English Language and Literature | Open Access Articles

Othello And The Political Theology Of Jealousy, Eric B. Song

English Literature Faculty Works

This essay revisits Othello’s jealousy to detail the politico-theological significance of this dramatic affect. In the Hebrew Bible, jealousy maintains a covenant between God and a holy nation. When Pauline teaching defines marriage as an index of Christ’s love, this redefinition promises to replace exclusivity with a supposedly universal truth. Yet jealousy persists to reveal a clash between individual realities and corporate truths. Jealousy performs this by underscoring the fictive nature of the identification of a husband with Christ. Before The Winter’s Tale relates the problems of jealousy to a hereditary monarchy, Othello locates them within a republic. The Venetian …

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Diasporic Longings, Bakirathi Mani

English Literature Faculty Works

Using diaspora as a framework for reading Asian American literature expands the geographical and temporal contours of what it means to be Asian American. Although late-twentieth-century US popular culture was marked by multicultural ideologies of American citizenship, “diaspora” captures another way of thinking about Asian Americans: as immigrants who are subject to multiple projects of nationalism, and who embody diverse forms of citizenship. Whereas writers like Bharati Mukherjee reproduce dominant ideologies of US exceptionalism and multicultural citizenship, for writers such as Meena Alexander, the production of diasporic locality ripples across generations, as she ties together South Asia with North America, …

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African American Celebrity Auto/Biographies, Anthony S. Foy

English Literature Faculty Works

Anthony Foy’s chapter asks how do we approach the overdetermined narrative of the African American celebrity as a modern variant of African American autobiography, rather than simply dismissing it for its lack or artistry, activism, or authenticity? Foy observes that (1) the Black celebrity narrative recounts the emergence, circulation, reception, and transformation of the star’s image while also registering the synedcochic function of the star’s racialized body; (2) it features the sites, activities, practices, and products of consumer culture in order to ratify the star’s status as exemplary consumer and alluring commodity; and (3) it commodifies authenticity by promising to …

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Contending Discourses Of Black Autobiography: Respectability, Authenticity, And Masculinity, Anthony S. Foy

English Literature Faculty Works

After historicizing the politics of racial representation in the slave narrative, this article considers how race, gender, and class intersect historically in the autobiographical production of Black men in the United States. At the dawn of the Jim Crow era, Black autobiography conformed to a cultural politics of racial synecdoche, which avowed that racial progress depended on the respectability of esteemed individuals. Dominated by aspirational figures who presented themselves as racial emblems, Black autobiography became closely aligned with the imperatives of Black middle-class formation, actuating a discrete form of racial publicity that erected disciplinary boundaries around Black self-presentation and silenced …

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Othello And The Political Theology Of Jealousy, Eric B. Song

English Literature Faculty Works

Diasporic Longings, Bakirathi Mani

English Literature Faculty Works

African American Celebrity Auto/Biographies, Anthony S. Foy

English Literature Faculty Works

Contending Discourses Of Black Autobiography: Respectability, Authenticity, And Masculinity, Anthony S. Foy

English Literature Faculty Works