We are seeking chapter proposals for The Routledge Companion to the Posthuman in Literature and Culture. This new interdisciplinary volume seeks to foreground the representation of the posthuman: as a figure that often appears within certain genres (eg New Weird Fiction, Solarpunk, Autofiction), as an image deployed by specific authors and filmmakers (eg Nnedi Okorafor, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alex Garland), as a discourse that supports the proliferation of “studies” within academia (eg Animal Studies, Surveillance Studies, Affect Studies), and as a growing presence in college classrooms around the world. This approach highlights the breadth and depth of posthuman/ist thought as it has been thoroughly integrated and metabolized across a variety of literary and cultural domains. 

Posthuman/ist literature and media often center other-than-human characters whose identities cannot be separated from the surrounding environment, whose status as human is both informed and interrogated by the nonhuman. However, this collection also attempts to address an urgent issue for posthumanism: the expansion and crystallization of “transhumanism” as a philosophical movement that is in direct political and philosophical conflict with critical posthumanism. Transhumanism emphasizes mastery, individual agency, optimization, transcendence, techno-feudalism, and superintelligence, while posthumanism emphasizes the entanglement of living bodies within messy, sticky, material ecologies, resulting in shared agency, assemblages, vital interdependencies, and flat ontologies. Our Companion aims to represent the posthuman as an empirical recognition of the roiling material reality wherein and out of which humans are inextricably enmeshed, as an ethic of inclusive belonging rooted in ecological and democratic imagery. In doing so, it also showcases the ways that emergent forms of transhumanist thinking – as embodied by TESCREALism and Silicon Valley – challenge and inform the philosophical and material configurations of the posthuman in contemporary literature and media.

We invite chapter proposals that align with the following areas and sub-topics:

Posthumanism’s Theoretical Frameworks

1. Generative AI and Posthumanism
2. Technofeudalism and Posthumanism
3. Capitalocene and Neoliberalism
4. Deep Time and Anthropocene
5. Postcolonial Ecocriticism
6. Environmental Humanities
7. Energy Humanities
8. Medical Humanities
9. Animal Studies
10. Disability Studies
11. Surveillance Studies

Posthuman Identities 

1. Racialized Bodies
2. Gendered Bodies
3. Disabled Bodies
4. Artificial Bodies (Android, Cyborg, AI)
5. Clones
6. Zombies
7. Non-human Animals
8. Plants
9. Geological Bodies

Genre and Media

1. Literary Fiction and Poetry
2. Graphic Novels & Comics
3. Young Adult Literature
4. Autofiction
5. Genre Fiction (Sci-Fi, New Weird, Solarpunk, Cyber/Biopunk)
6. Electronic Literature
7. Film and Television

We’re interested in scholarship that engages authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Kazuo Ishiguro, Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, China Miéville, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jeff VanderMeer, Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, Jeanette Winterson, Han Kang; and the work of directors like Alex Garland, Bong Joon-ho, Mati Diop, David Cronenberg, Julia Ducournau, Ridley Scott, Dennis Villeneuve, Guillermo del Toro.

Proposals should be submitted to justin.johnston@stonybrook.edu and sara.santos@stonybrook.edu by March 30, 2026 and include:

• A 300–500 word abstract, outlining the proposed chapter’s focus, key arguments, methods, and relevance to the volume.
• A brief (100–150 words) bio including institutional affiliation (if applicable), and relevant publications or experience.
• A note indicating which section your chapter best fits.

Completed chapters should be 7,000–8,000 words (including notes), written for a broad academic audience in an accessible style.