Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Narratives of (in)hospitality in literature, culture and the arts
Susana Araújo (Editor), Catarina Nunes de Almeida (Editor), Santiago Pérez Isasi (Editor)
Current historical and political issues, such as the refugee crisis or climate emergency, are deeply intertwined with notions, images and narratives of (in)hospitality. Departing from seminal works such as those by Kant and Derrida on these subjects, the chapters in this volume engage with these issues and examine how new postcolonial, gender, environmental and medical perspectives reshape current approaches to hospitality in literature, culture and the arts.
Through a comparison of case studies from multiple national backgrounds, Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities shows how the concept of hospitality shapes the way in which we relate with the Other in diverse – as well as changing – cultural, political, social and environmental contexts. By examining the issues of hospitality from a post-pandemic standpoint, which revised the roles of our private and public spaces in the aftermath of Covid 19, by dwelling on novel issues of climate emergency and by focusing on current developments in terms of migration and displacement, the book adds new light and significant theoretical and methodological perspectives to previous debates about hospitality.
Contents
List of contributors
1 Introduction
Susana Araújo, Catarina Nunes de Almeida and Santiago Pérez Isasi
Part I: (Post-)Colonial Hospitalities
2 Space and strangeness in Portuguese literature: Writing resistance and identity re-existence in the postcolonial context
Inocência Mata
3 Crèvecœur’s Land of the Free: Questioning the foundations of American hospitality
Judith Still
4 Transcultural hospitality. Guest friendship in Dionisia Alfaro’s Autobiografía de una líder arhuaca
Juan Camilo Brigard
Part II: Hospitalities, Hospitals and Medicalizations
5 Diagnosis as (in)hospitality: the case of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
Mar Rosàs Tosas
6 (In)Hospitable hosts: Close reading depictions of hospitality and hospitals in HIV/AIDS narratives
Leonardo Cascão
Part III: (In)hospitable Homes, Families and Heritages
7 Inhospitable gendered places: The haunted house and the female ghost in neo-Victorian fiction and what it can tell us about female agency
M. Francisca B. B. de Alvarenga
8 We have guests: (In)hospitality in multi-generational novels
Serena Cianciotto
9 Third Space and hospitality: Modal intertextuality and the threshold of the unhomely in Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, ou Les psaumes (2017)
Eric Wistrom
Part IV. Hospitality in the Anthropocene
10 ‘Literary Nesting’: Fictional responses to environmental inhospitality in the climate crisis
Silvia Vittonatto
11 Redefining hospitality in times of crisis: Relationality and vulnerability in Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army and Burntcoat
Constance Pompié
Part V: Borders, Otherness and the Ethics of Hospitality
12 ‘My face is a breaking point’: hospitality and inhospitality in Spring by Ali Smith
Elisa Santoro
13 Inhospitality toward Otherness in Marko Hautala’s ‘Pale Toes’
Johannes Melander
14 A breakdown in ethical practices: Forms of hospitality in Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat
Mathias Overgaard
Part VI: Negotiations and Redefinitions of Hospitality
15 At home with the Alien: ‘Xeno’ and Xenofeminism
Vít Bohal
16 Hospitality and periphery in Rosalía de Castro’s Costumbres Gallegas
Gisella Costas López
17 Epilogue: Hosting hospitalities at inhospitable times?
Susana Araújo, Catarina Nunes de Almeida and Santiago Pérez Isasi
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806551118
Publication date: 01 July 2026
PDF ISBN: 9781806551118
EPUB ISBN: 9781806551125
Hardback ISBN: 9781806551095
Paperback ISBN: 9781806551101
Susana Araújo (Editor) 
Susana Araújo is Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra, Portugal and an integrated researcher at CEComp, Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She is the author of the monographs Ominous Homelands: Moving Images of (In)Security and the Rise of Neo-Nationalisms (2025) and Transatlantic Fictions of 9/11 and the War on Terror: Images of Terror, Narratives of Captivity (2015) which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice in 2016, as well as several books of poetry and poetic prose.
Catarina Nunes de Almeida (Editor)
Catarina Nunes de Almeida is Researcher at the Centre for Comparative Studies (University of Lisbon, School of Arts and Humanities). She is the coordinator of the cluster “Portuguese Orientalism” since 2019. From 2007-2009, she was Portuguese Language Lecturer at the University of Pisa. Her work focuses on Portuguese Orientalism, Travel Writing and Portuguese Contemporary Literature and she has published several articles on these subjects in anthologies and journals. She is also the author of six poetry books.
Santiago Pérez Isasi (Editor)
Santiago Pérez Isasi is Assistant Lecturer at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, where he is also Vice-Director of the Centre of Comparative Studies. His main areas of research include Iberian Studies, literary historiography and Digital Humanities. Some of his most recent publications include Ibéricas. Las mujeres y la construcción del espacio cultural peninsular (siglos XX y XXI) (ed., 2025), Espanha e nós. Visões atuais sobre as relações Hispano-Portuguesas (ed., 2024) or La forja del canon. Identidad nacional e historia de la literatura española (2024).
Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Susana Araújo, Catarina Nunes de Almeida, Santiago Pérez Isasi,
01 July 2026
Creative Critical Interventions for Social Justice
Natasha Tanna, Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez, Hakan Sandal-Wilson,
04 February 2026
Translation Studies before ‘Translation Studies’
Kathryn Batchelor, Iryna Odrekhivska,
15 January 2026
Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Short Fiction
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Julio Ludemir, Maria Aparecida Andrade Salgueiro,
03 September 2024
Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading
Anthony Grafton, Nicholas Popper, William H. Sherman,
08 January 2024
The Bankruptcy
Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Cintia Kozonoi Vezzani, Jason Rhys Parry,
17 July 2023
Drama, Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy
Virginia Cox, Lisa Sampson, Anna Wainwright,
08 June 2023
Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Narratives of (in)hospitality in literature, culture and the arts
for more info
Series: Comparative Literature and Culture
Publication date: July 1, 2026
Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781806551118
Paperback ISBN: 9781806551101
Hardback ISBN: 9781806551095
Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Current historical and political issues, such as the refugee crisis or climate emergency, are deeply intertwined with notions, images and narratives of (in)hospitality. Departing from seminal works such as those by Kant and Derrida on these subjects, the chapters in this volume engage with these issues and examine how new postcolonial, gender, environmental and medical perspectives reshape current approaches to hospitality in literature, culture and the arts.
Through a comparison of case studies from multiple national backgrounds, Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities shows how the concept of hospitality shapes the way in which we relate with the Other in diverse – as well as changing – cultural, political, social and environmental contexts. By examining the issues of hospitality from a post-pandemic standpoint, which revised the roles of our private and public spaces in the aftermath of Covid 19, by dwelling on novel issues of climate emergency and by focusing on current developments in terms of migration and displacement, the book adds new light and significant theoretical and methodological perspectives to previous debates about hospitality.
