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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 …

New Technologies And Teaching Comparative Literature, Graciela Boruszko

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "New Technologies and Teaching Comparative Literature" Graciela Boruszko discusses the use of new technologies in literary studies curricula. Innovative processes are becoming fundamental components of our educational systems as students challenge faculty to immerse themselves in their rapidly changing world. Learning in the twenty-first century is assisted by various information technologies because the networked information economy made possible by the Internet allows students to access a rich array of online resources including community based and collaborative knowledge exchange systems. Current students are "digital natives" grown up using a variety of digital platforms. Students multitask and process information …

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 …

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 …

Comparative Literature And Cultural Studies: A Book Review Article About Wang's Work, Tian Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

March's Poetry And National Identity In Nineteenth-Century Catalonia, Alice E. Popowich

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "March's Poetry and National Identity in Nineteenth-century Catalonia" Alice E. Popowich investigates the role Ausiàs March's (1397-1459) oeuvre played in the creation of a distinct national identity of nineteenth-century Catalonia. The sociopolitical implications of renaixença and the romantic notion of Volksgeist are employed to situate renewed interest in March's poetry, while the study of reprints from the period allow reflections on the manipulation of March's celebrity in order to move political agendas forward in the establishment of the identity and culture of Catalonia. Popowich postulates that March's poetry influenced nineteenth-century literary rhetoric and politics whereby a regional …

Major Histories, Minor Literatures, And World Authors, Theo D'Haen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Major Histories, Minor Literatures, and World Authors" Theo D'haen discusses how the idea of world literature has made a remarkable comeback in literary studies. A major feature of this revival has been increased attention from a "world perspective" to literatures until recently little studied beyond disciplinary boundaries, particularly so some "major" literatures such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and various Indian-language literatures. As such, these literatures have come to join what has usually been thought of as "European" world literature. What this move, however to be welcomed in itself, obscures is the even further peripheralization of a number …

Challenges And Possibilities For World Literature, Global Literature, And Translation, Kathleen Shields

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Challenges and Possibilities for World Literature, Global Literature, and Translation" Kathleen Shields argues that Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur was grounded in translation practice: in creating a canon representing the best of each nation, translation occupied centre stage. Nation-building in Europe in the nineteenth century was combined with the idea of transnational literature where translation was an important tool of transmission and exchange, as well as a way of decentering from a strong monolingual base. There are four challenges for comparative literature now. Firstly, the nation state is weakening. Secondly, despite the growing interest in world literature since …

Gender And Emotion In Comparative Perspective, Raili Marling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender and Emotion in Comparative Perspective" Raili Marling argues that although the study of affect is anything but new, literary studies can benefit from the creative tension between affect and (feminist) politics. Building on the work of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant, Marling engages with the debates within affect theory and then fleshes out the idea of literature as a gendered intimate public sphere and investigates the political effects of emotions as cultural practices. The resulting — largely Anglophone — theoretical apparatus is then tested in a cross-cultural context by discussing Elo Viiding's negotiation of "happiness duty" …

Greek, Latin, And The Origins Of "World Literature", Alexander Beecroft

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Greek, Latin, and the Origins of 'World Literature'" Alexander Beecroft argues that while it is hardly new that the models of contemporary comparative and world literature(s) are Eurocentric in their origins and structures, the precise nature of Eurocentrism is less discussed. Beecroft argues that far from representing (as Goethe had wished) the end of national literature, the era of comparative and world literatures has, from its beginnings, been structured specifically around the notion of "national literatures." Beecroft explores the national basis for the study of comparative and world literatures in the nineteenth century with particular attention to …

Ethical Criticism And Literary Studies: A Book Review Article About Nie's Work, Biwu Shang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Introduction To World Literatures From The Nineteenth To The Twenty-First Century, Marko Juvan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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 …

Fiction, Film, Painting, And Comparative Literature, Ramona L. Ceciu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Fiction, Film, Painting, and Comparative Literature" Ramona L. Ceciu proposes a view of comparative literature as a "language in a process of ascertaining its proper grammar." She argues that like any language in order to survive, comparative literature must allow for a constant rejuvenation of its vocabulary and methods it must keep an "open" structure that would accommodate fresh extra-methodological approaches through a procedure of re-invention and expansion. Ceciu posits that in this process the comparatist's "objective creativity" plays a crucial role and draws on Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek's concept of a "new comparative literature" and applies …

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 " …

Multilingual Bibliography Of New Work In Comparative Literature In Europe 2007-2014, Marina Grishakova, Lucia Boldrini, Matthew Reynolds

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Generative Translation In Spicer, Gelman, And Hawkey, Lisa Rose Bradford

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Generative Translation in Spicer, Gelman, and Hawkey" Lisa Rose Bradford examines the practice of generative translation — a concept she designated — in Jack Spicer's After Lorca (1957), Juan Gelman's Com/positions (1986), and Christian Hawkey's Ventrakl (2010) to show how this strategy revives the original articulation as a continuation of the seminal frisson while producing an entirely new work of art and one that reflects the genius of both the original and translating authors. While generative translation represents a renovative strategy that has provided historically a constant creative force in literature, in recent years it has established …

Class Notes, Georgia Southern University

Arts & Humanities: News & Publications (2009-2023)

No abstract provided.

Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism In American Women's Popular Writing, Anne Aramand

Graduate Masters Theses

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are …

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 Humanism(S), The Divine Comedy, Lao She's "灵的文学与佛教" ("Literature Of The Soul And Buddhism"), And Gao's Soul Mountain, Letizia Fusini

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "World Humanism(s), the Divine Comedy, Lao She's "灵的文学与佛教" ("Literature of the Soul and Buddhism"), and Gao's Soul Mountain" Letizia Fusini analyzes the Lao She's and Xingjian Gao's conceptions of literature as an activity concerning the realm of the spirit. Fusini utilizes Dante's Divine Comedy for comparison between the literary ideals pursued by the two Chinese writers and regards Lao She's and Gao's humanist and non-political approach underlying their respective notions. Considering Lao She's call for the emergence of a "Chinese Dante" (1941), Fusini contends that China might have found its own "Dante" in …

From Cultural Third-Worldism To The Literary World-System, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "From Cultural Third-Worldism to the Literary World-System" Jernej Habjan links the debate on Franco Moretti's distant reading to the debate on Fredric Jameson's "third world culture." In and around this debate, Aijaz Ahmad both critiqued close reading and rejected Jameson's "Third-Worldism." What Jameson's and Ahmad's interventions into literary theory meant at the end of the real-socialist alternative and what Moretti's meant at the end of the US-American alternative to real-socialism, a synoptic reading of all three interventions might help achieve at the end of what seemed the European alternative to the US-American alternative.

National Literatures As Intimate Expression And The Problem Of Teaching World Literatures, Kette Thomas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "National Literatures as Intimate Expression and the Problem of Teaching World Literatures" Kette Thomas analyzes the fundamental tension embedded in the discourse on teaching world literatures. Thomas focuses on models which contextualize the problem around the subject of allegiance either to the reader or the author rather than the commonly limited geographical, national, and politically defined complex. Focus on the reader or author is often made at the expense of the "other," but it is the tension and communication between them that offers possibilities for the development of the discipline of comparative literature (against Eurocentrism and the …

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.

On Some Worlds Of World Literature(S): A Book Review Article On Ďurišin's, Casanova's, And Damrosch's Work, Anton Pokrivčák

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 …