Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Modern Literature (46)
- French and Francophone Language and Literature (31)
- French and Francophone Literature (31)
- Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature (25)
- Latin American Literature (19)
-
- Film and Media Studies (11)
- German Language and Literature (11)
- German Literature (11)
- American Studies (8)
- American Literature (7)
- Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (7)
- Slavic Languages and Societies (5)
- Russian Literature (4)
- Spanish Literature (3)
- English Language and Literature (2)
- African American Studies (1)
- American Popular Culture (1)
- Cultural History (1)
- History (1)
- Visual Studies (1)
Articles 31 - 60 of 80
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
"Pesadillas De La Noche, Amanecer De Silencio": Miguel Méndez And Margarita Oropeza, Debra A. Castillo
"Pesadillas De La Noche, Amanecer De Silencio": Miguel Méndez And Margarita Oropeza, Debra A. Castillo
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In many border-related discussions—whether philosophical, anthropological, critical, or fictional—there are typical themes or narrative tics: allusions to the flexible geography that makes the border region both an isolated territory and an analogue for the postmodern condition, the puzzlement over how to understand the role of the "maquiladoras" 'assembly plants' and the area's industrial boom, the awareness of a vast movement of people both north and south, a persistent and nagging phobia about feminization, and about female sexuality. In this paper I will explore these concerns with reference to two novels: Arizonan Miguel Méndez's well-known 1974 novel Peregrinos de Aztlán (Pilgrims …
Crossing The Great Divide: Rewritings Of The U.S.-Mexican Encounter In Walter Abish And Richard Rodríguez , Maarten Van Delden
Crossing The Great Divide: Rewritings Of The U.S.-Mexican Encounter In Walter Abish And Richard Rodríguez , Maarten Van Delden
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In a 1978 essay on the relationship between Mexico and the United States, Octavio Paz suggested that the two countries were separated by a "perhaps insuperable" divide. Yet two recent works—Richard Rodríguez's collection of essays Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (1992) and Walter Abish's novel Eclipse Fever (1993)—offer evidence of a changing outlook on the U.S.-Mexican encounter. Abish and Rodríguez build upon the storehouse of images of the irreconcilable differences between the two nations. However, insofar as they play with and question these images, they draw attention to the unstable, fluctuating nature of the U.S.-Mexican encounter …
Identity At The Border: Narrative Strategies In María Novaro's El Jardín Del Edén And John Sayles's Lone Star , Amy Kaminsky
Identity At The Border: Narrative Strategies In María Novaro's El Jardín Del Edén And John Sayles's Lone Star , Amy Kaminsky
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In María Novaro's El jardín del Edén and John Sayles's Lone Star, the narrative and visual art of film functions as ritual does: to make sense of the dangerous liminal space of the border. Novaro and Sayles both locate their protagonists' identity quests in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands, but they approach the problem from different directions: Sayles from the north, Novaro from the south; Sayles from the perspective of men in search of themselves through their fathers, Novaro from that of women in search of identity with the help of each other. With her focus on the stories of three …
To Arrive Is To Begin: Benjamin Sáenz's Carry Me Like Water And The Pilgrimage Of Origin In The Borderlands , Alberto López Pulido
To Arrive Is To Begin: Benjamin Sáenz's Carry Me Like Water And The Pilgrimage Of Origin In The Borderlands , Alberto López Pulido
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay examines the "pilgrimage of origin" as presented in Benjamin Sáenz's novel Carry Me Like Water. As is the case with other ethnic literature, Carry Me Like Water teaches us that we must first go back before we can move forward and transform our lives. By pilgrimage of origin I make reference to a journey where participants are required to return to the past and the familiar. Unlike the more commonly described linear pilgrimage experience where participants are required to travel beyond the range of their familiar space, the pilgrimage of origin obligates participants to return to their …
Fan Letters To The Cultural Industries: Border Literature About Mass Media, Claire Fox
Fan Letters To The Cultural Industries: Border Literature About Mass Media, Claire Fox
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The concentration of the Mexican and U.S. cultural industries in cities outside of the border region and the intermittent outsourcing of Hollywood movies to production facilities in Baja, California, have had a marked impact on the literary practice of "fronterizo" 'border' intellectuals. This essay discusses the theme of the cinema in three narratives by authors from the U.S.-Mexico border region: "Hotel Frontera" ("Border Hotel"), by Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, "Canícula," by Norma Elia Cantú, and "The Magic of Blood," by Dagoberto Gilb. These narratives provide ethnographic information about the reception of nationally distributed mass media in the border region; at the …
Hegemony And Identity: The Chicano Hybrid In Francisco X. Alarcón's Snake Poems , George Hartley
Hegemony And Identity: The Chicano Hybrid In Francisco X. Alarcón's Snake Poems , George Hartley
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Snake Poems renegotiates power relations between the discourse of Spanish imperialism and Aztec poetic practice. Alarcón's extended poem enacts a process of ethnic, cultural, and spiritual identification through a confrontation between texts—Alarcón's original poems, passages of commentary from the Spanish Inquisitor Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón's treatise on Aztec spells and invocations, and the Aztec spells themselves in the original Náhuatl, the Aztec language. Each of these three layers of text represents a unique and competing people, ideology, and culture, and it is the clash and the hybrid fusion of these distinct discourses that Alarcón the poet stages in Snake Poems …
Reading The Other Side Of The Story: Ominous Voice And The Sociocultural And Political Implications Of Luis Spota's Murieron A Mitad Del Río , Francisco Manzo-Robledo
Reading The Other Side Of The Story: Ominous Voice And The Sociocultural And Political Implications Of Luis Spota's Murieron A Mitad Del Río , Francisco Manzo-Robledo
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
It is always contoversial to proclaim a literary work, at face value, as a sociocultural study of a particular society. It is even more controversial when one deals with a hybrid work, combining factors from two completely distinct societies. Yet, there are some literary works that seem to call for exactly this type of analysis, presenting a range of ideas which in retrospect reveal origins of significant sociocultural trends. Such is the case of Luis Spota's Murieron a mitad del río (1948). This novel presents a panorama of ancestral problems in the life of thousands of immigrants and inhabitants of …
Hybridity And The Space Of The Border In The Writing Of Norma Elia Cantú, Ellen Mccracken
Hybridity And The Space Of The Border In The Writing Of Norma Elia Cantú, Ellen Mccracken
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The creative and scholarly writing of Norma Elia Cantú focuses centrally on the tensions of borders that are eroding yet firmly in place. Cantú's border pivots on the geographic space in which Mexico and the United States physically intersect, yet she probes at the same time several of the other tenuous cultural borders that postmodernity has brought into focus. Transcending distinctions between genres, languages, and cultures, Cantú undertakes innovative genre hybridity, visual-verbal hybridity, and the recombination of distinct cultural codes. Whether writing cultural criticism, autobioethnography, creative fiction, or poetry, Cantú locates herself at the intersection of the geographical and epistemological …
Victoria Ocampo And Alfonso Reyes: Ulysses's Malady , Doris Meyer
Victoria Ocampo And Alfonso Reyes: Ulysses's Malady , Doris Meyer
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Ocampo (Argentina, 1890-1979) and Reyes (Mexico, 1889-1959) were arguably Latin America's most influential writers and cultural catalysts in the first half of the twentieth century. They met in Argentina in 1927 and their friendship and correspondence lasted until Reyes's death. Over three decades of private and public discourse, they articulated a similar vision of Latin American identity and its future potential. Because they were both internationally known—Ocampo as founder and director of the literary review SUR, and Reyes as a diplomat and intellectual leader—their ideas found resonance in the Americas and Europe. Two dramatic works they wrote before meeting, Ifigenia …
Style And S(T)Imulation: Popular Magazines, Or The Aestheticization Of Postsoviet Russia , Helena Goscilo
Style And S(T)Imulation: Popular Magazines, Or The Aestheticization Of Postsoviet Russia , Helena Goscilo
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The new Postsoviet genre of the glossy magazine that inundated bookstalls and kiosks in Russia's urban centers served as both an advertisement for a life of luxury and an advice column on chic style. Conventionalized signs of affluence, models of beauty, "educational" articles on topics ranging from the history and significance of ties to correct behavior at a first-class restaurant filled the pages of magazines intended to provide an accelerated course in etiquette, appearance, and appurtenances for Russia's newly wealthy. The lessons in spending, demeanor, and taste emphasized moneyed visibility. Despite their differing emphases, popular magazines all shared the new-found …
Dismantling Romantic Utopias: María Beneyto's Poetry Between Tradition And Protest , Candelas S. Gala
Dismantling Romantic Utopias: María Beneyto's Poetry Between Tradition And Protest , Candelas S. Gala
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Despite the fact that Vicente Aleixandre considered her one of the best young authors of the generation of social poets of the 1950s, María Beneyto's writings have been disregarded by critics. While sharing the social concerns of the other poets of her generation, Beneyto's poetry also reveals the dilemma of the woman author facing a cultural tradition that espouses pre-established models for her conduct and identity patterned mostly in accordance with tenets of Romanticism. Beneyto resorts to those models as projections of herself as she seeks to articulate her own identity as woman and author. The objective of this essay …
Between L'Irréparable And L'Irrepérable: Subject To The Past, Downing Thomas, Steven Ungar
Between L'Irréparable And L'Irrepérable: Subject To The Past, Downing Thomas, Steven Ungar
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This issue of STCL grew from papers presented at a conference, "Memory in Context: Occupation and Empire in France and the Francophone World," held at the University of Iowa in April, 1996...
Identifying Jews: The Legacy Of The 1941 Exhibition, "Le Juif Et La France" , Raymond Bach
Identifying Jews: The Legacy Of The 1941 Exhibition, "Le Juif Et La France" , Raymond Bach
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
During the Occupation there was a two-pronged effort to separate the Jews from the rest of the French population...
Augusto Roa Bastos's Trilogy As Postmodern Practice, Helene C. Weldt-Basson
Augusto Roa Bastos's Trilogy As Postmodern Practice, Helene C. Weldt-Basson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Augusto Roa Bastos's most recent novel, El fiscal (1993), completes the author's trilogy on the "monotheism of power," which the novel constitutes in conjunction with the prior works Hijo de hombre (1960) and Yo el Supremo (1974). These novels form a larger whole by virtue of the way in which they attempt to define Paraguay's identity through the nation's history. Hijo de hombre focuses on both the Chaco War and a series of Paraguayan civil wars; Yo el Supremo concentrates on the nineteenth-century dictatorship of Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia; and El fiscal presents both Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship (1954-1989) …
The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes As An Imperial Immune System, Laura Otis
The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes As An Imperial Immune System, Laura Otis
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Trained as a physician in the bacteriological age, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a detective-hero who acts both like a masterful bacteriologist and an imperial immune system. Doyle's experiences as a doctor in South Africa taught him that the colonies' microbes were his Empire's worst enemy. In 1890, Doyle visited Berlin, where Robert Koch was testing a "cure" for tuberculosis, and in Doyle's subsequent character sketch of Koch, the scientist sounds remarkably like Sherlock Holmes. Based on Doyle's medical instructor Joe Bell, Holmes shares Koch's relentless drive to hunt down and unmask tiny invaders. Imperialism, by the 1880s, had opened …
Mysterious Illnesses Of Human Commodities In Woody Allen And Franz Kafka , Iris Bruce
Mysterious Illnesses Of Human Commodities In Woody Allen And Franz Kafka , Iris Bruce
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The article examines correspondences between Woody Allen's film Zelig and texts by Franz Kafka. Both Leonard Zelig and Gregor Samsa (The Metamorphosis) suffer from mysterious illnesses which are multi-determined. Twentieth-century racial stereotypes are partially responsible for them; other causes lie in the commercialization of life in early twentieth-century society. Zelig's illness parallels the cultural trends and political movements of his time and becomes full-blown in the fascist movement. Zelig is therefore also a commentary on the cultural climate which helped bring about the rise of fascism. Kafka could not benefit from Allen's hindsight, but Kafka's representation of what …
. . . Und . . . Fried . . . Und . . .: The Poetry Of Erich Fried And The Structure Of Contemporaneity, Nora M. Alter
. . . Und . . . Fried . . . Und . . .: The Poetry Of Erich Fried And The Structure Of Contemporaneity, Nora M. Alter
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay looks at the poetry of Erich Fried in the context of tensions within contemporary cultural studies. Fried's contemporaneity is linked to his status on the margins of various cultures, media, and ideologies—thus making both his life and his works appear as exemplary paradigms for the postmodern condition, with its various theoretical celebrations of "exile," "border crossing," "transgression," "deterritorialization," and so forth. Yet, at the same time, seemingly in contrast with his labile identity is Fried's rigid Marxist political ideological core which surfaces in his political poetry. Focusing, in particular, on Fried's poems directed against the Vietnam War, this …
Body / Antibody, Lawrence R. Schehr
Body / Antibody, Lawrence R. Schehr
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Unique object in the exchange-system, the gay body occupies a locus where a phantom identity and an imagined reciprocity define the poles of the subject-object relation. Made of the right stuff, it is an object circulating in a system that tends to reproduce the concept of identity in its search for mirror images of itself. Often rejected by the world, it has recently become a cynosure equated with sickness, pestilence, and death in the age of AIDS. The representations of that object change: no longer perceived as a part of libidinal economy, it has become a mass of symptoms, having …
The Stone And Its Images: The Poetry Of Nancy Morejón, Alan West
The Stone And Its Images: The Poetry Of Nancy Morejón, Alan West
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The essay explores the roots of Nancy Morejón's poetry within the context of a transculturated afro-Cuban identity. Beginning by an examination of the poems that directly deal with the orishas of santería, the essay moves on to some of her more lyric poetry. Morejón's relationship to Dulce María Loynaz provides particular interest in how both writers treat the metaphor of the house in two important poems. This is followed by a discussion of some of Morejón's overtly feminist poetry, placed both within a Cuban context of the history of its revolution, and the displacement of exile (in dialogue with Cuban …
Spanish American Women Writers: Simmering Identity Over A Low Fire, Ksenija Bilbija
Spanish American Women Writers: Simmering Identity Over A Low Fire, Ksenija Bilbija
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
After establishing the parallel between the kitchen and the alchemist's laboratory, this article shows that traditionally, the kitchen has come to symbolize the space associated with the marginalization of women. However, the recent explosion of the novels dedicated to the resemantization and reevaluation of the realm of the kitchen is the best evidence that it is also a space from which much creativity emanates. A close reading of two such cookbook/novels, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Like Potatoes for Varenike by Sylvia Plager, points toward a quite parodic and critical gender perspective. Furthermore, it calls for a …
Geography, (M)Other Tongues And The Role Of Translation In Giannina Braschi's El Imperio De Los Sueños, María M. Carrión
Geography, (M)Other Tongues And The Role Of Translation In Giannina Braschi's El Imperio De Los Sueños, María M. Carrión
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The Big Apple seems to be the central axis for the readerly and writerly "I" in El imperio de los sueños (Empire of Dreams), by Giannina Braschi. Readers can easily realize that the text is not just about New York, but that it actually journeys through praise and blame, drinking and dancing, talking and perversing many other cities and landscapes. El imperio is a space of bohemia with streaks from the Latin American Quarter in Paris, the barrio chino barcelonés, the zaguanes of Borges's Buenos Aires, from colonial houses in Old San Juan; it evokes dandy places, …
The Subject, Feminist Theory And Latin American Texts, Sara Castro-Klaren
The Subject, Feminist Theory And Latin American Texts, Sara Castro-Klaren
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
From a feminist perspective, this essay reviews and analyzes the interaction between metropolitan feminist theories and their interphase with the academic criticism of texts written by Latin American women. Discussion focuses on the question of the subject, which the author believes to be paramount in feminist theory, in as much as the construction of gender and the historical subordination of women devolve on the play of difference and identity. This paper examines how the problematic assumption by feminist theorists in the North American academy of Freudian and Lacanian theories of the subject pose unresolved problems and unanticipated complications to subsequent …
The Perilous Journey From Melancholy To Love: A Kristevan Reading Of Le Médianoche Amoureux, Karen D. Levy
The Perilous Journey From Melancholy To Love: A Kristevan Reading Of Le Médianoche Amoureux, Karen D. Levy
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Since the publication of Michel Tournier's first novel Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique in 1967, in which his protagonist Robinson makes fruitful the very earth of his desert island and eventually accedes to the cosmic transcendence embodied in his mentor and companion Vendredi, this contemporary French writer has boldly explored alternative forms of sexual expression that challenge traditional biological definitions of identity as well as norms of accepted behavior. The basis of his investigations is the anguish-ridden separation from the maternal, as experienced under diverse manifestations usually by male characters, and the irremediable solitude which then stretches over that …
Writing A Dynamic Identity: Self-Criticism In The Work Of Tchicaya U Tam'si, Chaibou Elhadji Oumarou
Writing A Dynamic Identity: Self-Criticism In The Work Of Tchicaya U Tam'si, Chaibou Elhadji Oumarou
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Very few Africans have had the courage to express their outrage at the stifling African traditions with the vigor and consistency of U Tam'Si. In fact, self-criticism is a major theme in Tchicaya's work as he strives to build a dynamic identity through a dynamic writing style. A dynamic identity changes with time and it is directed toward the future as opposed to static identity, which is concerned with only the past. This essay problematizes his efforts to create that identity and explores the rationale behind his self-criticism. Not content with his identity, he looks for a dynamic model that …
Only Joking? Gustavo Sainz And La Princesa Del Palacio De Hierro: Funniness, Identity And The Post-Boom, Philip Swanson
Only Joking? Gustavo Sainz And La Princesa Del Palacio De Hierro: Funniness, Identity And The Post-Boom, Philip Swanson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The Mexican Gustavo Sainz has been seen as one of the initiators of the Latin American Post-Boom, largely because of the humor, accessibility and interest in popular culture that characterize some of his work and are often said to characterize the Post-Boom in general. His 1974 novel La princesa del Palacio de Hierro (The Princess of the Iron Palace) is a representative case. However, the Post-Boom's incorporation of "popular" elements within a relatively sophisticated "new novel" framework is a highly problematic process. This can be seen, in this novel, in the broad relationship of the "funny" and the "serious." The …
Phylacteries As Metaphor In Elie Wiesel's Le Testament D'Un Poète Juif Assassiné, Simon P. Sibelman
Phylacteries As Metaphor In Elie Wiesel's Le Testament D'Un Poète Juif Assassiné, Simon P. Sibelman
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The novels of the Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, were initially read as eloquent expressions of remembrance and witnessing to the massacred millions who perished in Hitler's Inferno. His fiction is likewise a profound expression of Jewishness and of the author's fundamental belief that post-Auschwitz Jewry must draw nearer to its authentic roots. To that end, Wiesel' s novel, Le Testament d'un poète juif assassiné, represents the author's most compelling expression concerning Jewish identity. The novel is replete with the language, symbols and meta-structural techniques which elicit an exhortation to remain faithful to one's Jewishness. Moreover, Wiesel provides the reader …
The Past And The Present In The Early Novels Of Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Ernestine Schlant
The Past And The Present In The Early Novels Of Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Ernestine Schlant
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Hanns-Josef Ortheil's early novels Fermer, 1979 and Hecke, 1983 have male protagonists who search for self-identity in the West Germany of the 1980s. In the process, they discover that they are profoundly influenced by the lives and experiences of their parents, particularly as these lives were shaped during and by the Hitler regime. In Fermer, the 19-year old protagonist rebels against this society by going AWOL. Yet in his geographical flight and intellectual analyses he realizes his deep emotional bonds with the expectations and behavior of the parent generation. Recognition of these bonds is only the first …
Response To Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Janet Staiger
Response To Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Janet Staiger
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Chip Rhodes defends Althusser's scientific belief that the subject is a bearer of structures and opposes the humanist claim that the subject functions independently of its contexts. However, recent work in cultural studies examines how identity is constructed and allows us to reconcile the scientific and the humanist view. Ideological interpellation may define our subject positions but we are still able to refuse them. For instance, Rhodes' account of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" assumes that the subject is a fully interpellated, adolescent, Anglo, middle or upper class, heterosexual male. However, the film also offers various oppositional subject positions, including adolescent …
Between Female Dialogics And Traces Of Essentialism: Gender And Warfare In Christa Wolf's Major Writings, Sabine Wilke
Between Female Dialogics And Traces Of Essentialism: Gender And Warfare In Christa Wolf's Major Writings, Sabine Wilke
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The relationship between memory, writing, and the question of how we define ourselves as gendered subjects is at the center of Christa Wolf's work. Her literary production, starting in the late fifties with a rather naive and un-selfconscious love story, has undergone a dramatic shift. In her more recent texts, Wolf sets out to rewrite classical mythology to make us aware of those intersections in the history of Western civilization at which women were made economically and psychologically into objects. The present essay seeks to locate Christa Wolf's evolving conception of gender and warfare within the contemporary theoretical discussion on …
From Exile To Affirmation: The Poetry Of Joseph Brodsky, David Patterson
From Exile To Affirmation: The Poetry Of Joseph Brodsky, David Patterson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This article examines the relation between the exile of the poet from his homeland and the "exile of the word." The notion of the exile of the word pertains to the poet's problem of re-introducing meaning to the word—an excess of meaning that conveys more than the word can normally convey—through his poetry. Showing how the poet in exile becomes a poet of exile, the article examines what poetry has to do with a larger difficulty of exile and homelessness in human life. Brodsky's poetry, the article argues, addresses this very difficulty. The article concludes that the human capacity to …