The Invisible Touch

The Invisible Man

In this renowned novel by H.G. Wells, a heavily disguised man takes up residence at a rural English inn and begins performing secret experiments, leading to intense curiosity from the locals. Eventually, the mysterious man, a scientist who has discovered the key to invisibility, clashes with the villagers and progressively becomes more unhinged and dangerous as he uses his powers for self-serving purposes. Published and set at the turn of the 20th century, the book highlights the perils of unchecked scientific hubris.

Out of Touch

Out of Touch investigates how skin has become a crucial but disavowed figure in twentieth-century literature, theory, and cultural criticism. These discourses reveal the extent to which skin figures in the cultural effect of changes in visual technologies, a development argued by critics to be at the heart of the contest between surface and depth and, by extension, Western globalization and identity politics. The skin has a complex history as a metaphorical terrain over which ideological wars are fought, identity is asserted through modification as in tattooing, and meaning is inscribed upon the human being. Yet even as interventions on the skin characterize much of this history, fantasy and science fiction literature and film trumpet skin's passing in the cybernetic age, and feminist theory calls for abandoning the skin as a hostile boundary.

The Invisible Man: a Grotesque Romance