American Studies Commons^™

Suffering And Climate Change Narratives, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Suffering and Climate Change Narratives" Simon C. Estok begins with a brief survey of definitional issues involved with the term “suffering” and argues that there has been a relative lack of theoretical attention to suffering in climate change narratives, whether literary or within mainstream media. Estok shows that suffering, far from being singular, is a multivalent concept that is gendered, classed, raced, and, perhaps above all, pliable. It has social functions. One of the primary reasons for the failure of climate change narratives to effect real changes, Estok argues, is that they often carry the functions of …

The Punctum In History: Representing The M(Other)’S Death In Peter Handke’S A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Hivren Demir Atay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article aims to discuss how Handke’s autobiographical narrative, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972), stages the writer’s literary project through a neutral account of his mother’s suicide. Telling the story of his mother, who witnessed the Second World War and the nazi regime, Handke narrates the traumatic history of an Austrian town along with his own suffering. Concentrating on his attempt at a distanced language and his questioning of history as an objective fact, the article suggests that Handke’s perception of death and mourning parallels his understanding of the acts of writing and reading. Drawing particularly on Barthes’s concept …

The Different Representation Of Suffering In The Two Versions Of The Vegetarian, Young-Hyun Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “The Different Representation of Suffering in the two versions of The Vegetarian” the author examines how different the representation of suffering in the original and translated versions of The Vegetarian and explores the reasons for this difference. The author in particular refers to representative episodes which the translator’s strategy distorts even the central concepts of suffering in the original work. Her translated version results in critical misrepresentation of suffering and violence in the original version.

Salam Neighbor: Syrian Refugees Through The Camera Lens, Lava Asaad

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper examines the documentary Salam Neighbor (2015), which celebrates the will of Syrian refugee women who are displaced in Jordan. The collective experience of the refugees portrayed in the documentary solicits a reaction from the Western viewer. To counteract the images of refugees in the media, documentaries can be a good alternative for mass media, which has been perpetuating a binary of the West and the Rest. The argument tackles the issue of this new representation of refugees in documentaries within a postcolonial paradigm of how we represent or speak to/with the Other in our technological age, as well …

Introduction To Suffering, Endurance, Understanding: New Discourses Within Philosophy And Literature, Douglas S. Berman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Literature is generally seen as depicting the lives of human subjects through their unique narratives. And that, while its endpoint may be universal, it is typically grounded in the specificity of a human being (or, occasionally, an animal). Philosophy is tasked with providing the foundational cognitive tools to grasp the meaning of experience for the whole. In Hegelian terms, it unfolds the history of the concept. Yet, as George Steiner, Jacques Derrida, and other recent authors have shown, both philosophy – along with its agonistic cousin, religion -- evoke literary themes, rhetorics, and struggles. Over the past fifty years, Continental …

Holding The Line: A Dynamic Salary Cap For European Association Football, Kavi Sachania

Pop Culture Intersections

European association football’s domination by a select few teams with the plentiful resources to buy talent exposes how a sports league can develop runaway disparity without the presence of any wage spending controls. With the introduction of the UEFA Financial Fair Play rules to keep teams from furthering their debt, much discussion has ensued on whether these financial laws need to be expanded to address competitive imbalance. While salary cap systems have been proposed before, none have been able to balance the interests of owners, fans, players, and regulators within the European Union. I plan to add to the discussion …

The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Business And Mental Health, Madison Bregman

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will cover the relationship between entrepreneurship, business and mental health. As entrepreneurship has become increasingly popular in culture, many people aspire to be entrepreneurs. However, the "darker side" of it - the mental health challenges that often come with it - is less talked about and can have a significant impact on the "success" of an entrepreneur.

The Effects Of Scrolling: Social Media Takeover, Bianca Mancini

Pop Culture Intersections

The present research and argument examines how social media (influencers) negatively affect individuals by causing envy and low self esteem. Results suggest that many factors play a role, including time spent on social media and the individual’s level of self-esteem. To support my background research I will pull from my personal experience and a study I conducted. From these results, I have determined that we as a society have to take envy, low self-esteem, age, gender, and location into consideration when we are examining the link between mental health and social media. In the study, I will show that females …

Assistance From Alexa: The Social And Material Benefits Of The Internet Of Things, Sara Bunyard

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will apply the uses and gratifications theory to examine why people adopt products from the Internet of Things. Previous studies have applied the uses and gratifications theory to analyze why consumers have adopted forms of new media and technology, including social media and the Internet of Things. There are also many articles on the potential flaws of the Internet of Things, especially privacy concerns. This article will expand on this research by combining the benefits and concerns about the Internet of Things to asses user satisfaction. It argues that the Internet of Things satisfies user needs successfully despite …

Video Games And Social Relation, Feiyang Yu

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be discussing how multi-player games encourage social interactions. It will over multiple games as examples to illustrate the argument. The article has two focus: game mechanics and player psychology.

Influences Of Religion In Rap Music, Joey Rubino

Pop Culture Intersections

This article covers the intersection of religion and rap music. It covers many popular rappers of the current era and how their success has been bolstered by religious influence in their music.

The Impact Of The 90’S-2000’S Boy Bands, Tamia Braggs

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering the impact that top tier boy bands, The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC made in the 90's with Masculinity as well as Marketing aspects.

The Porn Crisis: This Generations Sexual Outlet, Daniela Williams

Pop Culture Intersections

With the development of technology, we opened a world, not only to new ideas and innovations but also to the world of pornography. Pornography has invaded our culture, in music, television shows, movies even social media. Advocates for the production and consumption of pornography claim pornography to be a form of self-expression that is healthy and essential to discovering their sexual experiences. However, this paper argues that the lack of regulation is contributing to the damaging effects pornography has on the consumers’ psyche and behavior, it is also factoring into our society’s decline of public health. This claim is supported …

Effects Of American Pop Culture On The Political Stability Of The Arab Spring!, Mina Alsadoon

Pop Culture Intersections

The Arab Spring was an act of rebellion by the youth to ask for freedom of speech, a relief from the dictatorship era, and to demand basic civil rights. It all started in Tunisia when a policewoman slapped a young boy in public when he was trying to sell merch on the sidewalk to support his family, the boy resulted to burning himself in public as its a shameful thing that a woman hit a man. That in a way started a revolution to enlighten people's minds, and be conscience to reality. In 2009, the Middle East started to get …

September 2019, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shabbat in the Woods; From the Rabbi; Preident's Message; Book Group; Announcements; Community Notices

Contemporary Stories Of Female Development And The Outer Limits Of Maternal Sexuality In Susan Choi’S My Education And Amy Sohn’S Prospect Park West, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

While liberal sexuality has been integrated into contemporary discursive understandings of female possibilities, barriers remain to representing mothers as sexual beings. This essay explores maternal representations in Choi’s My Education (2013) and Sohn’s Prospect Park West (2009) that challenge cultural ideals of good motherhood and invite scrutiny of normative paths and goals of female development. These 21^st-century American novels confront and even embrace active maternal sexuality but retreat at the boundary of the maternal/sexual breast to allow protagonists in contemporary alterations of female stories of development to achieve maturity through acceptance of the ideal of good motherhood .Each …

Oral History Project: Black Families Of Yalobusha County, Jessica Wilkerson

About the Project

Document presented to persons interested in participating in the oral history project. Sections included: who we are, what is oral history?, what happens during an interview?, and contact information.

Amjambo Africa! (September 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue... Maine’s Way of Life................Page 9

ILAP Statement ....................Page 16

Grace: A Reflection On The Novels Of Marilynne Robinson, Elayne Apol Heynen

Pro Rege

Editor's Note: Elayne Apol Heynen wrote this paper for a Kuyper Scholars Seminar to precede the Prodigal Love of God Conference, held at Dordt, April 2019, and co-sponsored by the Lilly Fellowship Program as a regional conference.

Through The Mouth: An Essay On Appetite And Ecocide, Iemanja Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of mourning and resilient joy in the midst of ecocide. Resisting the pervasive classification of the human as inherently destructive, I look to appetite as an aesthetic procedure that includes a material desire for intimacy with the more-than-human. My study considers the intersections of aesthetic production (primarily twentieth-century poetry and visual art), climate science, geology, cultural studies, theory within the contemporary nonhuman turn, and Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. I employ an interdisciplinary approach, which helps me explore the various ways that literal and figurative appetite can be a way of sensing and exploring …