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Modern Migration In Two Arabic Novels, Ikram Masmoudi Jun 2010

Modern Migration In Two Arabic Novels, Ikram Masmoudi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Modern Migration in Two Arabic Novels" Ikram Masmoudi proposes that twentieth-century Arab fiction is marked by the theme of the journey in literal and figurative ways. This motif features the theme of departure and arrival through characters crossings borders from East to West and from the periphery to the center (i.e., the metropolis) in order to acquire knowledge, understanding, and empowerment and to get a sense of Western modernity. The departure and arrival of the main characters becomes the central aesthetic preoccupying with a focus on their arrival back home and their rediscovery of their own idea …


New Modernity, Transnational Women, And Spanish Cinema, Maria Van Liew Jun 2010

New Modernity, Transnational Women, And Spanish Cinema, Maria Van Liew

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "New Modernity, Transnational Women, and Spanish Cinema" Maria Van Liew discusses aspects of migration to Spain in the context of histories of colonialism, racism, and sexism as represented in Spanish filmic narration. The flow of human traffic defies two aspects of European modernity: Non-linear time is reflected in the cycle of arrival/return/return as the nation relies on liminal subjects to determine its status as a progressive "First World" nation and in the effort to align representations of these cultural encounters accordingly, illusions of autochthonous national identity formations become dependent on practices of inclusion and, at times, cooptation …


Political Modernism, Jabrā, And The Baghdad Modern Art Group, Nathaniel Greenberg Jun 2010

Political Modernism, Jabrā, And The Baghdad Modern Art Group, Nathaniel Greenberg

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Political Modernism, Jabrā, and the Baghdad Art Group" Nathaniel Greenberg discusses how the art and literature of the late Palestinian novelist Jabrā Ibrahīm Jabrā challenged the normative perception of Arab modernism both within and outside the Middle East. Greenberg evaluates the influence of French existentialism on Jabrā's political vision of modernism and discusses the impact and nature of existentialism on Jabrā and on the Middle East. Educated in Europe, Jabrā returned to the Middle East in 1948 to live permanently in Baghdad where he was a member of the influential Baghdad Modern Art Group, established in 1951 …


Haitian Zombie, Myth, And Modern Identity, Kette Thomas Jun 2010

Haitian Zombie, Myth, And Modern Identity, Kette Thomas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Haitian Zombie, Myth, and Modern Identity" Kette Thomas analyzes texts by Zora Neale Hurston, Alfred Metraux, and Wade Davis. In these narratives we are re-introduced to the zombie not as a metaphor for lost consciousness, but, rather, as a common system that replaces personal subjectivity with an influence alien to our natural development. The discourse on subjectivity has become a central focus in the modern era but attention to fiction in "third world" cultures is neglected because they are studied almost exclusively through historical, political, sociological, or anthropological lenses or because their collective identities leads scholars to …


Aesthetics, Nationalism, And The Image Of Woman In Modern Indian Art, Kedar Vishwanathan Jun 2010

Aesthetics, Nationalism, And The Image Of Woman In Modern Indian Art, Kedar Vishwanathan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Aesthetics, Nationalism, and the Image of Woman in Modern Indian Art" Kedar Vishwanathan discusses how developments in visual culture impacted India's configuration as nation. Between 1880-1945 in Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) a burgeoning visual culture developed in service of anti-colonial nationalism. Used as a method to imagine a nation free of colonial rule, in particular images of women proliferated in private and public spaces. Crucial to this development was the reformulations of modernity based on an ambivalent combination of British and Indian vernacular art. Vishwanathan focuses on how the female was appropriated for the cause of …


Introduction To New Modernities And The "Third World", Valerian Desousa, Jennifer E. Henton, Geetha Ramanathan Jun 2010

Introduction To New Modernities And The "Third World", Valerian Desousa, Jennifer E. Henton, Geetha Ramanathan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Modernity In Márquez And Feminism In Ousmane, Geetha Ramanathan Jun 2010

Modernity In Márquez And Feminism In Ousmane, Geetha Ramanathan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Modernity in Márquez and Feminism in Ousmane" Geetha Ramanathan analyzes Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Sembène Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood. Ramanthan argues that if Márquez presents the semblance of the signs of modernity as fantasy and delusion, Ousmane's investment in the train as an instrument of the future in realist terms seems to challenge the modernist dictum that imperialism can be challenged only through modernist decenterings and through tricking and trumping. Yet, Ousmane's refusal to engage in the hallucination of the modern in his novel offers us a version of modernity that …


Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Haiti, And Symbolic Migration, Jennifer E. Henton Jun 2010

Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Haiti, And Symbolic Migration, Jennifer E. Henton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Haiti, and Symbolic Migration" Jennifer E. Henton analyzes Edwidge Danticat's novel with Lacanian thought. It is assumed frequently that literatures of the non-West "arrive" when they move from political and didactic traditions to the "aesthetic" and experimental models that delve into the terrain of the psyche. In The Dew Breaker, the Haitian family's move to the U.S., executed self consciously, indicates loss in a different sense than lack. In the case of Denticat's novel, loss or lack represent not a source of anxiety that evokes matters read in a psychoanalytical framework; instead, Henton …


Bibliography Of Work In Modernity And "Third World" Studies, Valerian Desousa Jun 2010

Bibliography Of Work In Modernity And "Third World" Studies, Valerian Desousa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


The Anti-Colonial Revolutionary In Contemporary Bollywood Cinema, Vidhu Aggarwal Jun 2010

The Anti-Colonial Revolutionary In Contemporary Bollywood Cinema, Vidhu Aggarwal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Anti-Colonial Revolutionary in Contemporary Bollywood Cinema" Vidhu Aggarwal discusses several contemporary films including Rakesh Omprakash Mehra's Rang de Basanti with focus on the figure of the revolutionary hero. The Bollywood film is a cultural form that combines several aesthetic styles, from within India and from the outside. With its formal heterogeneity and as a product of one of India's largest cities, Mumbai Bollywood has had an ongoing fascination with "arrival," that is, with India's status as a contemporary nation-state. While some Bollywood films seem to celebrate fantasy scenarios of India's arrival on the global scene, at …


Philosophy Of Modernity And Development In Jamaica, Novella Z. Keith, Nelson W. Keith Jun 2010

Philosophy Of Modernity And Development In Jamaica, Novella Z. Keith, Nelson W. Keith

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Philosophy of Modernity and Development in Jamaica" Novella Z. Keith and Nelson W. Keith postulate that a combined philosophico-practical inquiry is necessary to reduce the systemic asymmetries found in the North-South divide and to promote global interdependence. Proceeding from a deconstruction of European-inflected modernity, Keith and Keith sketch an alternative epistemology of uncertainty and unknowability and illustrate aspects of these epistemologies in theories and practices of modernization and its counter movements, dependency, and underdevelopment while also using them to discuss current practices of an NGO they created, Edu-Tourism , to bridge global divides as experienced in Jamaica. …


Bassani's The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis And Italian "Queers", John Champagne Mar 2010

Bassani's The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis And Italian "Queers", John Champagne

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Italian 'Queers'" John Champagne argues for a reading of the novel as not gay, but queer. Champagne argues that such a reading strategy emphasizes the ways in which the novel deconstructs normative gender, sexual, and even religious identities in an attempt both to resist the tyranny of the normal and to cope with the trauma of the Italian Shoah. A psycho-analytically inflected queer theory in this instance gives us access to the complexity of the novel's portrayal of Italian Jewish identity in fascist Italy and opens up onto a reflection …


Literary Studies From Hermeneutics To Media Culture Studies, Siegfried J. Schmidt Mar 2010

Literary Studies From Hermeneutics To Media Culture Studies, Siegfried J. Schmidt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Studies from Hermeneutics to Media Culture Studies" Siegfried J. Schmidt discusses aspects of hermeneutics, the systemic and empirical (contextual) approach to literature and culture, radical constructivism, and his postulates for the field of media culture studies. Schmidt describes his understanding of the transformation of literary studies towards media culture studies in the context of overall developments of society. His argumentation with regard to move from hermeneutics to media culture studies offers the postulate that research ought to be empirical and contextual in order to foster intuition, invention, innovation, and socially relevant scholarship. He concludes that the …


Bibliography Of Siegfried J. Schmidt's Publications, Agata Anna Lisiak, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek Mar 2010

Bibliography Of Siegfried J. Schmidt's Publications, Agata Anna Lisiak, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Anti-Nationalism In Scott's Old Mortality, Montserrat Martínez García Mar 2010

Anti-Nationalism In Scott's Old Mortality, Montserrat Martínez García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anti-Nationalism in Scott's Old Mortality," Montserrat Martínez García examines national identity through war in Walter Scott's Old Mortality in order to illustrate that war was one of the main catalysts of nationhood and show, simultaneously, the disparity between the institutional and the popular attitude toward war. Martínez García pays attention to the way Scott portrayed war and identity and to what extent this literary representation coincided with or faced the uniform ideology of nationalism. Based on the historical background of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Martínez García analyses Scott's novel to uncover focus his narrative of cracks …


Literature, Theatre, And Estrangement: A Review Article Of New Work By Fanger, Jestrovic, And Robinson, Gregory Byala Mar 2010

Literature, Theatre, And Estrangement: A Review Article Of New Work By Fanger, Jestrovic, And Robinson, Gregory Byala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Peking Opera And Grotowski's Concept Of "Poor Theatre", Yao-Kun Liu Mar 2010

Peking Opera And Grotowski's Concept Of "Poor Theatre", Yao-Kun Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of 'Poor Theater'" Yao-kun Liu presents a comparative study of Peking opera and Western theater with special attention to Grotowski's concept. Explaining Peking opera's dramatic elements (such as gesture and body-movement) and theatrical devices (such as stage-setting, costume, and conventions) Liu elaborates on the universality and distinctions between Eastern and Western aesthetics of drama. As an attempt to reveal the speciality and uniqueness of Peking opera, Liu employs Jerzy Grotowski's notion of "poor theatre" in a context of Constantin Stanislavski's concept of empathy, Antonin Artaud's dramatic prophecy, and Peter Brook's notion of …


The Motif Of The Patient Wife In Muslim And Western Literature And Folklore, Mounira Monia Hejaiej Mar 2010

The Motif Of The Patient Wife In Muslim And Western Literature And Folklore, Mounira Monia Hejaiej

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Motif of the Patient Wife in Muslim and Western Literature and Folklore" Munira Hejaiej examines the tale of modern Tunisian tale of "Sabra" told by women to an all female audience. Hejaiej's analysis includes some of the tale's analogues from various linguistic and cultural contexts, including readings of the medieval variant written in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She argues that the comparative analysis provides us with a broader scope of interpretive paths in order to deconstruct essentialized readings of the tale, on the one hand, and to challenge previously accepted conventional boundaries between cultures on the other. …


The Making Of (Post)Colonial Cities In Central Europe, Agata Anna Lisiak Mar 2010

The Making Of (Post)Colonial Cities In Central Europe, Agata Anna Lisiak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Making of (Post)colonial Cities in Central Europe" Agata Anna Lisiak discusses some of the transformations taking place in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw after 1989. Lisiak proposes that Central European capitals are (post)colonial cities because their politics, cultures, societies, and economies have been shaped by two centers of power: the Soviet Union as the former colonizer, whose influence remains visible predominantly in architecture, infrastructure, social relations, and mentalities and Western culture and Western and/or global capital as the current colonizer, whose impact extends over virtually all spheres of urban life. Furthermore, the cities under scrutiny are …


Sartre, Marcuse, And The Utopian Project Today, Robert T. Tally Jr. Mar 2010

Sartre, Marcuse, And The Utopian Project Today, Robert T. Tally Jr.

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Sartre, Marcuse, and the Utopian Project Today," Robert T. Tally Jr. discusses the philosophical legacy of the May 1968 revolution in Paris with respect to the power of the imagination and the possibilities for utopian thought in our own time. Although the rhetoric of the 1968 militants may seem dated, the underlying theoretical and political concepts are surprisingly timely in the twenty-first century. Among these, existential angst or anxiety has perhaps a heightened salience in the era of globalization and of global economic crisis, and the utopian desire for a life without anxiety has become more pressing. …