The West is at the very heart of the foundation of American identity and its history and culture are still springs for academic reflection when researchers aim at understanding the past, present and future of American identity. The West is where the sun sets and its myth draws an across-the-world shadow. The forthcoming essays offer a panoramic view of Western studies, with a stress on the international accent that has characterized this field in recent years.

The articles in this special issue show the many possibilities that the study of manuscripts offers across different subject areas and fully demonstrate the significance and impact of manuscripts on all realms of medieval and modern life, i.e., medical, political, private, etc. The issue will be helpful for readers to visualise some of the lines of research carried out within the label of Manuscript Studies.

This special issue shines a light on the manifold “narratives of waste” that have proliferated in recent years in North America, responding to the urgent need to explore stories dealing with waste in its myriad incarnations. The “toxic tales” presented will hopefully exemplify the multiple forms through which the wastification process is achieved.

This issue commemorates the centenary of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, a monument of modernist verse, offering new global perspectives of this epochal poem, one that has become a hallmark of modernity, and which remains an icon of our postmodern age. It is divided into two parts:  Part I comprises fourteen critical, scholarly essays of international and cross-cultural perspectives on Eliot’s poem, covering areas of interest ranging from poetry criticism to literary theory, translation studies and philosophy. Part II is dedicated to creative artwork, including poetry written by four poets from the USA, Spain and Mexico, paintings by two artists from Germany and Spain, and a special section on music (the recording of a recital titled “Then Spoke the Waste Land: Songs and Fragments,” performed in 2022).

This monography enriches the extant bibliography of the literature of the roaring twenties with new perspectives. Scholars from Spain, Germany, and Romania, who are at different stages of their career and who rely on different methodologies, look at the 1920s and their echo in the fiction of the time.

This special issue, devoted to “Cultural Representations of India and Indian Diasporas on Screen,” includes fourteen research papers, two interviews, four pieces of creative writing and three reviews that aim to assess and revisit portrayals of India and its diasporas on screen through different genres.

This volume, edited by Esther Pujolràs Noguer and Juan Ignacio Oliva, is devoted to Indian Ocean Literatures and Cultures, tracing a mosaic of the diversity, richness and multicultural identities that permeate their imaginaries.

This issue, edited by Francisco A. Lomelí, Sophia Emmanouilidou and Juan Ignacio Oliva, is devoted to Contemporary Challenges in Chicanx Literature and Culture, with some incursions into Latinx authors. The reader will find an ample selection of innovative critical analyses and also creative works, a tribute and an addendum essay. Topics like gender studies, music, human rights, border traumas, ideology and culture are offered to show the vitality of the Chicanx polyphonic vision of the US (and by extension of the Occidental world); one capable of transforming centric attitudes and decoding hegemonic positions.

This volume celebrates the forty years of life of RCEI, devoting its contents to the figure of Prof. José S. Gómez Soliño. His works on Historical Linguistics, Functional (Discourse) Grammar and African Studies are measured by the recognition received outside the limits of the Canarian archipelago. A representative group of scholars, contemporary colleagues and former disciples, participate in this tribute with contributions related to the three mail fields of interest of  Prof. Gómez Soliño.

This special issue on “Restoration Fiction (1660-1714)” hopes to contribute to further discern the achievements of this traditionally neglected period of the English novel, offering a glimpse into the literary richness and potential of mid- and late-seventeenth-century fiction.

This issue entitled “Canadian Fictions of Globality” aims at analyzing how a minute, singled-out field of sociological overtones ingrained in the dynamics of globalization is being engaged within the fictional (and critical) literary production ascribed to present-day Canada. The scholarly responses tackle globality from various angles: is it a condition of the postmodern present? Is globality a fiction of newness worth appending to cultural manifestations for marketing purposes? Is the presumed irrelevance of borders so apparent? Which new mechanisms are adopted to demarcate community boundaries anew after their transgression? The Canadian narratives selected by the contributors for this volume embody a groundwork for the materialization of global imaginaries and a plethora of answers to the questions above.

A series of articles that closely focused on the communicative/dialogical relationship between humans and Nature, and the agency of Nature. The issue examines old and new understandings of the agency of Nature/matter, and of what counts as speech. The issue also juxtaposes the premodern idea of a ‘language of nature’ as featured in aesthetics and literature in the 18th and 19th centuries with the new understandings of the concept in the context of ecocritical debates on nature’s agency.

This special issue is devoted to British India’s Partition and its effects in literature, culture, language and the other fields in the scope of the journal, offering thoughts about Partition as a process more than an historical event.

This monograph contains various articles which, from a variety of theoretical perspectives and frameworks, show the importance of discursive practices in establishing the interpreter’s professional identity, his or her recognition, society’s expectations regarding the interpreter’s professional activity, and the public perception of the social need for the linguistic services provided and the priority given to them in public policies.

This issue tackles bodily matters in British Fiction, having into account topics such as Gender inequalities in Neo-Victorian literature, and using strategies like affect theory, spatial constructions, queerness or deconstructing pornography.

Female corporealities in Contemporary Literature and Culture are analysed in this issue, coedited by Pilar Cuder-Domínguez & Justine Tally, paying special attention to Gender issues of oppression and violence exerted upon women in Irish, South asian, Afroamerican or US minority texts.

This issue tackles the evolution of women in scientific contexts, such as medicine, transmission of science, scientific writing, translation and censorship, lexical richness in women authors, or travel literature. 

Since its standardization, understood as it being acknowledged as a valid language, the “imposition” of English started. This issue deals with this gradual establishment by considering the creation of grammars and dictionaries for the instruction of native and non-native speakers, the development of a scientific English writing and the early and more recent displacement of other vernaculars, to conclude with the EU failure to o enhance multilingualism advocating countries to prioritize the teaching and use of English over other “minor” languages.

This issue addresses the Indian Diaspora from the perspective of literary and cultural studies, including topics such as East African Asian women, South Asian Muslims in the UK,  current feminism in India, or authors such as Hanif Kureishi or Salman rushdie.

Issue edited by Sally Burgess and devoted to the use of English as a means to communicate research results.

This issue of RCEI is devoted to the construction of alternative images and non-standard representations of  Ireland in literary, historical and cultural studies. It consists of a bunch of fourteen essays that portray an ample scope of the diversity of revisions, reinventions and rewritings that the Emerald Isle has produced and that offer an-“Other” gaze to the seemingly overwhelming monolithic idea of the island as a traditional, catholic, somewhat monotonous and provincial society.

This issue analyzes the representation of masculinity from diverse points of view, not only the literary, but also the sociologic and philosophic ones. It starts from the reflection of masculinity in the pervasive use of the first person, in different narratives, to then move towards a discussion of old and new theories such as those involving the dismantling of the gender binary. Following this line, it considers the construction of both masculinity and femininity  togethet with a new process of gendered social change.

This issue of RCEI focuses on the importance of small presses in the late 20th century and, particularly, their publication of poetry usually disregarded by Academia or corporate markets. An analysis of their efforts in publishing innovative American literature reveals how they face diverse forms of exclusion that go from material poverty to cultural deprivation. Articles show the concern of these editors with the political implications in literature which are further extended to philosophical schools and literary theoreticians. Thus, it is evidenced the participation of poetry in the discursive representation of social reality.

This monography is devoted to a major concern of pedagogy: teacher and learner autonomy. RCEI’s volume 38 was a first attempt to deal with this subject which in the current volume focuses on the development of a learner-centered type of education. Articles concentrate mainly in the methods used by teachers to implement this in their classrooms with special interest in language learning.

This issue is devoted to “(Re)Defining Contemporary British Poetry.”  The fact that it is published during the first decade of the 21st century seems to lend itself nicely to a reflection about the status quo of poetry in Britain today. In accomplishing the edition of this issue, room is provided for as many different voices and positions in the field as possible.