000 words (All Inclusive).

Please use the following link to format your articles:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/discover/bloomsbury-academic/authors/style-guidelines/

About the Editors:

Aqib Javid Parry (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of English at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, KSA. Parry’s research integrates literature, cinema, and technology, focusing on the intersections of women, technology, and monstrosity in film studies. He has recently published articles, such as Supernatural Justice Through the Monstrous Feminine: Reading Bulbbul (2020) as a New Wave Feminist Film and Gender Dynamics in Artificial Intelligence: Problematising Femininity in the Film Alita: Battle Angel exploring Kristeva’s ideas of horror and Abjection. Besides this, he has also worked on speculative fiction in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber: Blending Technology and Fantasy in a dystopian narrative. He is also engaged in projects on Technology and Abjection with multiple Taylor and Francis Journals.

Nizar Zouidi (PhD) is an assistant professor of English language and literature at the University of Gafsa, Tunisia and Sattam Ibn Abdulaziz University, KSA. He is the author of several articles and book chapters about characters in Renaissance drama and other literary periods and genres. He has recently contributed to the Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature (2021) and Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era (2024). Nizar is the editor of a collection on villainy in Anglophone literature (Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature) published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021 and a collection about monarchs in world literature and cinema (The Monarch and the (Non)Human in Literature and Cinema: Western and Global Perspectives) published by Routledge in 2023. He also attended several conferences worldwide.