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: 27 July 2026
PDF ISBN: 9781806551118
EPUB ISBN: 9781806551125
Hardback ISBN: 9781806551095
Paperback ISBN: 9781806551101
Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Susana Araújo, Catarina Nunes de Almeida, Santiago Pérez Isasi,
27 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
Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, Tomás Espino Barrera, Tomás Espino Barrera,
06 October 2025
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
Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Narratives of (in)hospitality in literature, culture and the arts
Series: Comparative Literature and Culture
Publication date: July 27, 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.
