Digital Commons Network^™

Towards A Symbiotic Coexistence Of Comparative Literature And World Literature, Jüri Talvet

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Towards a Symbiotic Coexistence of Comparative Literature and World Literature" Jüri Talvet postulates that comparative literature has really never enjoyed a pivotal or central status in the broad field of literary studies, yet at the same time specialized studies of separate literary traditions have not been able to fill numerous gaps in the understanding of literary creation as a broader cultural phenomenon influencing (although often invisibly) the world-view and axiological attitudes of entire societies and vast communities of people. Developing some ideas presented in his book A Call for Cultural Symbiosis (2005) and in his article " …

Transcultural Literature And Contemporary World Literature(S), Arianna Dagnino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Transcultural Literature and Contemporary World Literature(s)" Arianna Dagnino argues that within the emerging field of transcultural literary studies and despite the inevitable issues raised by categorization, we may classify transcultural literature within the wider domain of world literature(s). Dagnino presents a brief overview of the growing importance of a transcultural perspective in the fields of (comparative) cultural studies and literary studies and proceeds by outlining the main contours of transcultural literary theory and its main differences in respect to (im)migrant and postcolonial literary theories. Further, Dagnino analyzes the contemporary understanding of the field of world literature(s) and …

World Literatures, Comparative Literature, And Glocal Cosmopolitanism, Paolo Bartoloni

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "World Literatures, Comparative Literature, and Glocal Cosmopolitanism" Paolo Bartoloni reflects on the topos of the crisis of literature and the humanities. An urge to question the status and the relevance of literature; to investigate the relation between literature and literary studies; and the location of literature within the context of a transforming world has emerged in the last three decades. Assuming that a bond exists between literature and the world, what is its nature? Is it possible to take an interest in literature without knowing its potential relevance or its world? These questions are related to the …

Strangeness And World Literature, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Strangeness and World Literature" Mads Rosendahl Thomsen argues that world literature has emerged as a supplement to the two dominant paradigms for studies of literature beyond the nation: comparative literature and postcolonialism. Key questions for all three paradigms are first, what kinds of otherness or strangeness are desirable in literature, and second, how literary circulation is dependent on the representation of otherness. Through a variety of literary examples, Thomsen discusses how strangeness is mediated through genres, bicultural references, and (im)migrant experiences, and how making the local enchanted makes the world stranger to everyone.

African Literatures And Border Issues, Chimdi Maduagwu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "African Literatures and Border Issues" Chimdi Maduagwu posits that borders or boundaries are constructions which have social and symbolic implications and that they are also relevant in a variety of social processes versus class stratification. Modern Africa is a political construction from European colonialism and what we have today as countries of Africa were closely knit nation states (which colonialists identified as tribes) who had their distinct features. However, the advent of colonialism tore into the original nation state structure based on given ethnic relationships and in its place constructed sovereign states or countries, which only considered …

Interdisciplinary Studies And Comparative Literature In China And The West, Aaron Lee Moore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Interdisciplinary Studies and Comparative Literature in China and the West" Aaron Lee Moore addresses the arguments on the part of Chinese and Western scholars against and for the full inclusion of interdisciplinary studies within the discipline of comparative literature. Interdisciplinary studies, in general, have been resisted in Chinese scholarship as it once was in the U.S. and other Western countries. Moore discusses the major Chinese arguments for and against interdisciplinary studies in general and interdisciplinary studies within comparative literature. Moore's main argument is that the study of literature by necessity must always cross disciplinary boundaries and the …

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Annual Report, 2012-2013, Michael Nassaney

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project continued to maintain its high standards in research, teaching, and public outreach in the examination of the fur trade and colonialism in southwest Michigan under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Advisory Committee. Over the past year (September 1, 2012 through August 31, 2013) Western Michigan University (WMU) students and faculty, along with interested stakeholders and community volunteers, collaborated in both the archaeological investigation of Fort St. Joseph as well as the dissemination of information to an expanding audience. The highlights of the past year include:

• The newly released DVD, "Militia Muster,” …

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 …

Between Literature And Science: Inscribing Zora Neale Hurston’S Mules And Men In The Post-Human Condition, Jung-Hsien Lin

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Intrigued by the influence of technology on or in literature as well as the ways of which the posthuman body subverts the existing social constructs of race, gender, and culture, this paper appropriates the Foucauldian concept of “technologies of the self” to investigate the narrating “I/eye” in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. I flesh out how Hurston’s new “cyborg” identity, along with the idea of performativity—particularly in relation to her manipulation of the genre of autoethnography—resists the dominant constructs of race, gender and culture. Through a re-examination of these major moments of transformations of knowledge/power in Hurston’s Mules …

Great Plains Quarterly Fall 2013 Vol. 33 No.4 -- Editorial Matter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Notes and News

When Is A Convento Kiva? : A Postcolonial-Critical Indigenous Critique Of The Convento Kiva At Pecos National Historical Park, David M. Holtkamp

American Studies ETDs

At Pecos National Historical Park there exists a Puebloan ceremonial structure known as a kiva located within the confines of a 17th century Spanish church. The placement of this kiva in the church implies a different name, "convento kiva." Western historians and archaeologists have generated a metanarrative that presents the history of Pecos Pueblo and its inhabitants in a terminal format that is the Pueblo was doomed to abandonment once contact with the Spanish was made regardless of how the Pueblo Indians responded to Spanish colonialism. Contrary to this notion, the descendants of Pecos at the Pueblo of Jemez maintain …

Practical And Theoretical Implications Of Digitizing The Middle Ages, Roberta Capelli

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Practical and Theoretical Implications of Digitalizing the Middle Ages" Roberta Capelli discusses scholarship about and the teaching of medieval culture in digital humanities. While every medieval manuscript is an individual entity, displaying a series of unique and unrepeatable material, structural and aesthetic characteristics, digital devices are able to generate only two-dimensional photographic reproductions. However, the digital medium brings about some major improvements in the study — and teaching — of medieval manuscripts because the hypertextual nature of its applications allows us to analyse simultaneously synchronic and the diachronic dynamics. From a theoretical point of view, the difference …

Dams, Roads, And Bridges: (Re)Defining Work And Masculinity In American Indian Literature Of The Great Plains, 1968-Present, Joshua Tyler Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, …

Dressing Indian: Appropriation, Identity, And American Design, 1940-1968, Alison Rose Bazylinski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the ways the American fashion industry and fashion publications appropriated aspects of Indian cultures as marketing tools from 1940 to 1968 and the ways representations stereotypes created through fashion outlets denoted American and individual, rather than Native, identity. Representational stereotypes created at the turn of the twentieth century provided fashion merchandisers and sellers with a home-grown marketing scheme, while the development of an American fashion industry based on mass-produced, ready-to-wear sportswear led to nation-wide dissemination and use of "Indian" colors, patterns, and designs.

An Historical Archaeological Investigation Of The Indianola Prisoner Of War Camp In Southwestern Nebraska, Allison Marie Young

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Second World War military operations resulted in the capture of thousands of prisoners of war. This led to the creation of internment facilities by both the Axis and the Allies. Archaeologists have begun to examine these facilities. The United States government established a POW program with numerous camps all over the country. This study provides the results of historical archaeological research at the Indianola prisoner of war camp in southwestern Nebraska. A goal of this research is to determine if the archaeological record reflects adherence to the Geneva Convention of 1929. The investigation included archival research and archaeological fieldwork with …

The Power Of Voice: The Indian Arts Research Centers Identity Shift, Laura Elliff

American Studies ETDs

Over the past three decades and in a significant shift, museum professionals have been collaborating with tribal communities by incorporating their voices into the daily tasks of exhibition design, education, and programs, as well as collections care and storage. This study will examine the Indian Arts Research Center's history and identity by highlighting collaborative projects that have resulted in the inclusion of Native voices and in some cases a joint decision-making process, which I argue has shifted the IARC's institutional identity. In the past, the IARC collection has mostly been managed and created by non-Native people, and Native input was …

Imagining "The Town Too Tough To Die": Tourism, Preservation, And History In Tombstone, Arizona, Kara L. Mccormack

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation looks at the ways popular culture, preservation, and economic exigencies continually circulate and interact in Tombstone, Arizona the ways tourists make meaning from the site the importance of the concepts of history and authenticity and the resonance of the Earp Myth and the Mythic West worldwide. Tombstone's place within that myth cannot be understated, as it has come to signify for many the ideas wrapped up in the myth as a whole. On a more basic level, Tombstone fits within wider trends in historic preservation and heritage sites that are central to an analysis of the power and …

Galloway, William, William Galloway, Deborah Oden, Ishmael Lewis

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Penning The Shipper-Worthy Screenplay: Exploration Of Network Television Situational Comedy And The Crime Procedural, Kacie Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Network television writers often utilize ongoing romantic turmoil as a plot device to form loyal fan bases called "shippers," viewers who become deeply invested in the romantic relationships between their favorite television couples. For my thesis, I explored the shipper paradigm and the differences between network sitcoms and crime procedurals by creating one spec script The Big Bang Theory and another for Bones. I used research and my own personal experiences to analyze both series and write episodes that could fit within the established canons of both programs. Through the writing process I came to understand something very important …

Introduction To Asian Culture(S) And Globalization, I-Chun Wang, Li Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Explaining The Unexplainable: A New Cultural Outlook On H. P. Lovecraft’S Cthulhu Mythos, Erika L. Mutter

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Although the majority of the scholarship on H. P. Lovecraft focuses on the idea of nihilism as the purpose of the Cthulhu mythos, the exploration of three stories The Nameless City, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Shadow over Innsmouth disproves this overly basic and irrelevant reasoning. Through a cultural studies lens, there is a parallel between the curiosity and fear surrounding the other within the text and those same emotions felt towards the immigrants coming into America during the 1920s. This argument analyzes the transformation of the relationship between the narrator and the aliens, showcasing how this otherness can …

Wait Upon Ishiguro, Englishness, And Class, Mustapha Marrouchi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Wait upon Ishiguro, Englishness, and Class" Mustapha Marrouchi analyzes Kazuo Ishiguro's novels with focus on the writer's interest in Japanese culture and his preoccupation with matters of class in England. Marrouchi analyzes Ishiguro's novels as located astride of East, West, and the in-between: his precise, exquisitely made stories are shadowed by absences and silences, balanced "between elegy and irony" (Rushdie) and this is so whether the speaker is the obsessive butler in The Remains of the Day or one of the demented heroes in The Unconsoled or When We Were Orphans or the Japanese, guilty or exiled, …

Virtuality, Nationalism, And Globalization In Zhang's Hero, Ping Zhu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Virtuality, Nationalism, and Globalization in Zhang's Hero" Ping Zhu examines how Yimou Zhang's martial arts film dislodges the historical tale from its spatiotemporal context by creating virtual images, characters, narratives, and ideologies, and presents the virtual idea of tianxia (天下) (all under heaven) as an active mode of participation in the virtual global. Amidst the surge of virtuality in its cinematic space, with Hero Zhang aims to eclipse the national by a higher order: a homogenizing and harmonizing order that originates in traditional Chinese culture and that is compatible with the post-9/11 world order. However, Zhu …

Crossed Boundaries In Musical Culture Between Asia And The West, Kheng K. Koay, Mikel Ledee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Crossed Boundaries in Musical Culture between Asia and the West" Kheng K. Koay and Mikel LeDee examine Tony Prabowo's Pasar Loak (Flea Market) for soprano and percussions and Chinary Ung's Grand Alap (A Window in the Sky). Composers Prabowo and Ung adopt modernist techniques from Western and traditional Asian music cultures in their compositions. Koay and LeDee explore aspects which broaden the presentation of sound in the two selected compositions and the background influences of Western and Asian music on the two composers. Prabowo and Ung absorb new experiences and embrace music that excites them and Prabowo, …

Globalization And Theater Spectacles In Asia, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Globalization and Theater Spectacles in Asia" I-Chun Wang discusses how performance is an integral part of cultural discourse: in industrially advanced Asian nations governments started to examine the relationship between cultural discourse and popular culture, cultural identity and tourist attractions and artists have become prominent participants in this development in particular with regard to theater performance, an activity with old traditions in Asian cultures. With the uptake of technology and in some cases Western innovation, Asian theater performance not only became an important part of social and cultural discourse, it rejuvenated itself. Wang posits that Asian theater …

Eating Spaces And Places: Examining The Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, And Black Urban Space As Sites Of Collective And Social Imagination, Kathlynn E. Hinkfuss

American Studies Honors Projects

I focus on three specific neighborhood tropes that are commonly understood and accepted in the American social imagination: the Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, and Black Urban Space. I examine how these three neighborhood tropes show up in and play out on physical examples of these spaces. I identify three currently existing neighborhoods in the Upper Midwest: the South Side of Milwaukee, Chinatown in Chicago, and North Minneapolis. To more specifically interrogate the connection between the abstract and concrete, I argue that specific sites of analysis in each neighborhood are symbolically and physically consumed: the Mexican restaurant “La Perla” in Milwaukee, the …

Archeological Investigations For The Levi Jordan Plantation House Stabilization, Brazoria County, Texas, Jennifer K. Mcwilliams, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron Norment

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The Levi Jordan plantation house is one of the few antebellum plantation structures to have survived in Brazoria County. It is the only standing structure associated with the plantation, which began operating in 1848 and was occupied continually up through the 1990s. The original house, built in the early 1850s using slave labor, was a 20x60-ft two-story wooden frame structure. It was altered many times during its long occupation, often due to hurricane damage. A portion of the Levi Jordan Plantation was acquired by the State of Texas in 2002 and managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department until …

Nature And The Environment In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And Elmaz Abinader's Children Of The Roojme, Rosario Nolasco-Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the role of nature and the environment in two works by the ethnic minority women writers Ana Castillo and Elmaz Abinader. The works examined are Castillo's novel So Far From God and Abinader's memoir Children of the Roojme. My research begins with a review of these authors' ouvre, contextualizing it within the themes here addressed. It continues with an analysis of a spectrum of Arab American and Chicano/a works that lend fruitful content and perspective to an ecocritical analysis. Although these two works are dissimilar in genre, my study demonstrates significant parallels in the following areas: characters' …

American Exceptionalism And The Historical Fiction Of Chabon And Delillo: Media Identity Commodification And The Truth Of Lies, Samm Yeakel

English Theses & Dissertations

At the heart of any democratic nation lie the individuals that inhabit its borders, heed allegiance to its flag, comprise its political and economical bodies, and fight the very wars that disrupt its political ideals. Max Weber, who is revered not merely as a great sociologist, but the sociologist, contends that any sociological explanation regarding the w1derlying will and motives of these individuals must relate to their self-conscious actions. But, however self-conscious these actions may appear, they are decidedly influenced by external factors, and, as will be shown, a well-constructed novel captures the interplay between the individual, the nation, and …

A Nation In Its Prime: A Pentadic Study Of Walt Disney World's Main Street, U.S.A., Casey Guise

Masters Theses

The purpose of this paper is to consider the entrance to Walt Disney World, Main Street, U.S.A., as a rhetorical text and apply Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad. Background is provided on rhetorical theory and The Disney Company. Meanings are derived from messages interpreted using semiotics and symbolic interaction within the location. The significance of Main Street, U.S.A., as a replica of historic architecture and an illustration of revival architecture in creating emotive messages is discussed. Further discussion includes the implications of this study on corporations and the field of rhetorical studies in addition to suggestions for further research.