Comparative Literature Commons^™

Mo Yan In Context: Nobel Laureate And Global Storyteller, Angelica Duran, Yuhan Huang

Purdue University Press Books

In 2012 the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.” The announcement marked the first time a resident of mainland China had ever received the award. This is the first English-language study of the Chinese writer’s work and influence, featuring essays from scholars in a range of disciplines, from both China and the United States. Its introduction, twelve articles, and epilogue aim to deepen and widen critical discussions of both a specific literary author and the globalization of Chinese literature …

African E-Government Research Landscape, Jean Vincent Fonou Dombeu, Nelson Rannyai

The African Journal of Information Systems

Over the past decade, African governments have followed the worldwide trends towards establishing e-government with the aim of improving public service delivery to citizens through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As a consequence, authors from academia, government departments and agencies, civil society, industry, non-governmental and international organizations have embarked into e-government research focusing on Africa. However, the state of the art of e-government research in Africa is poorly documented. This study analyzes the status of e-government research in Africa. A qualitative technique based on online searches and literature reviews is used to collect data that have addressed …

Interpreting Law: Jesus, The Lawyer, And The Parable Of The Good Samaritan, Calum M. Carmichael

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Conscience's De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen (The Lion Of Flanders) And Its Adaptation To Film By Claus, Gertjan Willems

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Conscience's De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders) and Its Adaptation to Film by Claus" Gertjan Willems discusses Hugo Claus's 1984 filmic adaptation of Hendrik Conscience's 1838 historical novel, a landmark in the history of the Flemish Movement. Willems's analysis is executed by means of a textual film analysis and archival research. Willems pays special attention to the Flemish-Dutch coproduction's complex relations with the national question. Despite various difficulties concerning Flemish nationalist sensitivities of the project, the producers wanted the film to be as faithful as possible to Conscience's novel. This resulted in an …

Translation As Relation And Glissant's Work, Sandra Bermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Translation as Relation and Glissant's Work" Sandra Bermann proposes that in today's complex world of migration, war, and globalization, translation among languages and cultures is everywhere evident. Indeed, as citizens of the twenty-first century, we inevitably think in and through translation. Yet we have only begun to explore its contemporary modes of operation, its challenges, and its promise for study. Bermann suggests ways to think about translation — its difficulties, as well as its promise. Looking first to some traditional views of translation, Bermann then turns to particular ways in which it might be recast in terms …

Literature And Science In Nineteenth-Century Realist Novels: A Book Review Article About Ambrière's And Bender's Work, Anne-Marie Reboul

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

New Work About Reading Poetry: A Book Review Article On Stafford's And Bohn's Work, Martyna Markowska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Love And Marriage In The Work Of Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, And Al-Razzaz, Qusai A.R. Al-Debyan, Shadi S. Neimneh

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Love and Marriage in the Work of Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, and al-Razzaz" Qusai A.R. Al-Debyan and Shadi S. Neimneh posit that love, marriage, and sexuality represent important aspects in Mu'nis al-Razzaz's 1997 novel Alive in the Dead Sea, Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki's 2000 novel Ghost Songs: A Palestinian Love Story, and Diana Abu-Jaber's 2003 short story "Madagascar." Issues of love, marriage, and sexuality in these texts suggest a rebellious attitude on the part of women protagonists against taboos of religion, politics, and sexuality and Abdul-Baki, Abu-Jaber, and al-Razzaz employ descriptions of sexual intimacy to reflect the social …

Trust-Based Learning And Its Importance In Intercultural Education, Clemens Seyfried

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Trust-Based Learning and Its Importance in Intercultural Education" Clemens Seyfried introduces the concept of "trust-based learning," an approach he developed for learning in an intercultural world and applied in primary and secondary education. The objective of the concept is the raising of opportunities students with (im)migrant background in education. Seyfried presents an overview of the educational situation of (im)migrants and ethnic minorities in the European Union with special focus on Austria, followed by a description of the said concept of trust-based learning including the results of a statistical survey conducted in Austria. The focus of the concept …

Arab Women Writers As Revolutionary Orators And Catalytic Agents Of Emancipation, Safaa S. Nasser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary Egyptian and Palestinian Women's Writing as 'Committed Literature'" Safaa S. Nasser discusses the role of Arab women writers whose works were harbingers of the Arab Spring of 2011. Nasser's analysis demonstrate that the majority of Arab women writers acted as agents of feminist action and social change through their critique of patriarchal, phallocentric domi-nation and through their call for a secular sensibility. Their works demonstrate the symbiotic relation-ship between political, national, and feminist struggle for equality between genders. To exemplify this revolutionary perspective, Nasser analyzes texts by Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Salwa Bakr, Saki-na Fuad, …

Postcolonial Studies In The Twenty-First Century: A Book Review Article About New Work By Ashcroft, Mendis, Mcgonegal, Mukerjee And Carrera Suárez, Durán Almarza, Menéndez Tarrazo, Alejandra Moreno

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Temporal Spaces In García Márquez's, Salih's, And Rushdie's Novels, Adrienne D. Vivian

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Temporal Spaces in García Márquez's, Salih's, and Rushdie's Novels" Adrienne D. Vivian discusses the significance of time in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. While culturally distinct to one another, in each novel temporal space is narrated as a means to express and explore postcolonial identity. Vivian examines the connections between time and memory, history, and nation in each of the novels and the ways postcolonial authors use time as a device to mark the crossroads of precolonial past …

Time, Photography, And Optical Technology In Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Tetyana Lyaskovets

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Time, Photography, and Optical Technology in Nabokov's Speak, Memory" Tetyana Lyaskovets discusses how Vladimir Nabokov narrates time in his autobiography by invoking photography and optical instruments. Photography and optical technology function in Speak, Memory as metaphors and probe the limits of chronological time. Nabokov portrays time as personal and reversible time that collapses the past and the present and allows one to glimpse the future. Because this temporal collapse is not possible physically but, as Nabokov believes, can be achieved through one's will, he engages optical technologies which provide a spatial form for his project to …

Review Article About U.S. Comparative Literature Journals Published In 2013, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Queering Masturbation In Lorde's Life And Writing, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Queering Masturbation in Lorde's Life and Writing" Eric Sipyinyu Njeng discusses masturbation in Audre Lorde's life and works to signal an important aspect of her oeuvre often neglected in scholarship. Lorde stands out among prominent queer queens by demonstrating theory corporeally thereby going beyond mere theory and positing her body as a space of complex sexual passions. When Judith Butler speaks of gender as performative rather than embodied, Lorde theorizes and foregrounds this in her works and self and celebrates a sexual matrix that ranges from heterosexuality to homosexuality to auto-sexuality. Lorde places masturbation between the binary …

Greenberg's Prose And Poetry About World War I, Chanita Goodblatt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Greenberg's Prose and Poetry about World War I" Chanita Goodblatt analyzes the literary response of Uri Zvi Greenberg to the war. His volume of poetry Krieg oyf der Erd— largely untranslated to English — can be read as part of a multicultural literary response to World War I, particularly in juxtaposition with the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Goodblatt posits that a study of shared esthetic strategies and literary traditions underlines the way in which Greenberg created an "alienated wanderer" who witnesses and stands helpless in the face of the violence and destruction of …

Marriage In The Short Stories Of Chekhov, Mark Richard Purves

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Marriage in the Short Stories of Chekhov" Mark Richard Purves explores Anton Chekhov's often occurring depiction of marriage. Purves posits that Chekhov's depiction of the experience of marriage raises important ontological questions about the core features of family life such as what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife, and the degree of relatedness between them. Chekhov elaborates on what he sees as matrimony's central antinomy, namely that the wedding of one individual to another produces loneliness, an absence of intimacy, and a kind of alienation so acute it causes love …

Postmodernist Poetics And Narratology: A Review Article About Mchale's Scholarship, Biwu Shang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Utopian Literature From The Sixteenth Century To Present Day, Lisa Sikkink

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and George Orwell’s 1984 are all works of utopian literature. Although they were written during different time periods, the issues they explore are remarkably similar. My research project explores such ideas as literature, sex and reproduction, society, and family life in these utopian works in order to demonstrate these affinities.

Lessons In Liminal Space: Borders As Pedagogical Tools In No Country For Old Men, Steven Norton

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

As scholars continue to explore the territories created by burgeoning interdisciplinarity and ever-growing global networks, the concept of borders become a topic of increased theoretical and pedagogical discussion. Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men, set at the Texas-Mexico border, provides an opportunity to explore the liminal nature of borders and their role in identity formation. The novel allows us to embrace the fluidity of borders and see, as Gayatri Spivak argues, that “we are made by the forces moving about the world” (3), rather than divided by them. Throughout No Country for Old Men, McCarthy posits that borders …