Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

“All Data Is Credit Data,” Or, On Close Reading As A Reciprocal Process In Digital Knowledge Environments, John Hunter

Faculty Journal Articles

The new knowledge environments of the digital age are often described as places where we are all closely read, with our buying habits, location, and identities available to advertisers, online merchants, the government, and others through our use of the Internet. This is represented as a loss of privacy in which these entities learn about our activities and desires, using means that were unavailable in the pre-digital era. This article argues that the reciprocal nature of digital networks means 1) that the privacy issues that we face online are not radically different from those of the pre-Internet era, and 2) …

World Literatures In Secondary School Curricula In Iran, Massih Zekavat

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "World Literatures in Secondary School Curricula in Iran" Massih Zekavat argues that the inclusion and teaching of works of world literature is significant at the secondary school level because it introduces students to a dialogic and polyphonic world where difference is appreciated. Further, Zekavat posits that the pedagogical use of reading world literatures would be the case in particular in countries and cultures where essentialist and homogenizing objectives and practices of culture prevail. Zekavat's argumentation is based on the recent revival of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur in the U.S. as a pedagogical tool and practice of reading …

Comparative Literature In Chinese: A Survey Of Books Published 2000-2013, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Variation Theory And Comparative Literature: A Book Review Article About Cao's Work, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, And The Humanities, Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, and the Humanities" Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser discusses comparative literature in the context of cultural studies and aesthetic education. Her starting point is the complexity of comparative literature as an academic discipline propelled by intellectual curiosity for what lies across the barriers which stand in the way of understanding and enjoying creative acts of all kinds everywhere and at all times. Literary and artistic investigations which focus on aesthetic values lead us towards general aesthetics, analyses which situate the arts and literature in context with little regard for aesthetic criteria take us …

European Comparative Literature As Humanism, Bernard Franco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "European Comparative Literature as Humanism" Bernard Franco presents an epistemological reflection on comparative literature in the context of the evolution of the relationships between different forms of knowledge. Franco argues that in the late nineteenth century the notion of the "humanities" replaced that of the "human sciences," but that we have recently returned to a humanist concept of knowledge linked to ethics. Franco focuses on the origins of this critical reflection about the nature of knowledge and on the debate in the Romantic period between rational and non-rational forms of knowledge. The idéologues (Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, …

Literary Aspects In New Media Art Works, Narvika Bovcon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Literary Aspects in New Media Art Works" Narvika Bovcon discusses examples of new media literature in the works of new media artists Jaka Železnikar and Srečo Dragan. While Železnikar is primarily a net artist who authors new media poetry and online linguistic interventions, the literary segments in Dragan's work are based in conceptual art and video art and he uses them to initiate a happening. Bovcon argues that studies of new media literature — of those works which require a readerly perception — should take time and attempt to capture the general flavor of such works which …

Artaud, Barney, And The Total Work Of Art From Avant-Garde To The Posthuman, Matteo Colombi, Massimo Fusillo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Artaud, Barney, and the Total Work of Art from Avant-Garde to the Posthuman" Matteo Colombi and Massimo Fusillo discuss the aesthetics of Matthew Barney's video-performance art and the theater of Antonin Artaud. Colombi and Fusillo highlight the characteristics of the posthuman: the rejection of Western anthropocentrism and its subversion through hybridization with human, animal, and mechanical elements, the incorporation of Dionysian imagery of the body, and a commitment to the idea of the total work of art in its blending of different artistic mediums, and indeed, of art and life. Using examples from Artaud's writings on theater, …

On World Literatures, Comparative Literature, And (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "On World Literatures, Comparative Literature, and (Comparative) Cultural Studies" Ning Wang argues that cultural studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature, but also because it challenges the discipline of comparative literature. On the other hand, (comparative) cultural studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of a sort of new comparative literature. Wang illustrates how some of the representative Anglo-American comparatists are now doing cultural criticism while still engaging in comparative literature and they paved the way for …

Interculturality And World Literary System(S), Jola Škulj

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Interculturality and World Literary System(s)" Jola Škulj proposes a new framework for studying planetary exchanges of literatures, one that subverts the systemic distinction between centers and peripheries. She advocates a model that can yield the analytical conceptualization and hermeneutic understanding of literary phenomena and their historical reality in the complexity of semiotic traces, in actual distinctiveness of formal and textual deposits, and in interconnections of poetological impacts. She argues that literary facts seen in such intricate networks of mutual intertextual phenomenology and reaccentuations attest to their character of permanent mobility, evident instability, and constant inventive reformulation of …

Positive Uncertainty And The Ethos Of Comparative Literature, Brigitte Le Juez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Positive Uncertainty and the Ethos of Comparative Literature" Brigitte Le Juez examines the continuous difficulty comparatists have with the lack of definition of the discipline and explores possible new avenues for tackling the problem. Le Juez argues that "uncertainty" recognized as a tenet of comparative literature should not be unheeded, but embraced in order to shift the focus from the idea that comparative objects and methods are the defining elements of the discipline and envisage them as the aims and results of an ethos. Le Juez posits that when "indiscipline" and "serendipity" are added to the notion …

World Literature(S) And Comparative Literature: A Book Review Article Of Books Published In English And German 2011-2013, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Comparativist Imagology And The Phenomenon Of Strangeness, Małgorzata Świderska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Comparativist Imagology and the Phenomenon of Strangeness" Małgorzata Świderska presents an imagological-hermeneutic conception of the interpretation of national, ethnic, and/or (inter)cultural strangeness in literary works. Świderska develops her concept of comparativist imagology from the work of Paul Ricoeur's concept of multiple étrangeté and from the work of Jean-Marc Moura. Świderska applies her conceptualization of comparativist imagology to Heimito von Doderer's "Divertimento No I" and Das letzte Abenteuer. Ein Ritter-Roman.

Periodization, Comparative Literature, And Italian Modernism, Donata Meneghelli

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Periodization, Comparative Literature, and Italian Modernism" Donata Meneghelli discusses why periodization is one of the most problematic issues in literary studies. Following a discussion of literary history and comparative literature, Meneghelli focuses on the notion of Italian modernism which has recently begun to circulate in literary studies referring to Italian literature of the beginning of the twentieth century. Meneghelli argues that Italian modernism is a paradoxical and contradictory notion which calls into question the relationships between literary history, geography (literary, cultural, political), and comparative literature while at the same time challenging the new framework of world literature(s) …

Desai's Hullabaloo In The Guava Orchard As Global Literature, Erin M. Fehskens

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard as Global Literature" Erin M. Fehskens argues that scholars readily recognize Kiran Desai's Booker Prize winning second novel The Inheritance of Loss as world literature following David Damrosch's and Franco Moretti's notions. However, Desai's first novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is often overlooked. Although Hullabaloo's focus is narrow and local, its allegorical implications encode the processes of globalization and resistance to it into the novel. Thus, the novel can be read as an example of global literature, which uses the discontinuous nature of allegory to critique the de-differentiating practices …

The Paradox Of Testimony And First-Person Plural Narration In Jensen's We, The Drowned, Divya Dwivedi, Henrik Skov Nielsen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "The Paradox of Testimony and First-Person Plural Narration in Jensen's We, the Drowned" Divya Dwivedi and Henrik Skov Nielsen posit that the analysis of narratives of limit-experiences provides insight into literature's relation with the formation of community and subjectivity. Testimonies such as Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and other narratives of survivors of concentration camps, especially the Muselmänner, focus on aspects of community. Dwivedi and Nielsen discuss how in Carsten Jensen's novel We, the Drowned group identity, intersubjectivity, and the possibility for and mode of testimony about traumatic events are narrated. Although Jensen's …

Translation And Self-Translation In Today's (Im)Migration Literature, Anastasija Gjurčinova

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Translation and Self-Translation in Today's (Im)migration Literature" Anastasija Gjurčinova discusses contemporary (im)migration literature in Europe as a phenomenon that offers new opportunities for comparative literary research especially as related to the issue of the translation and reception of literary works. Gjurčinova considers (im)migrant authors who write in their native tongue and then translate their works — or have them translated — into the adopted language and others who prefer writing their literary works directly in the latter language. Through references to the work of relevant scholars of comparative and world literature Gjurčinova elaborates on these issues by …

Poetry And The Ethics Of Global Citizenship, Monique-Adelle Callahan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Poetry and the Ethics of Global Citizenship" Monique-Adelle Callahan argues that the recent work of poets Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa suggests the emergence of an archetypal poet who transgresses boundaries of place and time through measured wandering amongst cultures and histories. Graham and Komunyakaa offer a poetic discourse on the relationship between poetry and citizenship in an increasingly global world. Through a close reading of excerpts from Graham's 2012 Place and Komunyakaa's 2011 The Chameleon Couch, Callahan uses the paradigm of the poet-as-prophet to articulate the position of the poet vis-à-vis the geopolitical spaces she …

World Literatures And Romanian Literary Criticism, Caius Dobrescu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "World Literatures and Romanian Literary Criticism" Caius Dobrescu argues that the notion Weltliteratur of Goethe posits the concept of world literature as the conveyor of universal (i.e., cosmopolitan) skills of socio-cultural adaptation. The influence of this form of Weltliteratur on Romanian literary criticism is traceable from Westernization in the nineteenth century to the cultural dissent of the post-Stalinist era. Based on Norbert Elias's diffusionist theory of the civilizing process, Dobrescu contends that one of the role models of the Romanian literary scholar and critic in his/her capacity of intercultural mediator was the eighteenth-century philosophe in the tradition …