Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity

Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity aims to develop the field of nuclear humanities and the powerful ability of literary and cultural representations of science and catastrophe to shape the meaning of historic events. Examining multiple discourses and textual materials, including fiction, poetry, biographies, comics, paintings, documentary and photography, this volume will illuminate the cultural, ecological and social impact of nuclearization narratives. Furthermore, this text explores themes such as the cultures of atomic scientists, the making of the bomb, nuclear bombings and disasters, nuclear aesthetics and art, and the global mobilization against nuclearization. Nuclear Cultures breaks new ground in the debates on ＂the nuclear＂ to foster the development of nuclear humanities, its vocabulary and methodology.

Pramod K. Nayar, recipient of the Visitor’s Award for Best Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences from the President of India, is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, India. He is the author of books in literary-cultural studies, with primary interests in English colonial writings, posthumanism and, in the last decade, human rights and literature. His newest books include Alzheimer’s Disease Memoirs (2021), The Human Rights Graphic Novel (2020), Ecoprecarity (2019), Indian Travel Writing in the Age of Empire (2020) and Essays in Celebrity Culture (2021). Nayar holds the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad.