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Globalisation, Empire, And The Vampire, Mario Vrbančić

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Globalisation, Empire, and the Vampire," Mario Vrbančić opens up the question of the possibility of a dialectical utopian thinking in postmodernism. Following Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Vrbančić analyses the vampire as the nation looking both at Hardt and Negri's theory of Empire and Žižek psychoanalytically inclined theory of nationalist identification. The vampire always occurs in the wake and decay of Empires: Dracula embodies Victorian fears of the infestation of the undead by invading the imperial centre; in America vampires disperse and multiply in popular culture and the mass media; in a newly emerging global order (Empire) they may …

The Rebirth Of Comparative Literature In Anglocalization, Anand Patil

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Anand Patil examines in his paper, "The Rebirth of Comparative Literature in Anglocalization," the debates on effects of "globalization" on literary studies and "cultures" in India. The focus of his comparative scrutiny follows the debate about the "death" of comparative literature. Patil re-imagines the rebirth of interdisciplinarity, a basic tenet of the discipline of comparative literature and a characteristic of globalization. He has coined the term "Anglocalization" to analyze the complexity of the effects of globalization in the multilingual and multicultural situation of the sub-continent. The term is used to describe a tripartite process: Anglicization by global English, economic liberation, …

Empathy Versus Abstraction In Twentieth-Century German And Russian Aesthetics, Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Empathy versus Abstraction in Twentieth-Century German and Russian Aesthetics," Thorsten Botz-Bornstein argues that Alexander Koyré has shown how the crisis of belief incited by Bacon, Montaigne, Pascal, and Descartes made that "man lost his place in the world." The German term Einfühlung (empathy) played an important role in the transformation of the relationship between the person and his/her world at the moment when modern science began to emerge. Botz-Bornstein examines the conceptual links between empathy and Verfremdung (in Russian ostranenie), and style by showing how German and Russian literary critics of the 1910s attempted to retrieve the …

The Cognitive Construction Of The Self In Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Patrick S. Bernard

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "The Cognitive Construction of the Self in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God," Patrick S. explores the conception and representation of the self as a cognitive construct in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. By this approach, Bernard proposes that cognitive paradigms, such as knowing, seeing, thinking, and speaking, for example, and their capacities to engender knowledge and perception, identity and consciousness, memory and narrative, language and speech, are central to the novel's exploration of the self as an epistemological and ideological product. Using tools of interpretation adapted from cognitive psychology and radical constructivism, …

Forum: Twenty Years Of Mcq: Forum Introduction, Kathy Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In this issue we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Management Communication Quarterly. To do so we invited the previous editors to reflect on their experiences providing leadership for the journal. In what follows, each editor looks back on his or her vision for MCQ, how his or her hopes for the journal were realized (or not), and the challenges he or she faced during his or her tenure as editor. Management Communication Quarterly approaches its 21st year rooted in their collective experience of working to establish the journal’s reputation for quality, interdisciplinarity, and internationalization. Although its interdisciplinary roots …

Deep Ecology And Postmodernity: Making Space For Conversation, Chris Drinkwater

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Fourth paragraph]

I begin with the fact of ecology's virtual exclusion from cultural studies. Cultural studies are centrally concerned with issues of meaning, subjectivity, objectivity and knowledge. They attempt to describe their production, conditions and complex structural effects. They are particularly interested in effects of inclusion and exclusion: for instance, "What is a legitimate object of attention within a particular discourse?" Why do cultural studies not attend to ecology? Why is negligible attention paid to a discourse and cultural movement, which are so challenging to dominant values and ways of life? I suggest that the omission is not accidental. Cultural …

Introduction, Alexandra Ganser, Vibha Arora

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

At the time of finalizing EcoCultures for publication, nearly all discussions in mass media remind us that climate change has been caused by anthropogenic excesses in the last three centuries. Environmental concern, intertwined with a critical and scholarly perspective, is also at the heart of EcoCultures: Culture Studies and the Environment. The twelve academic articles comprising this issue were written by scholars based in the North and South, speaking different languages yet living in a multicultural global world, and positioned in disciplines ranging from landscape and environmental history, literature and gender studies to visual studies and art. …

Contemporary Art Facing The Earth’S Irreducibility, Amanda Boetzkes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article considers the aesthetic strategies and ethical implications of contemporary earth art. Drawing from feminist and ecological phenomenology, I argue that an ethical preoccupation with the earth is identifiable in works that evoke the sensorial plenitude of natural phenomena, but refuse to condense it into a coherent image or art object. By denying a perceptual grasp of the earth, contemporary earth artists question the possibility of representing it as such. They thereby position the earth as a territory of alterity that exists beyond our conceptual and perceptual limits. This approach counters two deeply flawed but nevertheless pervasive stances towards …

Translating Ecocriticism: Dialoguing With Michel Serres, Stephanie Posthumus

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Since its humble beginnings in the Western United States, ecocriticism has grown under the banner of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment into an organization of over 1000 members with international affiliates in Australia-New Zealand, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Koria and the UK. At first sight, it would seem that ecocriticism has achieved global status. But as Ursula Heise remarks in her assessment of ecocriticism, this process of globalisation has been mainly a process of becoming known internationally. In truth, ecocriticism has remained strongly rooted in Anglophone literary studies even as it has been exported to …

Family Stories As Indicators Of The Family Dynamic, Allison Clarkson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

An important element of the family unit involves the stories that are often told and retold. Although the collection of stories varies among families, the themes within these stories are sometimes common across different families. Within this research, certain patterns were shown to recur regarding these story themes. Furthermore, a positive relationship was found between families’ stories and the characteristics that are used to describe the families.

The Bachelor Primetime Construction Of Romance, Fairy Tales, And Melodrama, Susan E. Beck

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This thesis is centered on the reality television program The Bachelor. Presenting itself as a modem day Cinderella story, The Bachelor speaks directly to women's fantasies and their familiarity with fairy tales. In the process, women are molded into convenient and stale stereotypes. Furthermore, the show uses melodrama to create suspense as well as sensational episodes and romantic sentiments to keep the viewer tuned in. Instead of "reality" the show highlights a series of marginalized, sexualized, commodified, and pacified women who place marriage at the epicenter of their selfworth. From Queen for a Day to The Phil Donahue Show …

Reading South African Media Representations Of Islam After 11 September 2001, Gabeba Baderoon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Reading South African Media Representations of Islam after 11 September 2001," Gabeba Baderoon probes the resonances of news representations of 11 September 2001. Baderoon examines the events of that day from the perspective of South Africa, arguing that the international media became located and embodied through the representations of the highly visible and grievable deaths of just under three thousand people in the United States. Her analysis reveals a complex view that derives from the legacy of legislated racial discrimination crafted under the policy of Apartheid as well as the presence of Muslims brought as slaves during …

Textual Strategies To Resist Disappearance And The Mothers Of Plaza De Mayo, Alicia Partnoy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "Textual Strategies to Resist Disappearance and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo" Alicia Partnoy draws attention to the ways the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo use literature as both a form of protest and as a way to build solidarity. Focusing on four texts written by the Mothers, Partnoy attempts to correct the lack of attention that this literary work has drawn. Partnoy suggests that in addition to the forms of public protest engaged by the Mothers, their literary activities also play a central role in their efforts. In fact, their use of the literary form …

The Logic And Language Of Torture, Jonathan H. Marks

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "The Logic and Language of Torture," Jonathan H. Marks explores the tragic temptation of torture in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. Emotive responses to terrorism fueled by ticking bomb scenarios and other narrative constructs caused the U.S. to reconsider torture and the boundaries of permissible interrogation tactics in the aftermath of 9/11. While many in the media and the academy debated the necessity of "interrogational torture," the government decided that something more than moral reconstruction was required. For that reason, it embarked on a campaign of legal exceptionalism. While affirming its commitment to the …

Landmines, Hiv/Aids, And Africa's New Generation, Barbara Harlow

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Landmines, HIV/Aids, and Africa's New Generation," Barbara Harlow asks the question what do "humanitarianism" and "human rights" have to do with the humanities? In a globalizing culture, how do personal stories contribute to political histories? What might be the effect of literature on these pressing questions? Harlow focuses in her essay on the work of Swedish writer and Maputo theater director Henning Mankell through particular attention to Secrets in the Fire and Playing with Fire: Two novels about a young Mozambican named Sofia. Harlow shows how Mankell's linking of the experiences of Sofia to the legacy of …

Introduction To Representing Humanity In An Age Of Terror, Sophia A. Mcclennen, Henry James Morello

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Collateral Damage And The "Incident" At Haditha, Tom Engelhardt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Collateral Damage and the 'Incident' at Haditha," Tom Engelhardt provides a comparative analysis of the massacres of innocent civilians in the Viet Nam and Iraqi wars. Focusing on the events of My Lai, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, and Fallujah, Engelhardt traces the uncanny resemblance between the ways that the military attempted to contain the flow of information about these atrocities. Engelhardt analyzes the rhetorical tropes of media coverage via the favored terms of "collateral damage" and "incident" and the preferred statistics that always claim that 99.9% of the military conducts itself professionally. The fact that the media not …

A Monk's Tale, Sam Hamill

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "A Monk's Tale," Sam Hamill recounts his ongoing commitment to using poetry as a form of protest and explains how poetry bridges the personal and the public, weaving together the life of one poet and that of an entire globe. In late January 2003, in response to an invitation to a symposium by Laura Bush to celebrate "Poetry and the American Voice," Hamill declined to participate; a longtime pacifist, he could not in good faith visit the White House following the recent news of George W. Bush's plan for a unilateral "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq. …

The Tortured Body, The Photograph, And The U.S. War On Terror, Julie Gerk Hernandez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Julie Gerk Hernandez, in her article "The Tortured Body, the Photograph, and the U.S. War on Terror," engages in an analysis of the institutional mechanisms that lead to dehumanizing violence as a result of the ongoing allegations of torture of detainees at U.S. military bases at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo. Hernandez conducts her investigation by examining the photographed torture at Abu Ghraib as an atavistic resurgence of the representational practices at work in post-Civil-War racial lynching. Hernandez also explores the historical and visual parallels between the photographs at Abu Ghraib and the photographs of post-Civil-War lynchings in …

The Black Body And Representations Of The (In)Human, Li-Chun Hsiao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Li-Chun Hsiao, in his article "The Black Body and Representations of the (In)human," takes cues from the theoretical insights of Agamben's "bare life" as well as Laclau's and Mouffe's "social antagonism" and explores how the slave can be considered a constitutive element which is nevertheless foreclosed from Western democracies. Hsiao also analyzes the various ways the term "slave" functions as trope in the founding discourses of Western democracy. "Bare life" remains included in politics "in the form of the exception," as "something that is included solely through an exclusion." Such an "inclusive exclusion" is represented not in its differential relationship …

The Global Phenomenon Of "Humanizing" Terrorism In Literature And Cinema, Elaine Martin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "The Global Phenomenon of 'Humanizing' Terrorism in Literature and Cinema" Elaine Martin presents -- following a discussion of two early examples, Schiller's The Robbers and Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas (1810) -- an analysis of several contemporary works that model different ways of representing terrorism: Heinrich Böll's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) and its 1976 filmic adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff, Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist (1985), Santosh Sivan's film The Terrorist (1999), and Tom Tykwer's film Heaven (2002). Edward Said provided a critique of the battle against terrorism, saying that it is selective ("we" are …

Mass-Mediated Social Terror In Spain, Nicholas Manganas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Mass-Mediated Social Terror in Spain," Nicholas Manganas explores mass-mediated narratives associated with social terror. Manganas posits that one approach to understanding social terror is to conceptualize it as a process of narrativization. Manganas takes a global view while at the same time applying that approach to the contemporary Spanish political and cultural context following the 11 March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid. He views the current social and political panorama of Spain as an example of social terror in dialogue with both current and historical national discourses. Manganas details the events surrounding the March 11 attack in …

The Humanities, Human Rights, And The Comparative Imagination, Sophia A. Mcclennen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "The Humanities, Human Rights, and the Comparative Imagination" Sophia A. McClennen argues that understanding the relationship between culture and human rights depends on humanist perspectives attentive to the relationship between storytelling and identity, mass culture and ideology, text and audience, critical thinking and engaged citizenship. After briefly considering how the divide between the humanities and human rights advocates developed and how it might best be overcome, she suggests that comparative cultural studies grounded in an ethical commitment to study the relationship between culture and society offers an indispensable perspective on the ties between culture and identity integral …

Poetry And The Aesthetic Of Morality, Michael Mcirvin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Poetry and the Aesthetic of Morality," Michael McIrvin charts the fall of language from its mythologized acquisition through its use in communal history and ritual to its present diminished function as advertiser's tool and means of control by those in power. The partial exegesis of a poem written in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the subsequent US response illustrates that the assignation of otherness on the present grand scale is emblematic of this diminishment. McIrvin argues that President Bush's misspeak leading up to the war and to the last presidential election is …

The Terrorist Event, Bill Nichols

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Terrorist Event," Bill Nichols examines how the US media attempted to make meaning of the events of 9/11. How were news anchors and producers to explain an event that escaped their comprehension? Without context or historical equivalence in the US, news outlets groped for a narrative in which to frame the event even if that meant creating the meaning themselves. In their attempt to create meaning, what sorts of fetishes and fantasies did they draw-on and in turn create? The result is that the US excuses itself from its own past and future barbarism as it …

Bearing Witness Through Fiction, Carolina Rocha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Bearing Witness through Fiction," Carolina Rocha explores the ways in which three Argentine writers grappled with their roles as public intellectuals and witnesses to acts of terror, undeniable violence, and human rights abuses during the most recent military dictatorship. By examining three narrative texts written from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s Aquí pasan cosas raras (Strange Things Happen Here) (1975) by Luisa Valenzuela, La casa y el viento (The House and the Wind) (1984) by Hector Tizón, and El árbol de la gitana (The Tree and the Gypsy) (1997) by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, she argues that …

Dorfman, Schubert, And Death And The Maiden, David Schroeder

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Dorfman, Schubert, and Death and the Maiden," David Schroeder suggests that the selection of the play's title Death and the Maiden (1991) by Ariel Dorfman is a careful one. Schroeder proposes that it is not only that the title of the piece comes directly from Franz Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, so named because it uses material from the song of the same name as the theme for the second movement. Schroeder argues that Dorfman's thoughtful choice is as much related to the strong parallels between Schubert's Maiden and Dorfman's character Paulina Salas, as to Dr. …

Narration In International Human Rights Law, Joseph R. Slaughter

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Narration in International Human Rights Law," Joseph R. Slaughter argues that the prohibitions and entitlements articulated in international human rights law presume and promote an image of the human being as a self-narrating subject. He proposes that human rights law enshrines commitments to the human voice and to the ability of the individual to construct narratives of identity. In this sense, human rights violations can be understood as assaults on the human voice and on the socio-cultural structures that make certain kinds of narratives and narration possible. This narratological reading of the law offers a way to …

Media In A Capitalist Culture, Barbara Trent

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Media in a Capitalist Culture," Barbara Trent looks at the negative effects that capitalism has on the media and how those effects may be overcome. Trent intertwines personal experience with socio-historical context to give the reader a genuine feel for political filmmaking in a Hollywood dominated world. She describes how her Academy Award winning film The Panama Deception was removed from a Cineplex, even after out-grossing all of the other films there, because Warner Brothers wanted the screen. After an examination of the impact a dominant Hollywood has on local culture around the world, Trent offers three …

Artists In Times Of War, Howard Zinn

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Artists in Times of War," Howard Zinn examines the role of the artist during war time and finds that the transcendent nature of art not only shows us the beauty of everyday life, but can also go beyond everyday politics and media hype to critically address the problems of the day. In fact, Zinn suggests that it is the job of artists to "to think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say." For Zinn, this is especially important given the intensity of the events of 9/11 where …