Digital Commons Network^™

Literature, "In-House" Writers, And Processes Of Success In Publishing, Frank De Glas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Frank de Glas discusses in his article, "Literature, 'In-House' Writers, and Processes of Success in Publishing," the fact that too many studies of twentieth-century publishing practices concentrate on individual case studies while neglecting more general patterns and that too little use is made of theoretical concepts developed in the sociology of cultural production. He argues that one of the contributing elements in the economic and artistic success of a publishing house is the bringing together of a productive group of "in-house authors." To build up and to maintain such a group, publishers steadily launch new authors who they hope will …

Western Mediations In Reevaluating The Communist Past: A Comparative Analysis Of Gothár's Time Stands Still And Andonov's Yesterday, Roumiana Deltcheva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Roumiana Deltcheva's article, "Western Mediations in Reevaluating the Communist Past: A Comparative Analysis of Gothár's Time Stands Still and Andonov's Yesterday," offers a comparative analysis of two films, Peter Gothár's Time Stands Still and Ivan Andonov's Yesterday. Both films appeared in the 1980s, in Hungary and Bulgaria, respectively, and were highly acclaimed by the critics and the audience. Both films deal with the Communist past of these two countries. In her analysis, Deltcheva's adopts the perspective of "in-between peripherality," a particular manifestation of the post-colonial paradigm in its application to East Central and Central Europe. The two films use similar …

Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, 'History,' And The Other, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, 'History,' and the Other," Steven Tötösy discusses the historical background of Michael Ondaatje's novel, The English Patient (1992). The historical background and its analysis extend to selected aspects of Anthony Minghella's and Michael Ondaatje's adaptation of the novel to film (1996) and the ensuing controversy after the release of the film. From the historical background Tötösy designates as the "Almásy theme" of the novel and the film, he relates Ondaatje's engagement of the protagonist -- Central European Hungarian László Almásy -- to the notion of the Other as a historical and fictional …

Popular And Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View, Peter Swirski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Popular and Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View," Peter Swirski discusses the role and status of popular fiction in contemporary culture. Starting with the basic question, "Who needs popular fiction?," he surveys select sociological evidence and prevailing aesthetic arguments in order to take stock of the ways in which highbrow literature and popular fiction relate to each other. He begins with statistical and socio-economic data which casts a different lights on many myths prevailing in scholarship as well as in general social and cultural discourse, such as the death of the novel, the alleged decline of the reading …

Théophile Gautier And The Orient, F. Elizabeth Dahab

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Théophile Gautier and the Orient," F. Elizabeth Dahab discusses the function of the Orient in general, and in particular, the function of Ancient Egypt in some of Gautier's contes fantastiques written between 1835 and 1857. Gautier and many of his contemporaries including Baudelaire wanted to escape from a society dominated by the idea of progress. They expressed deep doubt in many of their texts and strived to find solace in the notion of permanence in art characteristic of Ancient Egyptian architecture and mortuary customs. They also believed that Ancient Egypt may provide an answer to humanity's quest …

The Impact Of Globalization And The New Media On The Notion Of World Literature, Ernst Grabovszki

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ernst Grabovszki discusses in his article, "The Impact of Globalization and the New Media on the Notion of World Literature," aspects of communication and scholarship in the humanities in the context of social processes resulting from globalization and the impact of new media. The author suggests that the process of communication, the processes of creativity, and the study of literature and the changes these areas are now experiencing owing to the impact of globalization and new media should be studied from a systemic and empirical point of view. Further, the article is an exposition of changes we observe with regard …

Nietzsche And The Knowledge Of The Child At Play: On The Question Of Metaphysics, Johannes F. Welfing

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Nietzsche and the Knowledge of the Child at Play: On the Question of Metaphysics," Johannes Welfing raises the question of a Nietzschean metaphysical presence (did Nietzsche define the essence of life and of being and thus also implicitly establish an imperative about the way in which one should lead one's life, or did he refrain from all definition, truth, system or law whatsoever?). The controversy continues: while for some critics Nietzsche's philosophy is animated by a desire for truth, others emphasize the novelty of a philosophical project that questions the very premises on which it is based. …

New Ways In Comparative Literature: A Review Article Of New Work By Tötösy And Tötösy, Dimic, And Sywenky, Ernst Grabovszki

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Identity Politics In Atwood, Kogawa, And Wolf, Jean Wilson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Jean Wilson's article, "Identity Politics in Atwood, Kogawa, and Wolf," is a comparative study of three texts published in the early 1980s: Atwood's "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother," Kogawa's Obasan, and Wolf's Cassandra. Identity politics figure prominently in all three literary works, whose common poetic project is one of demythologization and of enabling at the same time the emergence of a new, liberating articulation, a language perhaps "never heard before." These writings interrogate the construction of identities in a patriarchal culture and contribute to a more complex understanding of identity formation. All three works, albeit in different …

Review Of Didier Souiller And Wladimir Troubetzkoy's Littérature Comparée, Thomas Pavel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek proposes a theoretical approximation of already established and current aspects of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies. "Comparative cultural studies" is conceived as an approach with three areas of theoretical content: 1) To study literature (text and/or literary system) with and in the context of culture and the discipline of cultural studies; 2) In cultural studies itself to study literature with borrowed elements (theories and methods) from comparative literature; and 3) To study culture and its composite parts and aspects …

Familial Autobiography And The World: A Review Article Of Work By Kenzaburo Oe, Manuel Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Turning Points In The Development Of Blended Families, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, John H. Nicholson

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

A modified retrospective interview technique (RIT) was employed with members of 53 blended families to determine the types of turning points they reported experiencing and the developmental trajectories of their respective blended family’s first 4 years. Findings revealed 15 primary types of turning points, of which “Changes in Household Configuration,” “Conflict,” “Holidays/Special Events,” “Quality Time,” and “Family Crisis” were the most frequent. A cluster analysis revealed five basic trajectories of development for the first 48 months of family development: Accelerated, Prolonged, Stagnating, Declining, and High-Amplitude Turbulent. The trajectories differed in the overall positive-to-negative valence ratio, the frequency of conflict related …

Comparative Literature In Spain Today: A Review Article Of New Work By Romero, Vega And Carbonell, And Guillén, Pablo Zambrano

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Poetic Image And Tradition In Western European Modernism, José Manuel Losada Goya

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

José Manuel Losada Goya investigates in his article "Poetic Image and Tradition in Western European Modernism: Pound, Lorca, Claudel," aspects of poetic imagery in modernism. The analysis of the changes brought about by modern poetry involves just as much the study of content as it does of form. In the very beginning of modernity, the poet feels the necessity to invent another tradition, distinct in spatial-temporal parameters and in rhetorical procedures. In the article, attention is paid to both the re-modification of the phonological figures (especially in rhyme and rhythm) and the restructuring of lexical levels (especially in metaphor and …

The Innocence Of Children: Effects Of Vulgarity In South Park, Emily Ravenwood

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Emily Ravenwood examines in her article, "The Innocence of Children: Effects of Vulgarity in South Park" the way in which the appropriation of low culture into high art can operate to simultaneously raise and lower the cultural capital of the art in question. Usually, in definitions of high and low art vulgarity is understood as a negative representation. This dismissal is rooted in the linguistic and political relationship between vulgarity and perceived "lower class" realities. In the context of artistic representation, however, vulgarity can be a powerful weapon to enforce attention and awareness of foreign realities in a middle class …

East Central Europe As A Politically Correct Scapegoat: The Case Of Bulgaria, Roumiana Deltcheva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Roumiana Deltcheva analyzes in her article "East Central Europe as a Politically Correct Scapegoat: The Case of Bulgaria" the mechanisms of image construction of East Central Europe in the West, taking Bulgaria as a case study as seen in literary and filmic texts. A historical overview of literary and theoretical texts which deal with the cultural semiosphere of Bulgaria is presented to demonstrate that contrary to widely held perceptions in North American (US and Canada) "politically correct" scholarship, Europe is not a homogeneous cultural unity. In fact, a clear centre/periphery situation is established and delineated along the geographical axis West/East …

Some Observations About The Suicide Of The Adulteress In The Modern Novel, Babis Dermitzakis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Babis Dermitzakis posits in his article "Some Observations about the Suicide of the Adulteress in the Modern Novel" that in three major male-authored European novels -- Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Thérèse Raquin -- the protagonists are wives who commit adultery ending in suicide. In contrast, texts by women authors of the period show no similar description and perception of adultery by women. Dermitzakis suspects that the male writers did not simply fictionalize a specific social behavior or condition; rather, they likely imported their own prejudices about women's adultery -- and more generally about women's sexuality -- into their …

Reading Orientalism And The Crisis Of Epistemology In The Novels Of Lawrence Durrell, James Gifford

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Reading Orientalism and the Crisis of Epistemology in the Novels of Lawrence Durrell," James Gifford argues that Edward Said's Orientalism has had a far reaching impact on the study of literature as well as in Comparative Literature, especially in works which depict the "Eastern Other." However, a question arises in those texts which have completed the philosophical motion from existentialism to epistemological skepticism such as the novels of Lawrence Durrell. For example, in The Avignon Quintet a provisional and even counterfactual form of knowledge becomes central and obvious to the reader. Subsequently, knowledge of the Other becomes …

Another Look At The Portrayal Of Minorities And Women In Prime-Time Television, Tellisa Amos

Dissertations and Theses

This study updates a 10-year longitudinal study investigating TV's portrayal of minorities and women on prime time television. Prior studies focused on the types of roles held by performers. This study extends prior research, examining not only the types of roles held by performers, but also networks' preference for women and minorities and the genre that most often feature women and minorities.

Data were collected for a consecutive five-week period from February 19, 1997 to March 14,1997. From this sample 40 dramas and 115 situation comedies were recorded and coded. Programming was taken from shows that aired in the Pacific …

Leadership Development In The Christian Church And Churches Of Christ In Northeast Nebraska, Wayne Dykstra

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This project/thesis focuses on the leadership needs of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ in northeast Nebraska in general and of Wakefield Christian Church in particular. The leadership context of Wakefield Christian Church was analyzed utilizing a congregational profile inventory, the presentation of a leadership development course, an evaluation instrument, and conversations and interviews of the church leadership. The success or failure of organizations will depend upon the quality of the leadership. The objective of this project was to provide a leadership course which would produce better leaders who could make a difference in the kingdom of God and …

An Interview With Claude Guillemot, Samantha Mach

SWITCH

This interview with Claude Guillemot, a French video game developer and publisher, talks about his website and some of the issues surrounding it today. Guillemot also mentioned CD-ROM and the web at the time when DOTCOM started to boom in the years 1998 - 2000. He uses the web to create synthetic artworks and talks about how artworks cannot be objective, the same way scientists such as archeologists are not really objective. In his responses to Switch Staff, Guillemot explains scientists and artists do not form a bias in their works and do not favor one side or another. By …

What's Past Is Prologue: Imagining The Socialist Nation In Cuba And In Hungary, Patricia D. Fox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Patricia D. Fox's article, "What's Past is Prologue: Imagining the Socialist Nation in Cuba and in Hungary," examines the symbolic mooring of Cuban and Hungarian identity, recuperated Caliban from William Shakespeare's The Tempest and an ever conflicted Faustus/Adam from Imre Madách's Az ember tragédiája, respectively. Despite serial cosmological fragmentations and political upheaval, the present analysis holds that production and reproduction of these founding figures in the process of imagining the socialist nation represent an ongoing litigation of meaning. This process then conserves a marked thematic continuity through temporal conceptions, totality of exegesis, the mix of rational and mythical, and the …

Thematics And Intellectual Content: The Xvth Triennial Congress Of The International Comparative Literature Association In Leiden, Marko Juvan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Marko Juvan's article, "Thematics and Intellectual Content: The XVth Triennial Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association in Leiden," offers an in-depth view of the intellectual structure and atmosphere of the Congress. The author describes both in detail and in an overview the thematics of the Congress, Literature as Cultural Memory, and explicates the intellectual content of a good number of important panels and papers presented at the Congress. The article represents in a concise manner the current situation of the discipline of Comparative Literature in an international context.

Review Of Ward Churchill, A Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust And Denial In The Americas, 1492 To The Present, A. Claire Brandabur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Book Review Article: A. Clare Brandabur, Review of Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present

The Comic In Literature As A General Systems Phenomenon, Vera Zubarev

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Vera Zubarev proposes in her article, "The Comic in Literature as a General Systems Phenomenon," that the definitions of and about aspects of dramatic genre are best articulated from the theoretical approach of systems theory. It is assumed that self-regulation is a basic element, that is, any object, any system or phenomenon has its own structure, fulfills its own function, performs its own process, has its own operator, and maintains its genesis. A number of new notions can be drawn from this proposition with regard to the concepts of potential in dramatic genre and the comic, as follows. 1) The …

Memories Of Hungary: A Review Article Of New Books By Suleiman And Teleky, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Comparative Method And The Study Of Literature, Aldo Nemesio

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Aldo Nemesio argues in his article "The Comparative Method and the Study of Literature" for the comparative method as follows. Contemporary literary research is based on parameters and methods which do not appear to have evolved similar to other fields of inquiry. If the study of literature is concerned with literary behavior, for instance, the object of study cannot limit itself to a single author or to a limited number of authors and what surrounds them closely. Also, national boundaries are too narrow: what happens within the boundaries of a culture can be understood only if we relate it to …

Manifesto For A Revolution Of The West, Armando Gnisci

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Armando Gnisci's article, "Manifesto for a Revolution of the West," is a proposal for solidarity and action he understands as "revolution" against inequities and injustice. The world, conquered by the Eurocentric will-to-power, already centrifuged and spread across the globe, is now in sight of a new era. Images of the near future are appearing on the horizon: the rich and powerful North dominates and wastes the South. The cruelty of this Brave New World is contrasted with the utopean diaspora of de-colonizers, the "Creolitisation" of mind and cultures, the resistance of differences, and revolution. The first image, to which we …

Protecting Communication Departments: Reflections On The Nebraska Experience, Ronald Lee, William J. Seiler

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Eight years ago, in the first week of the 1991 fall semester, the Acting Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs announced a series of vertical budget cuts that included the elimination of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s department of Speech Communication (now Communication Studies). Over the next seven months the department fought against the proposed action. In March 1992, the Budget Reduction Review Committee voted against the Vice Chancellor’s recommendation. Later in the month, the Academic Planning Committee also voted to rescind the budget cutting measure.

These actions ended the battle and assured the continuation of the department. In an earlier …