Beyond Humanities and Life
Call for Papers
Beyond Humanities and Life
Erothanatos: A Peer-Reviewed Quarterly Journal on Literature
E-ISSN: 2457-0265
Volume 10, Issue 4
In recent decades, the Humanities have undergone a profound reconfiguration. No longer confined to textual interpretation or cultural representation alone, they now engage dynamically with questions of life—biological, ecological, technological, affective, planetary, and posthuman. The “new Humanities” emerge at the crossroads of philosophy, science, ecology, digital cultures, and critical theory, challenging inherited humanist assumptions and rethinking what it means to live, to endure, and to perish.
Erothanatos invites original research articles for a special issue, “Beyond Humanities and Life.” This issue seeks to explore how life is conceptualised, theorised, narrated, politicised, and aestheticised in contemporary Humanities discourse—particularly in relation to death, extinction, vulnerability, care, survival, and futurity. In keeping with the journal’s long-standing engagement with eros and thanatos, being and non-being, we are interested in critical interventions that interrogate life not as a given essence but as a contested, relational, and often precarious condition.
The issue aims to foreground interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that rethink life beyond anthropocentric, liberal-humanist, or purely biological frameworks. We especially welcome contributions that situate literary, philosophical, and cultural texts within broader debates in critical life studies, environmental humanities, posthumanism, biopolitics, and speculative thought.
Indicative Themes (but not limited to):
Life, death, and the afterlife of the Humanities
Critical life studies and biopolitics
Posthumanism, transhumanism, and the question of the “human life”
Environmental Humanities, ecology, extinction, and planetary life
Life, care, vulnerability, and ethics in contemporary theory
Bio-narratives, medical humanities, and illness narratives
Digital life, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic subjectivity
Indigenous, non-Western, and mythic conceptions of life
Life, survival, and precarity in literature and cultural texts
Aesthetic representations of life at the threshold of death
Pandemic, catastrophe, and the politics of living and dying
Marxist, feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives on life
Submission Guidelines
Articles should be original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere.
Length: 3,500–6,000 words (including references).
Formatting: MLA 9th edition.
All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review.
Submit through the Submission Portal
Important Dates
Full paper submission deadline: November 10, 2026.
Publication: December 31, 2026.
Submit through the Submission Portal:
This special issue of Erothanatos seeks to critically engage with life as a philosophical, cultural, and political problem—one that continues to redefine the scope, relevance, and future of the Humanities in an age of uncertainty, crisis, and transformation.
