About the Book
People often overlook the uncanny nature of homecomings, writing off the experience of finding oneself at home in a strange place or realizing that places from our past have grown strange. This book challenges our assumptions about the value of home, arguing for the ethical value of our feeling displaced and homeless in the 21st century. Home is explored in places ranging from digital keyboards to literary texts, and investigates how we mediate our homecomings aesthetically through cultural artifacts (art, movies, television shows) and conceptual structures (philosophy, theology, ethics, narratives). In questioning the place of home in human lives and the struggles involved with defining, defending, naming and returning to homes, the volume collects and extends ideas about home and homecomings that will inform traditional problems in novel ways.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Introduction: Uncanny homecomings: Becoming unsettled in religion, narrative, and art, Daniel Boscaljon; Part I Uncanny Homecomings: Knowing for the first time, David Jasper; Staying found, Christopher Merrill. Part II Unsettling Foundations of Homes: Homecoming and the half-remembered: environmental amnesia, the uncanny, and the path home, Forrest Clingerman; Dwelling beyond poetry: the uncanny houses of Hawthorne and Poe, Daniel Boscaljon; The paradox of homecoming: home is where the haunt is, Kimberly Carfore; Uncanny courage and theological home, Verna Marina Ehret; Alt + Home: digital homecomings, Rachel Wagner; Faith or friendship: on integrating dimensions of self-realization in Kierkegaard and Aristotle, Nathan Eric Dickman; Homecoming as damnation, Thomas J.J. Altizer. Part III Uncanny Meditations of Homecomings: Revolt against the city? Art and home in Iowa, Joni L. Kinsey; Domestic doubles, generic cities and the urban uncanny: constructing home in Synedoche, New York, and Marwencol, Michael Baltutis; Phenomenology and uncanny homecomings: homeworld, alien world and being-at-home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television series Six Feet Under, David Seamon; Coming home and places of mourning, Janet Donohoe; Poetic habits, impossible homecomings, Hanna Janiszewska; When the dead share the table: the uncanny colonial home in James Joyce’s 'The Dead', Ayesha Malik; Index.
About the Author :
Daniel Boscaljon, Instructor, University of Iowa, USA.
Daniel Boscaljon, David Jasper, Christopher Merrill, Forrest Clingerman, Kimberly Carfore, Verna Marina Ehret,, Rachel Wagner, Nathan Eric Dickman, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Joni L. Kinsey, Michael Baltutis, David Seamon, Janet Donohoe, Hanna Janiszewska, Ayesha Malik.
Review :
'This richly evocative text investigates the strangeness at the heart of home through explorations in poetry, film contemporary art and popular culture. The spiritual challenges of dwelling in familiar, intimate and yet dangerous spaces are addressed with creative candour and academic rigour demonstrating our intense preoccupation with issues of security and identity. It is a compelling but unsettling read.' Heather Walton, University of Glasgow, UK'This is an impressively interdisciplinary volume that repositions our understanding of home. In a world where displacement seems to be the ruling sense for so many, even when "at home", the essays here set out important bearings - literary, philosophical, religious and cultural - in helping us negotiate any return home or, as may be more the case, reconstruct the place we once thought was home. To engage with these various discussions is to displace, significantly and uncannily, displacement itself.'Andrew Hass, University of Stirling, UK
'The collection’s variety, solid editing, and generally strong writing make this a work suited for large collections supporting interdisciplinary study in the humanities. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.' Choice
`This richly evocative text investigates the strangeness at the heart of home through explorations in poetry, film contemporary art and popular culture. The spiritual challenges of dwelling in familiar, intimate and yet dangerous spaces are addressed with creative candour and academic rigour demonstrating our intense preoccupation with issues of security and identity. It is a compelling but unsettling read.’
Heather Walton, University of Glasgow, UK
`This is an impressively interdisciplinary volume that repositions our understanding of home. In a world where displacement seems to be the ruling sense for so many, even when “at home”, the essays here set out important bearings - literary, philosophical, religious and cultural - in helping us negotiate any return home or, as may be more the case, reconstruct the place we once thought was home. To engage with these various discussions is to displace, significantly and uncannily, displacement itself.’
Andrew Hass, University of Stirling, UK
