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The Logic And Language Of Torture, Jonathan H. Marks Mar 2007

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 …


Collateral Damage And The "Incident" At Haditha, Tom Engelhardt Mar 2007

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 …


Selected Bibliography Of Comparative Studies On Human Rights Culture, Henry James Morello Mar 2007

Selected Bibliography Of Comparative Studies On Human Rights Culture, Henry James Morello

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Narration In International Human Rights Law, Joseph R. Slaughter Mar 2007

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 …


Mass-Mediated Social Terror In Spain, Nicholas Manganas Mar 2007

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 …


Landmines, Hiv/Aids, And Africa's New Generation, Barbara Harlow Mar 2007

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 …


The Tortured Body, The Photograph, And The U.S. War On Terror, Julie Gerk Hernandez Mar 2007

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 …


Poetry And The Aesthetic Of Morality, Michael Mcirvin Mar 2007

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 Mar 2007

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 …


Textual Strategies To Resist Disappearance And The Mothers Of Plaza De Mayo, Alicia Partnoy Mar 2007

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 …


Bearing Witness Through Fiction, Carolina Rocha Mar 2007

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 Mar 2007

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. …


Artists In Times Of War, Howard Zinn Mar 2007

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 …


Globalization And Christopher Columbus In The Americas, Elise Bartosik-Vélez Dec 2006

Globalization And Christopher Columbus In The Americas, Elise Bartosik-Vélez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Globalization and Christopher Columbus in the Americas," Elise Bartosik-Vélez considers the responses of scholars working in colonial and early modern studies to recent exponential increases in the transnationalization of capital and the resulting changes in the role of the nation-state. The case of Christopher Columbus and his appropriation by US-American nationalists during the early modern period is particularly instructive with regard to this discussion because Columbus exemplifies not only the drive to globalization of early modern European colonialism, but also the limits of nation-centric thinking in understanding the intersections and overlappings between empire and nation. Columbus in the Americas …


Portrayal Of Mathematicians In Fictional Works, Daniel Dotson Dec 2006

Portrayal Of Mathematicians In Fictional Works, Daniel Dotson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Portrayal of Mathematicians in Fictional Works," Daniel Dotson explores how people with mathematical abilities -- including mathematicians, mathematics teachers, mathematically-inclined youths, cryptographers, and more -- are portrayed in novels, films, television programs, and a play. A summary table of the characters gives a short description of each of them, the title of the work in which they appeared, and the format of the work. Characters were analyzed to see if they possessed any of ten personality traits: obsessive, having major mental health problems, withdrawn, brave, timid, socially inept, arrogant, uses math to escape reality, out of touch, …


Memories Of Communism In Central And East Europe: New Work By Janaszek-Ivaničková, Modrzejewski And Sznajderman, Rév, And Spiewak, Agata Anna Lisiak Jun 2006

Memories Of Communism In Central And East Europe: New Work By Janaszek-Ivaničková, Modrzejewski And Sznajderman, Rév, And Spiewak, Agata Anna Lisiak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Comparative Cultural Perspectives For The Study Of The Americas: New Work By Imbert And Mcclennen And Fitz, Irune Del Río Gabiola Mar 2006

Comparative Cultural Perspectives For The Study Of The Americas: New Work By Imbert And Mcclennen And Fitz, Irune Del Río Gabiola

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, And The Media, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek Dec 2005

Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, And The Media, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, in his paper, "Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, and the Media," discusses aspects of media coverage in German-, Hungarian-, and English-language newspapers and magazines of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to Imre Kertész. The perspective of Tötösy's analysis is to gauge the importance and impact of media coverage comparatively in the three cultural and media landscapes. Based on selected examples from newspapers and magazines with an international scope, Tötösy argues that the reception of Kertész's Nobel Prize suggests the convergence of the media (as the message) and the contents of the message within …


The Problematics Of A Social Constructivist Approach To Science, Bryce Christensen Sep 2005

The Problematics Of A Social Constructivist Approach To Science, Bryce Christensen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "The Problematics of a Social Constructivist Approach to Science," Bryce Christensen takes John Gray's hope that science can serve as a remedy for anthropocentrism as an entry point for discussing the debate between scientific realists and social constructivists. Christensen examines the way science appears to buttress the realist position when it confronts humans with truths that contradict their expectations and desires. In his discussion, Christensen also surveys the ways that science fits within social constructivist theory when it serves identifiable social needs or advances identifiable group interests. Further, Christensen identifies eschatological cosmology as an extreme test case …


Hybridity And Whiteness In Claudine C. O'Hearn's Half And Half: Writings On Growing Up Biracial And Bicultural, Heather Latimer Sep 2005

Hybridity And Whiteness In Claudine C. O'Hearn's Half And Half: Writings On Growing Up Biracial And Bicultural, Heather Latimer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O'Hearn's Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural," Heather Latimer examines the autobiographical collection Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural assembled and edited by Claudine C. O'Hearn. Latimer's analysis reveals how current models of hybridity theory are performed, articulated, and exemplified in the texts of O'Hearn's volume. In her analysis, Latimer explores the anxiety and tension about whiteness within hybridity theory, often reflected in the performance of hybrid aesthetics. Latimer argues that while some authors in Half and Half avoid talking about whiteness as …


Nation, Heritage, And Hospitality In Britain After Thatcher, Ryan S. Trimm Jun 2005

Nation, Heritage, And Hospitality In Britain After Thatcher, Ryan S. Trimm

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Nation, Heritage, and Hospitality in Britain after Thatcher," Ryan S. Trimm examines the trope of cultural inheritance in postimperial Britain. "Heritage," an ubiquitous term in 1980s Britain, circulates largely as a conservative concept, an imagined bequest that works to exclude groups such as minorities who are disinherited putatively by not being part of the past and conceived as handing down some legacy. Such seems to be precisely the way heritage functioned under Margaret Thatcher's heritage politics, a collection of policies that associated icons such as the country house with the nation itself. However, although appeals to heritage …


But... Can The Subaltern Sing?, Rebecca Romanow Jun 2005

But... Can The Subaltern Sing?, Rebecca Romanow

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "But... Can the Subaltern Sing?," Rebecca Romanow discusses the dominance of the English language in rock music and the cultural values and global power that are exerted through the exportation of rock by American and British bands. Further, she explores the question of the ways in which this music represents an area of popular culture where the voices of the non-English speaking and the non-Western are silenced. Salman Rushdie, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, complains that rock music "is precisely one of those viruses with which the almighty West has infected the East, one of the …


Dust And The Avant-Garde, Jake Kennedy Jun 2005

Dust And The Avant-Garde, Jake Kennedy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Dust and the Avant-Garde," Jake Kennedy presents an interdisciplinary exploration of experimental modernism in the work of visual artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Gertrude Stein. Kennedy focuses on the strange presence of dust in the work of these two artists and argues that as an abject object -- it is literally the unwanted of domestic space -- the idea of dust engages radically modernism on a material level. Dust is also the unwanted of modernity itself, as it represents a potentially subversive sister-part to urban, masculine modernity's valorisation of machinery, glass, and steel. Transmuted into the metaphysical …


Introduction To New Papers In American Cultural Studies, Joanne Morreale, P. David Marshall Jun 2005

Introduction To New Papers In American Cultural Studies, Joanne Morreale, P. David Marshall

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Selected Bibliography Of Scholarship In (Comparative) Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, Yilin Liao Jun 2005

Selected Bibliography Of Scholarship In (Comparative) Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, Yilin Liao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz In Seventeenth-Century New Spain And Finding A Room Of One's Own, Deborah Weagel Mar 2005

Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz In Seventeenth-Century New Spain And Finding A Room Of One's Own, Deborah Weagel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in Seventeenth-Century New Spain and Finding a Room of One's Own," Deborah Weagel examines the life of the seventeenth-century nun and compares her life with the ideals Virginia Woolf portrays in A Room of One's Own. Woolf asserts that in order for a woman to develop innate gifts, she needs a certain degree of financial freedom and private space in which to create. The concept of having one's own room, or space, that can be segregated from the activities of home and public life can be considered both literally and metaphorically. …


Exilic Perspectives On "Alien Nations", Sophia A. Mcclennen Mar 2005

Exilic Perspectives On "Alien Nations", Sophia A. Mcclennen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Sophia A. McClennen's paper, "Exilic Perspectives on 'Alien Nations'," is an excerpt from her book, The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language and Space in Hispanic Literatures (Purdue UP , 2004). In the paper, McClennen summarizes her theory that exile writing is inherently dialectical. Focusing on writers working in the latter part of the twentieth century who were exiled during a historical moment of increasing globalization, transnational economics, and the theoretical shifts of postmodernism, McClennen proposes that exile literature is best understood as a series of dialectic tensions about cultural identity. Through a comparative analysis of Juan Goytisolo (Spain), Ariel …


Separatist Nationalism In Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants, Karsten H. Piep Dec 2004

Separatist Nationalism In Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants, Karsten H. Piep

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Karsten H. Piep, in his paper "Separatist Nationalism in Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants," argues that only recently rediscovered among American scholars and still awaiting much critical work, Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants offers an intriguing case study in the complex relationship between fictional representation and late eighteenth-century nation formation. Tracing briefly the novel's reception history, Piep locates The Emigrants within the socio-political context of eighteenth-century discourses on revolution, emancipation, and independence. Taking Benedict Anderson's study on the rise of nationalism as a point of reference, Piep argues that Imlay's novel offers an example of a perhaps uniquely American separatist nationalism that …


Czech Literature, The King With The Horse's Ears, And Its Translations By Karel Havlícek Borovský And Milan Uhde, Michelle Woods Dec 2004

Czech Literature, The King With The Horse's Ears, And Its Translations By Karel Havlícek Borovský And Milan Uhde, Michelle Woods

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Michelle Woods, in her paper "Czech Literature, The King with the Horse's Ears, and Its Translations by Karel Havlícek Borovský and Milan Uhde," analyses the adaptation and "translation" of the Irish legend into the Czech language in Karel Havlícek Borovský's 1854 epic poem Král Lávra and in Milan Uhde's 1964 play Král Vávra. The translation of Irish language myths and legends into English functioned as way of constructing and disseminating the notion of a great literary and heroic past within the language of the colonizer but also in dissent to the constructions imposed by that language. Woods focuses on how …


Hellenism, Hebraism, And The Eugenics Of Culture In E.M. Forster's Howards End, Seth Jacobowitz Dec 2004

Hellenism, Hebraism, And The Eugenics Of Culture In E.M. Forster's Howards End, Seth Jacobowitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Seth Jacobowitz, in his paper "Hellenism, Hebraism, and the Eugenics of Culture in E.M. Forster's Howards End," explores how the culturalist principles of Hellenism and Hebraism theorized by Matthew Arnold as the basis of Englishness in Culture and Anarchy (1869) were incorporated into the text of E.M. Forster's Howards End (1910) to show the close institutional and conceptual linkages Forster shared with Arnold. Further, Jacobowitz seeks to bring Howards End into dialog with Forster's only major work of science fiction, The Machine Stops (1928), to address their mutual themes of eugenics, the racialization of class difference, and concerns over the …