Overview

Realism is an artistic practice that aims to faithfully represent reality. Historically, it has been practiced across different media, from early pictorial art and epic oral narratives, through literature and visual arts, to film, music, and digital media. However, an understanding of what it means to ""faithfully represent reality"" is not universal; rather, it varies from culture to culture. The Oxford Handbook of Global Realisms brings the diversity of global realisms - literary, visual, sonic, dramatic, and digital; Victorian and modernist; socialist, capitalist, magical and marvelous, postcolonial, environmental, and posthuman - to the fore. By foregrounding theories, practices, and forms of realism that are less well-known to Anglophone readers than ""classic"" realisms, The Oxford Handbook of Global Realisms revises the Eurocentric geography of the concept. It offers a broad chronology that overcomes the habitual fixation in studies of realism on the nineteenth century as its starting point and offers, instead, a more flexible timeline of this artistic practice. The Handbook's four sections ""Theories of Global Realism,"" ""Practices of Global Realisms,"" ""Global Realisms and the Novel,"" and ""Intermedial Global Realisms"" present realism as a transnational, transhistorical, and intermedial global phenomenon. The Oxford Handbook of Global Realisms offers a global view of realism through contextualized case studies, showcasing previously underrepresented and marginalized theories, practices, forms, and media of realist cultural production.

Full Product Details

Author:   Margarita Vaysman (Professor, Professor, University of Oxford) ,  Katherine A. Bowers (Professor, Professor, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 5.80cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   1.633kg
ISBN:  

9780197610640

ISBN 10:   0197610641
Pages:   888
Publication Date:   28 November 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

About the Editors List of Contributors 1. Global Theories, Chronologies, and Geographies of Realism Katherine Bowers and Margarita Vaysman Part I. Theories of Global Realism 2. The Politics of Postcolonial Realism Meghan Gorman-DaRif 3. Realism and the Subaltern in India Ulka Anjaria 4. Theorizing Global Realism from Lukács to Climate Crisis Literature Treasa De Loughry 5. Global Climate Realism in Blue Modern Europe Anna Barcz 6. Affect and the Global Politics of Emotion in German Realism Ervin Malakaj 7. Sentimentalism and the Gendered Aesthetics of Global Realisms Hilde Hoogenboom 8. Global Disability Studies and Realist Representation Hannah Thompson 9. Realism and Race in the Literature of the Global Hispanic Empire Julia Haeyoon Chang 10. Digital Humanities and Literary Realism Daniil Skorinkin and Boris Orekhov 11. Indigi-realism and ""Aye!""sthetics Renae Watchman Part II. Practices of Global Realism 12. Embodied Realisms in Australian Aboriginal Art Liz Cameron 13. Realism and the Visual Arts in France and Japan Marika Takanishi Knowles 14. The Work of Realism, Shin, and Materia Medica in Nineteenth-Century Japan Maki Fukuoka 15. Victorian Realisms in the Age of Global Trade Jessica R. Valdez 16. Global Realism and the Gothic Genre Katherine Bowers 17. Ottoman Armenian Visual Realism and Social Reform Vazken Khatchig Davidian 18. Caribbean Diasporic Marvelous Realism María Alonso Alonso 19. Realist Drama as World Drama Ning Wang 20. Considering Gay Realisms in Canadian Theater Conrad Alexandrowicz 21. Realism, Neorealism, and Hyperrealism in Argentine Cinema Juli A. Kroll 22. World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism Lúcia Nagib Part III. Global Realisms and The Novel 23. Realism and Novel Ethics Christopher S. Weinberger 24. The Socialist Realist Novel in Central Asia Chris Fort 25. Capitalist Realism in the Arabic Novel Raya Alraddadi 26. The Global African Novel Katherine Hallemeier 27. Magic Realism in the African Novel Ousmane Ngom 28. Realist Physiognomies and the Japanese Modernist Novel Satoshi Bamba 29. Realism in the Global Age of Modernism in China and the United States Julia Chan 30. Russian Metafiction and Global Realisms Margarita Vaysman Part IV. Intermedial Global Realisms 31. Global Traveling Realisms from Literature to Film Kate Holland 32. Intermedial Projections from Realism to Naturalism Robert Singer 33. Narrative Realism and Television Lisa W. Jacobson and Chloë Kitzinger 34. Journalism and Realist Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France Edmund Birch 35. Peripheral Realisms, War, and Catastrophe in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction Modhumita Roy 36. Realism and the Politics of Frequency in Filmmaking Terri Weissman 37. Documentary Forms and Realist Theater Lucie Kempf 38. Reality Effects and Oral Modes of Entextualization Roma Chatterji 39. Computational Realism in the Digital Humanities Aaron Mauro 40. Transing Holodeck Realism in Video Games Cody Mejeur 41. Preposterous Realism and Posthuman Aesthetics Christoph Cox Index

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Author Information

Katherine Bowers is Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Bowers's research considers questions of literary form and genre. Her first monograph, Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic (2022), examines the ways European gothic fiction influenced the development of Russian realism. Her published work spans literary and media studies, digital humanities, and environmental humanities, as well as four co-edited volumes on topics in Russian literary and cultural history. Margarita Vaysman is Associate Professor of Nineteenth-Century Russophone Literature and Thought and Fellow in Russian at New College, University of Oxford. Her first monograph Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel was published in 2021. In 2020, Vaysman co-edited a volume Nineteenth-Century Russian Realism: Society, Knowledge, Narrative , which showcased the new interdisciplinary, inclusive approaches to the Russian realist canon. Her research focuses on literary texts, primarily the realist novel, and history of gender and sexuality.

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