Call for Book Chapters: Transhuman Futures in Media and Literature
As the boundaries of the human body and mind are increasingly expanded through technology, transhumanism is reshaping not only human experience but also the ways in which stories are created, represented, and consumed. Films, television series, video games, virtual and augmented reality experiences, as well as literary works including novels, short stories, graphic novels, and manga, explore the convergence of human cognition with artificial intelligence, neural augmentation, and bio-digital enhancements. These narratives challenge conventional notions of identity, communication, and social interaction, opening new avenues for aesthetic, ethical, and philosophical reflection. This edited volume seeks contributions that critically examine how transhumanism is imagined and represented across textual and visual narratives, and how they reshape our understanding of communication, cognition, affect, and identity. Contributions from discourse studies are particularly welcome, especially those investigating how language, narrative strategies, and media forms construct, mediate, and challenge transhuman and migratory ideologies.
We welcome interdisciplinary approaches from scholars in media studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, semiotics, posthuman studies, transhuman studies and philosophy.
We encourage submissions in German and English that engage but not limited with the following topics:
- Representations of AI, neural interfaces, and cognitive enhancement in literature, film, and other media
- Narrative strategies, aesthetics, and world-building of transhuman characters
- Discourse-analytical approaches: how language, narrative structures, and media texts construct, negotiate, and contest transhumanist and migratory ideologies
- Critical examination of power, ideology, and social norms in representations of human enhancement and mobility
- Posthuman and hybrid identities in media and literary texts
- Communication, dialogue, and cognition in technologically enhanced humans
- Emotion, empathy, and affect in transhuman storytelling
- Ethics and philosophy of transhumanism as depicted in media and literature
- Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality as narrative spaces for transhuman experiences
- Reception studies: audience or reader engagement with transhuman narratives
- Semiotics of technological embodiment and bio-digital interfaces
- Intersections of transhumanism with gender, disability, and social identity in narratives
- Transhumanism and transhumance: metaphors of mobility, migration, and ecological adaptation in narratives of technological and biological enhancement
- Pastoral, ecological, and migratory motifs as frameworks for understanding human-machine-environment interactions
Publication: Selected papers will be published by Maurer Press (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) in the series Interdisciplinary Studies on Philology.
Book Title: Transhuman Futures in Media and Literature
CPC: The CPC for publication in this volume is 130 Euro per chapter.
Submission guidelines:
Please send your paper proposals (max. 1 DIN-A-size page, Times New Roman 12, 250–300 words) and a 100-word author biography by February 1, 2026 to:
Assoc. Prof. İrem Atasoy, Istanbul University (irem.atasoy@istanbul.edu.tr)
Assoc. Prof. Habib Tekin, Marmara University (habib.tekin@marmara.edu.tr)