Comfort in Contemporary Culture: The Challenges of a Concept

Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cozy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of »getting out of your comfort zone« attest. This volume is the first to investigate »comfort« as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualizations of comfort in linguistics, literary, media, and cultural studies and art history. They showcase how »comfort« serves as a valuable lens to analyze contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.