Literary Theory Column

Nihilism, Relativism, and Literary Theory

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Bibliography/Bibliography of Literary Theory and Criticism (2)

Gore Galore: Literary Theory and Computer Games

Computer games have not been adequately theorized within the humanities. In this paper a brief history of computer games is presented as a starting point for developing a topology of games and a theory of computer games as rhetorical artifacts suitable for critical study. The paper addresses the question of why games should be treated seriously and suggests a theoretical approach based on Backh...

Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind.

Understanding others' mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cogni...

Complexity Theory Column 48

Here is a real gift to the field from David Johnson: After a thirteen year intermission, David is restarting his NP-completeness column. His column will now appear about twice yearly in ACM Transactions on Algorithms. Welcome back David, and thanks! And for those for whom a diet of two per year won’t do, meals past can be found at http://www.research.att.com/ ̃dsj/columns.html. As to the Complex...