Comparative Literature Commons^™

Gendered Hate Speech And Political Discourse In Recent U.S. Elections And In Postsocialist Hungary, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gendered Hate Speech and Political Discourse in Recent U.S. Elections and in Postsocialist Hungary" Louise O. Vasvári illustrates gendered political discourse in the U.S. through a case study of the 2008 presidential campaign. While the campaign turned into a plebiscite on gender and sexual politics with Hillary Clinton and other female political figures depicted in the most traditionally misogynist terms, Barack Obama has in some leftist circles been seen as an empathetic figure who transcends both race and gender, although from the political right he has been attacked with racist and feminizing stereotyped invectives. In turn, in …

About Cultural Production: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Crowther And Grigorian, Baldwin, And Rigaud-Drayton, Kathleen Waller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Parallel Women Characters And Femininity In Durrell's And Kazantzakis's Work, Helena González-Vaquerizo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Parallel Women Characters and Femininity in Durrell's and Kazantzakis's Work" Helena González-Vaquerizo discusses Nikos Kazantzakis's and Lawrence Durrell's fiction with regard their narration of women protagonists. Further, considering both writers' role in a modernist literature and issues of gender identity, González-Vaquerizo examines the special relationship women have with nature. For both writers, the female and the feminine seem to be the pagan descendant of a powerful goddess and women's carnality is seen as key to man's spiritual experience. González-Vaquerizo posits that a comparative approach to Durrell and Kazantzakis both with regard to their biographies and their novels …

Mcsweeney's And The Challenges Of The Marketplace For Independent Publishing, Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, Pieter Vermeulen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "McSweeney's and the Challenges of the Marketplace for Independent Publishing" Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen argue that the artistic projects of the US-American author, activist, and editor Dave Eggers are marked by a tension between the desire for independence and the demands of brand-building. The article offers a close analysis of the materiality and paratexts of one particular issue of McSweeney's, the literary magazine of which Eggers is the founding editor. Both the content and the apologetically aggressive tone of Eggers's editorial statements betray a deep unease with the inability to inhabit a …

Animals Speaking In The Fiction Of Jin And Malamud, Matt Prater

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Animals Speaking in the Fiction of Jin and Malamud" Matt Prater discusses "The Jewbird" by Bernard Malamud and "A Composer and His Parakeets" by Ha Jin as transcultural texts which involve non-human animals as major characters. Jin and Malamud examine differing representations of animal language and how these representations connect to the politics of both interspecies and transnational relationships. By applying critical animal studies and transnational discourse and by charting the interlinking of other-ings by theorists such as Carol Adams and Susan Kappeler, Prater attempts to show that animals figure into transcultural and transnational discourses in ways …

Hearing The Cry In Black Diasporic And Latina/O Poetics, Rachel E. Ellis Neyra

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Hearing the Cry in Black Diasporic and Latina/o Poetics" Rachel Ellis Neyra expands upon Edouard Glissant's notion of "the cry of the Plantation" and shows how to listen for it in literary arrangement of Derek Walcott, Piri Thomas, Pedro Pietri, Ralph Ellison, Miguel Algarín, and James Baldwin. Ellis Neyra also reads musical lyrics by Oscar D'León and Billie Holiday and the melodic nuances of salsa, jazz, the blues, and bomba for how they sound out what she calls the New World Cry, a mnemonic figure of the Plantation of the Americas and a metaphor for how estrangement …

Social Science Journals In Interwar Romania And The U.S. Model Of Sociology, Valentina Pricopie

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Social Science Journals in Interwar Romania and the U.S. Model of Sociology" Valentina Pricopie analyzes the US-American presence in two journals of the Bucharest School of Sociology between the two world wars, as well as the information provided by US articles with regard to the US-American sociological model and its developments. Pricopie's analysis suggests strong academic connections, cooperation, and consistent exchange of academic knowledge between the two schools of thought. The analysis is based a quantitative study of the archives including the frequency of occurrence of items in thirty-one issues of Arhiva pentru Ştiinţa şi Reforma Socială …

Going The Distance: Themes Of The Hero In Disney's Hercules, Amy Elizabeth Burchfield

Theses and Dissertations

Disney's Hercules is an apt modern reception of the ancient mythology of Herakles, acknowledging ancient and modern sources surrounding three types of classical hero: the archetypal hero, influenced by the ideas of Joseph Campbell; the Pan-Hellenic hero, distilled from ancient Greek exempla of heroism from epic and other genres of ancient literature; and the tragic hero, inspired by the heroic criteria presented in Aristotle's Poetics. By adapting these heroic types from their traditional ancient source myths, Disney's Hercules produces a new, contemporary definition of heroism—one informed by modern, Western family values. This adaptation renews the power of the myth of …

Conference Report: Romola And Felix, Institute Of English Studies, 23 November 2013., A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's two Marmite novels - given their reputations, not everyone tries them, and when they do, they often leave them only partially digested - Romola (1862-3), the one she famously said aged her, and Felix Holt (1866), the one with that involved legal plot, were the focus of last year's George Eliot Conference sponsored by the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Nevertheless, despite their uneven appeal, the Conference drew a tolerably-sized audience. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) once again organized the Conference, bringing together a group of speakers who variously dealt …

Blood And Water: Unity In The Gospel Of John (1), Matthew G. Ancell, Dr. V. Stanley Benfell

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The stated purpose of the Gospel of John is that the reader or hearer “may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20.31) (2). Regardless of whether the Fourth Gospel is written to a community of believers or to convert the unbelieving, as is debated, this verse points to life through Jesus Christ as the focus of the book. Each of the four Gospels offers a testimony of Jesus as the Christ. Culminating in the passion and resurrection narratives, each version presents a unique …

Carmen De Bello Actiaco (Pherc 817): The Illumination Of A Two Thousand Year-Old Papyrus With A 21st Century Eureka, Stewart Tanner, Dr. Roger Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The days when scholars of the Classics refuted the ability of technology to contribute to their discipline are a memory of the past. From archaeology to papyrology the study of the Ancients through the lens of tomorrow advances daily. Such was my experience with the revolutionary breakthrough of multi-spectral imaging (MSI) on a remnant from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.: A charred, millennia-old piece of papyrus (PHerc 817) from Herculaneum, Italy treating the famous Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. From Provo to Palo Alto, from Naples to Oxford, the ORCA Grant provided me with the necessary …

Liu Yuxi In The Paradox Of The Sign, Kyle David Anderson, Dr. Steven P. Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Western perspectives on Chinese literature and poetics have generally been overly mystified (or even nonexistent). This fledgling view of the knowledge and literary achievements of China is to be anticipated during the beginnings of a cultural exchange between the East and the West.

Something Written In The State Of Denmark: Contemporary Danish Literature, Kevin C. Brimhall, Dr. Steven Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The works of such well-known authors as H.C. Andersen and Karen Blixen are relatively accessible in the original Danish, but have the disadvantage of failing to reflect contemporary spellings, syntax, and word usage common in present-day Danish. Like all languages, Danish is constantly changing and the passage of over a century has certainly left its mark on Danish literature. Unlike, older Danish works, contemporary Danish literary works are relatively hard to come by, which poses a problem for those interested in learning Danish as its written and spoken today. Consequently, the purpose of this project was to compile and supplement …

A Downright Dilemma For Danish Ducklings: The Development Of Additional Instructional Resources For Byu’S Danish Program, George Bailey, Dr. Steven Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Danish is an important language for many who wish to make a study of family history and genealogy. Opportunities to learn Danish are very rare, and BYU is one of only several universities in the United States that offers courses in Danish. Due to this scarce availability of Danish classes, resources for Danish teaching and learning are likewise difficult to come by. To this point in time, BYU has been using Danish for Ducklings for its first-year course. However, this textbook not only has an insufficient amount of material to cover the first year, but it is also geared towards …

The Influence Of Dorothea Lange On American Culture, Heather Heyman, Dr. Allen J. Christenson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When America experienced the Great Depression during the 1930’s, a large number of people struggled to survive each day. Countless men and women were unemployed, and therefore, had no means of providing for their families. The migrant workers of the west were hit the hardest, and their former lives of simplicity became a serious fight for existence. At this same time, however, a portrait photographer in San Francisco, named Dorothea Lange, captured city conditions with her camera. Out of curiosity and boldness, Lange began to take pictures of citizens in San Francisco. These photographs documented the results of the chaotic …

Baroque Influence In Tongan Church Music, Sara Black, Dr. Larry Shumway

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Tongan culture, music is very much a part of the natural expression of the people. In the Western tradition, musical experience is often limited to a setting in which an isolated group of performers presents a work to the general public, who observe as an outside audience. In Tongan culture, members of the general public are both audience and performer. Large groups of people are gathered together to present a work of both music and dance. In this setting, performance is not so much dependent upon isolated skills developed by a few, but it is a more democratic experience …

Navigating 18th Century Haiku: Translating The Poetry Of Yosa Buson, Allan Persinger

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

One of the difficulties in translating the poetry of Yosa Buson, an 18th century Japanese poet and painter is negotiating the cultural differences between time and place, and still writing a translation that moves the audience within the limits of a haiku without doing any violence to the original text. My presentation is on the difficulties in translating a literary master from the Edo Era, Yosa Buson, especially when the poems contain embedded cultural references that the average American reader would not be familiar with as it is important to convey all of the information in a meaningful way and …

Turning Into A Shadow: Textual Management Of Sexual Violence In Taketori Monogatari, Otilia C. Milutin

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

This paper is an integral part of an ongoing doctoral research which examines the varied textual representations of sexual violence in Heian and Kamakura monogatari. The first part of this dissertation, opening with the section presented here, addresses the three mid-ninth to mid-tenth century texts, Taketori, Utsuho and Ochikubo monogatari, whose representations or misrepresentations of sexual violence shaped Murasaki Shikibu’s own, in the eleventh century Genji monogatari.

The present study focuses on the Taketori text and its management of sexual violence; it traces the work’s textual lineage and underlines the consistent and sustained attempts to sanitize its content …

Henry David Thoreau: Perpetuating The Myth Of Paradoxical Environmentalism, Rachelle Koenen, Dr. Kerry Soper

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The knowledge that I have of Thoreau began with an interest early in my life, developed into a Thesis Proposal one year ago, and intensified with research at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. In addition to the research I did there, I also spent upwards of 40 hours reading and talking with professors about this man. Initially I wanted to discover the “true” Thoreau—find out what he was really saying and disprove all other theories—but I quickly realized that the subject was too complex and that at best all I could to would be to present the complexity and do …

Herculaneum Disegni, Nick Frederick, Julie Frederick, Dr. Roger T. Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Thanks to the BYU multi-spectral images, scholars around the world have been able to access the Herculaneum scrolls without having to travel to Naples. Those images greatly facilitated scholarship by both their readability and availability. Because of the availability of the multi-spectral images, the necessity and benefit of having other related resources available in digital from became apparent.