Sleep and Its Meanings: Socio-Cultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies

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Diletta De Cristofaro

Sleep and Its Meanings

Name: Sleep and Its Meanings
Price: 180 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9780262052306

Socio-Cultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies

Diletta De Cristofaro

$180

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

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English

MIT Press
30 June 2026

Society & culture: general

A wide-ranging collection exploring the many meanings of sleep, within the context of the humanities and social sciences.

Sleep has been an object of specialized medical research for more than a century now, yet it is only in the twenty-first century that sleep has become a significant focus across the humanities and social sciences, a growing interest that has been termed critical sleep studies. Featuring essays by leading international scholars, Sleep and Its Meanings is the first collection devoted to this multidisciplinary field. These essays probe the social, cultural, political, historical, philosophical, and aesthetic meanings of sleep. For it is only by considering these meanings that we can begin to understand sleep not just as a biological fact of life but as profoundly intertwined with the world the sleeper inhabits.

The book showcases some of the diverse disciplines that make up critical sleep studies, including both the ones that have been prominent in the field's development from the outset-sociology, anthropology, history-and those that have turned to sleep only more recently and have therefore been so far underrepresented-literary and cultural studies, as well as studies of arts, design, and media.

By: Diletta De Cristofaro
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262052306
ISBN 10: 026205230X
Pages: 364
Publication Date: 30 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Diletta De Cristofaro is Assistant Professor in English Literature in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University, UK, and the author of The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel.