Sven Cvek. Towering Figures: Reading the 9/11 Archive. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2011.

The book analyzes US literary representations of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, focusing on the works of Jonathan Safran Foer, Art Spiegelman, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon. The book is an attempt to articulate the fundamental relation of the 9/11 cultural archive: between the historical event, its cultural imprint, and the wider social system.

Mario Brdar, Stefan Gries, Stefan, and Milena Žic Fuchs (eds). Cognitive Linguistics: Convergence and Expansion. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011.

Cognitive Linguistics is not a unified theory of language but rather a set of flexible and mutually compatible theoretical frameworks. Whether these frameworks can or should stabilize into a unified theory is open to debate. One set of contributions to the volume focuses on evidence that strengthens the basic tenets of CL concerning e.g. non-modularity, meaning, and embodiment. A second set of chapters explores the expansion of the general CL paradigm and the incorporation of theoretical insights from other disciplines and their methodologies – a development that could lead to competing and mutually exclusive theories within the CL paradigm itself. The authors are leading experts in cognitive grammar, cognitive pragmatics, metaphor and metonymy theory, quantitative corpus linguistics, functional linguistics, and cognitive psychology. This volume is therefore of great interest to scholars and students wishing to inform themselves about the current state and possible future developments of Cognitive Linguistics.

Borislav Knežević. Reading Joyce after the Postcolonial Turn. Zagreb: FF-press, 2012.

The book examines the impact of postcolonial theory on interpretations of Joyce’s fiction. It seeks to elucidate critically some of the limitations of historiographic discourse in postcolonial criticism. It also seeks to call attention to some underanalyzed issues in Joyce’s fiction, such as the issue of social class.

Mario Brdar, Ida Raffaelli, and Milena Žic Fuchs (eds). Cognitive Linguistics between Universality and Variation . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.

The present volume contains a collection of contributions originally presented as keynote talks or as regular papers at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference Cognitive Linguistics between Universality and Variation, held in Dubrovnik (Croatia), 30 September–1 October, 2008. The participants were invited to focus on various points on the continuum in the cognitive linguistic agenda stretching from the study of the universal to the study of variation in space and time, between individual and society. As it transpires from the contributions selected in this volume, it is impossible to disregard the methodological aspects of conceptual unification while tackling the universality vs. variation issue, i.e. while adopting usage-based and constructional approaches to linguistic phenomena, doing cognitive corpus linguistics, cognitive contrastive linguistics, cognitive sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, or diachronic cognitive linguistics. The volume is divided into four parts, roughly mirroring the methodological access points in addressing universality and variation.

Iva Polak. Razvoj književne proze australskih Aboridžina: od nevidljive do postkolonijalne priče. Biblioteka književna smotra, ur. Irena Lukšić, Zagreb: Hrvatsko filološko društvo, 2011.

Knjiga se bavi u nas nepoznatim korpusom australske aboridžinske književnosti na engleskom jeziku. Imajući na umu hrvatskog čitatelja, autorica u uvodnome dijelu knjige objašnjava problem pristupanja kulturološki specifičnome tekstu kojem istraživač ne pripada, kao i problem primjene eurocentričnog teorijskog aparata na tekst koji izlazi iz okvira zapadnoga kruga. Uvodna poglavlja također nude uvid u društveno-povijesne okolnosti nastanaka i razvoja aboridžinskog stvaralaštva na engleskom jeziku, te uvod u aboridžinsku ontološkom potku „Snivanje“, nužnu za razumijevanje aboridžinskog pisma. Središnji dio studije posvećen je nastanku kratke priče i romana. U okviru poglavlja o kratkoj priči, locira se „trenutak“ u kojem dolazi do transformacije usmene predaje u pripovijetku, odnosno čuvara usmene predaje u osviještenog autora književnoga teksta. Poglavlje o romanu bavi se okolnostima nastanka romana te njegovim tematskim i strukturnim osobitostima. Autorica tematski tipizira aboridžinski roman na „moderni“ roman, detektivski i pustolovni roman, povijesni roman, fantastični roman, roman Ukradenih pokoljenja, roman grada i nasilja, te queer roman. Svaki je romaneskni žanr oprimjeren najznačajnijim aboridžinskim romanima spisatelja od 1964. do 2010. godine. Neki od  analiziranih autora su Mudrooroo, Sam Watson, Bruce Pascoe, Eric Willmot, Richard Wilkes, Sally Morgan, Doris Pilkington, John Muk Muk Burke, Tara June Winch, Melissa Lucashenko, Vivienne Cleven, Alexis Wright, Larissa Behrendt i dr. Studija zaključuje poglavljem o književnim prijevarama u Australiji uzrokovanim lažnim prisvajanjem aboridžinskog identiteta. Nazvavši ovu pojavu „pseudonimski plagijat“ potaknut željom za profitom, autorica propituje granice prepoznavanja i razgraničenja kulturnoga koda kao i granice književne etike i estetike.
Ova knjiga kroz jasno izraženi etički pristup i skepsu prema lakomislenoj primjeni eurocentričnog kritičkog diskursa otvara hrvatskome čitatelju potpuno novi književnokulturni prostor.