Digital Commons Network^™

New Approaches To Mena Prison Literatures After 2011, Anne-Marie Mcmanus

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Rereading Nick Joaquin As A Devil’S Advocate “La Naval De Manila” (1943) In Context, Luisa L. Gomez

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

Nick Joaquin characterized himself as a “devil’s advocate” for taking contrarian positions in Philippine cultural history. His early essay “ La Naval de Manila” is taken as an example of such. A re-examination of the essay within its original context of the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, however, reveals that Joaquin’s early historical imagination must be understood less as an act of rebellion and more as a product of negotiation. It navigates multiple audiences and overlapping empires—the Spanish past it venerates, the American period whose language it uses, and the Japanese present that enabled its publication. Its power lies not …

Post-Lecture Forum With Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Mara Coson, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review: Balthazar: A Black African King In Medieval And Renaissance Art, Karli R. Snyder

Quidditas

Western European medieval and Early Modem art history is full of representations of ethnically diverse peoples. However, there are relatively few examples of scholarly publications that coherently organize these visual representations into a complete analysis of the topic. One recent publication that aims to do just that is Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art. The slim paperback boasts 121 full-color illustrations and features a collection of essays and narratives edited by museum curator Kristen Collins and art historian Bryan C. Keene. The book was published as a companion to the 2019 exhibition of the same …

Submission Guidelines

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

Body, Mind, And Archives: A Critical Questioning Of “Places For Knowledge” In David Treuer’S The Translation Of Dr. Apelles, Lisa Brau-Weglinski

Comparative Woman

Western conceptualizations of time and space are common topics to be queried within the field of Indigenous literary study. However, while the focus has been laid on temporal and spatial literary conventions, too little attention has been drawn to the conceptualization and norms around an identity forming element: knowledge. This paper is particularly suspicious of Western conceptualizations of “places for knowledge,” as this has very real consequences for how we understand and treat ourselves and others. As such, my work highlights that “places for knowledge” can cloud and limit our perception of reality, which, concerning the project of decolonization …

Review: White Before Whiteness In The Late Middle Ages, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Civilizations From Toynbee To Coker: The Quest Of Christopher Coker (1953 – 2023) To Reinstate Comparative Civilizational Thinking In Western Scholarship, Greg Lewicki Vice President

Comparative Civilizations Review

In the gentlemen’s heaven, Christopher Coker must surely have his separate suite, one with golden busts of travelers, old-fashioned English furniture, and cold-toned walls resembling those of Athenaeum, a Pall Mall club in London, one of a few clubs where he liked to dine.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Emily Sun’S On The Horizon Of World Literature, Jing Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Malvinas/Falklands War In Transatlantic Narratives: Exploring Collective Memory And Negotiating Self/Other Identity, Andrea R. Bellot

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Malvinas/Falklands War in Transatlantic Narratives: Exploring Collective Memory and Negotiating Self/Other Identity", Andrea R. Bellot examines the remembrance of the Malvinas/Falklands War (1982) through cultural texts for children, presenting a comparative analysis of post-war narratives from both the United Kingdom and Argentina. Through a detailed exploration of "The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman" by British author and illustrator Raymond Briggs (1984), and the Argentine TV cartoon show "La Asombrosa Excursión de Zamba en las Islas Malvinas" (2012), broadcasted on Paka Paka, Bellot discusses how collective memory and national identity are crafted and contested …

Chinese Ideas And American Politics: Confucius As A Guideline For Leadership, Alfred Hornung

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Chinese Ideas and American Politics: Confucius as a Guideline for Leadership", Alfred Hornung traces the influence of Chinese ideas on American politics with a focus on the works of Confucius. The more than 2.500-year-old impact of the Chinese philosopher on public conduct and his pursuit of virtuous perfection has served as a guideline for leadership emanating from China to Europe and America. For this trajectory of ideas, the historic and the new Silk Road play a decisive role. The exchange of goods along the land-based and maritime routes, which inform Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, also …

All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’S Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan And Its Effects On Her Writing Career, Zhihui Sophia Geng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan and its Effects on Her Writing Career,” Zhihui Sophia Geng focuses on Pulitzer Prize winner and Noble Laureate Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s All Men Are Brothers, her translation of the classical Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. She examines the reception of her translation and analyzes the significance of All Men Are Brothers to Buck’s literary career. By providing the first complete translation of Shui Hu Zhuan to an English-speaking audience, Buck made a significant cultural contribution to the United States and English-speaking cultural spheres. The …

Engaging China: Beckett’S Debt To Pound, Giles, And Laloy, Lidan Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Engaging China: Beckett’s Debt to Pound, Giles, and Laloy," Lidan Lin examines Ezra Pound’s influence on Samuel Beckett. In their dealings with China, Pound and Beckett are both indebted to such sinologists and cultural transmitters as Ernest Fenollosa, H. A. Giles, Louis Laloy, and Laurence Binyon who introduced Chinese culture, literature, and arts to the Western world through translation and their writings about China. Lin situates the Pound-Beckett connection in the broad cultural context of the early 20^th century. She argues that while modernism’s turn to China as a cultural paradigm was collectively brought about by …

Translation As Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders In Contemporary China, Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Translation as Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders in Contemporary China,” Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang examines four groups of selected writings centered on one of Robert van Gulik’s more well-known Judge Dee novels, The Chinese Maze Murders (written first in English but not published until 1956). Different from most publications on van Gulik and his novels, Zhang examines the impact of censorship and self-censorship on the writing, rewriting, and (re)adapting, “literal” and “liberal/free” translation of the Judge Dee stories traveling between Chinese and English, between China and the West, for Chinese and non-Chinese audiences. Focus is given …

Exotic Construction Of An Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’S Creative Translation Of Li Ch’Ing-Chao’S Ci-Poems And Its Influences, Yuqun Fu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Exotic Construction of an Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’s Creative Translation of Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-Poems and its Influences,” Yuqun Fu discusses Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-poems and her identity as a woman intellect in the patriarchal and feudal Song Dynasty of China. Due to Kenneth Rexroth’s feminist perspective and Sappho complex as well as his own pursuit to excel in the hipster stylistics of the newly prospering Beat writers, Rexroth turns to the Eastern women poets to fuel his own cause, especially in his idiosyncratic way of interpreting and translating Li Ch’ing-Chao. His translation focuses on gender identity and …

Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization And Neoliberal Rationality In Rawi Hage’S Cockroach, Shahab Nadimi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization and Neoliberal Rationality in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach," Shahab Nadimi examines Rawi Hage’s Cockroach as an example of refugee literature in the light of current debates about neoliberal biopolitics and the idea of a new form of life. Refugees, who are neither identified as citizens nor totally as strangers, are forced to compete in unequal circumstances of economic mobility with other citizens, often leaving them in a condition of personal debts, unemployment, and mental distress. Nadimi investigates Cockroach’s depiction of psychological breakdown, suicidal attempts, and metamorphosis as symptomatic of and critical to the neoliberal …

The Female Best-Friend Novel: Narration And The Reconsideration Of The Political Act, Neta Stahl

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “The Female Best-Friend Novel: Narration and the Reconsideration of the Political Act,” Neta Stahl argues that twentieth- and twenty-first-century women novelists borrowed the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century best-friend narrative, reintroducing it for the purpose of challenging the very concept of the political act, namely, what modern, liberal society considers as a political action and what stands behind it. The article focuses on four novels written by novelists from four different countries: the American novelist Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973); the Israeli novelist Ronit Matalon’s Sarah, Sarah (2000); the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale: Storia di chi fugge e …

“What Memory Wants From Me”: Contemporary Female Writers On The Calling To Remember, Daria Smirnova

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersections of transnational memory studies and feminist autobiographical writing through the works of Maria Stepanova, Annie Ernaux, and Lea Ypi. It argues that contemporary literature, especially that written by women, provides innovative frameworks for understanding identity, memory, and the sociopolitical context of our time. By examining how these authors intertwine personal and collective histories, the study highlights the shift in memory studies from monumental, nation-centered history to transnational, mobile memory modalities. I have pinpointed three themes to which these authors significantly contribute within the feminist and political discourse on memory: the relationship between gender and memory, …

Star Power: An Analysis Of Digital Astrology Content As An Instrument Of Political Tractability, Aliza Phillips

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

In an essay from 1953 titled, The Stars Down to Earth, Theodor Adorno performed an exacting analysis of the weekly horoscopes published in The Los Angeles Times to illuminate the latent authoritarianism embedded in the rhetoric of astrology. One of Adorno’s primary arguments is that an insidious form of political tractability is forged through the simultaneous determinism and individualism of astrology. Seventy years after The Stars Down to Earth, the genre of short-form astrology videos has skyrocketed in popularity across social media platforms. This essay offers a series of close readings of digital astrology videos to theorize both …

Displaced Ukrainian Writers After 2014, A Postcolonial Perspective, Sophie Ivanka Shields

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This paper analyzes post-2014 Ukrainian displacement literature from a postcolonial perspective. I argue that Ukrainian writers, displaced with the 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and/or 2022 full-scale invasion by Russia, transform literature into a tool of cultural resistance against Russia, forging a postcolonial Ukrainian identity in their works that unites those displaced since 2014. I particularly focus on two long-form works by displaced writers: the novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love (2019) by Volodymyr Rafeyenko, who was displaced in 2014 from Donetsk to Kyiv and again in 2022 to Pittsburgh, USA on the City of Asylum Exiled Writer and …

Transcreation In World Of Warcraft’S China Localization: Echoes Of Poetry Across Two Worlds, Yilu Ren

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

The official trailer for the globally popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) World of Warcraft Patch 5.2: The Thunder King featured an original English poem, subsequently translated into 10 other languages. All versions retained a poetic form, with the one release in mainland China creatively borrowing the tetrasyllabic verse style akin to that used in Shijing, the first anthology of Chinese poetry. This unprecedented adaptation of a literary genre in the localization of a non-literary video game product blurred the conceptual boundary between Lawrence Venuti's binary notions of foreignization and domestication in translation theory.

Viewed in light of …

Eng 155: Introduction To Literary Studies, Joseph Donica

Open Educational Resources

An OER syllabus covering the ways humans have read and continue to read literature from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. An emphasis is placed on the application of critical thought to writing expository essays and responding to readings.

Decolonizing Neo-Liberalism, Empowering The Local: A Global South Reading Of Noir In The 2000s., Jean-Hugues Bita’A Menye

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research aims at providing a Global South reading of noir in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It relies on the premise that noir, a sub-genre of crime fiction born in France during World War II, offered new avenues of literary creation and political criticism. Based on a selection of authors from the U.S., Mexico, Algeria, and Cameroon, the dissertation explores how authors from underrepresented or formerly-colonized communities discuss the impact of neoliberal thinking in their communities. With an emphasis on race and gender dynamics, nation building and terrorism, police corruption and brutality, or the growth of organized, each …

Narratives Of Exile: Themes Of Displacement In Seghers, Duras, And Elio, Erin Consla

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines identity, memory, and displacement in the exile narratives of Anna Seghers, Marguerite Duras, and María Luisa Elío. I argue that identity post-exile can be conceptualized as a continuous process of becoming, marked by a kaleidoscope of past, present, and future. Several aesthetic maneuvers such as the use of elements of form, memories of childhood, and palimpsest are shared by the chosen narratives, resulting in similar negotiations with identity. Through analysis of the authors' aesthetic focalizations, it becomes clear that their binary subject positions are modulated by the liminality and contradictions inherent in identity creation after exile. The …

2024 Conference Program, Georgia Southern University

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

2024 Conference Program

Best Integrated Writing Spring 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. This is the first issue after a 5 year hiatus.

Western Theory’S Chinese Transformation: Postscript, Liu Kang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Out Of The Myths Of “Revolutionary China”: Liu Kang Versus Žižek & Badiou, Liu Xin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The highlight of the 2011 special issue of Positions on Slavoj Žižek is the debate between Liu Kang and Žižek on “Revolutionary China.” It unpacks the Western left’s political unconsciousness and myths about China in several respects. First, revolution is not a parody-travesty of the “tradition” that Žižek concocts from romanticized fantasies of a “retrospective tradition” drawn from Jorge Luis Borges and T. S. Eliot. Second, revolution is not Alain Badiou’s “truth event,” which tends to reduce the Chinese Cultural Revolution to an abstract “event” in process, neglecting the real calamities of the so-called utopian experiment. Third, the key problematic …