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The New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Jin Feng Dec 2004

The New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Jin Feng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Jin Feng, in her paper "The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction," proposes that the representation of the "new woman" in Chinese fiction was paradoxically one of the ways in which male writers of the era explored, negotiated, and laid claim to their own emerging identity as "modern" intellectuals. Previous scholarship on fiction of the period probed occasionally the thematic implications of female characters in specific works but has not engaged in systematic study of the "new woman" as a figure through a discussion of the politics of the narrative form. Feng addresses aspects of audience in early-twentieth-century Chinese …


Ondaatje's The English Patient And Rewriting History, Stephanie M. Hilger Sep 2004

Ondaatje's The English Patient And Rewriting History, Stephanie M. Hilger

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Stephanie M. Hilger, in her paper "Ondaatje's The English Patient and Rewriting History," situates the novel within the long-standing Western tradition of writing about the cultural "Other," from Herodotus to Michel de Montaigne to Rudyard Kipling. Michel de Certeau's notion of history serves as a reference point for the analysis of Ondaatje's presentation of the "English" patient's story as well as of twentieth-century history. Hilger argues that the protagonist's physical mutilation is a metonymic representation of post-World War II and postcolonial consciousness. In the same way that the characters in the novel attempt to understand the mystery that is the …


Selected Bibliography Of Michael Ondaatje's Texts And Studies About Michael Ondaatje's Texts, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek Sep 2004

Selected Bibliography Of Michael Ondaatje's Texts And Studies About Michael Ondaatje's Texts, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Michael Ondaatje's Writing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek Sep 2004

Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Michael Ondaatje's Writing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Exploring Transnational Identities In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Victoria Cook Sep 2004

Exploring Transnational Identities In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Victoria Cook

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Victoria Cook, in "Exploring Transnational Identities in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost," addresses issues of identity raised in the narrative of Michael Ondaatje's novel Anil's Ghost. Cook's paper is a close analysis of Ondaatje's novel, paying particular attention to the way in which Ondaatje examines identity as both a "construct" and a "process." The approach used is one that draws on postcolonial theory and takes a "transnational" perspective. Cook argues that Ondaatje's text moves beyond the concept of a postcolonial literature of "resistance" into an area that requires a theory of process rather than product. Transnationalism is shown here to be just …


Medieval Cosmopolitanism And The Saracen-Christian Ethos, Marla Segol Jun 2004

Medieval Cosmopolitanism And The Saracen-Christian Ethos, Marla Segol

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Medieval Cosmopolitanism and the Saracen-Christian Ethos," Marla Segol argues that in Floire et Blancheflor and Aucassin et Nicolette, two medieval Occitanian romances, the writers work actively to incorporate Islamic culture and its accomplishments into a hybrid communal identity. The hybrid elements of this identity are demonstrated in two ways: first, through the portrayal of mixed couples and second, through depiction of a biculturally constituted landscape and culture. Intercultural relations between the characters are dramatized through the structures of religious conversion. Each romance features a mixed couple, with one member Christian and the other, formerly Muslim but converted …


On Edward Said, Scholar And Public Intellectual, F. Elizabeth Dahab Dec 2003

On Edward Said, Scholar And Public Intellectual, F. Elizabeth Dahab

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "On Edward Said, Scholar and Public Intellectual," F. Elizabeth Dahab pays tribute to Edward Said, 1935-2003. Dahab discusses selected aspects of Said's trajectories as a scholar and Palestinian-American activist including aspects of Said's numerous activities and work as a musician, an ardent political polemicist, a music critic, a Columbia University professor of comparative literature, a humanist, President of the Modern Language Association of America, and an exiled Palestinian as evident in the vast corpus of this eminent scholar's publications over the course of almost four decades (twenty-four books and hundreds of articles and interviews). Said's work elicited …


Cultures Of Populism And The Political Right In Central Europe, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Andrea Petö Dec 2003

Cultures Of Populism And The Political Right In Central Europe, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Andrea Petö

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper, "Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe," Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petö analyze the common points and differences in which imagined and mythologized histories are serving as a mobilizing force for extreme-right movements in three Central European countries, in Austria, Hungary, and Italy. The authors discuss how populist and right-wing political parties in these countries construct their conceptions of an alternative identity for the European Union. Further, the authors analyze the politico-territorial myths constructed by the three populist right-wing parties, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy, and the Party of …


Comparative Literature Versus Comparative Cultural Studies, Tomo Virk Dec 2003

Comparative Literature Versus Comparative Cultural Studies, Tomo Virk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies," Tomo Virk discusses debates of the role, essence, and the future of comparative literature as it has developed since the 1995 publication of the Bernheimer Report. Virk explores the situation of the discipline in its North American context: "contextualists" argue for the abandoning of comparative literature understood as the study of literature with theoretical investigations of literariness while the "non-contextualists" underscore the study of the linguistic structure(s) of the text. Virk supports comparative literature understood as the traditional concentration of the discipline with focus on the specificities of literary questions while …


New Orleans And Its Influence On The Work Of Lillian Hellman, Charlotte Headrick Sep 2003

New Orleans And Its Influence On The Work Of Lillian Hellman, Charlotte Headrick

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "New Orleans and Its Influence on the Work of Lillian Hellman," Charlotte Headrick explores playwright Lillian Hellman's life and work. Headrick proposes that Hellman was indelibly shaped by her years in the city of New Orleans. In her early childhood, Hellman would spend half a year in New York and half a year in New Orleans, home to her parents. Despite this seemingly schizophrenic upbringing, she considered herself a Southerner to the end of her days and, in fact, defined herself less by her Jewishness than by her "Southernness." Hellman's plays and memoirs are peppered with references …


Selected Bibliography Of Work In Cultural Studies And Us-American Popular Culture, Marta Guirao, Benton Jay Komins Sep 2003

Selected Bibliography Of Work In Cultural Studies And Us-American Popular Culture, Marta Guirao, Benton Jay Komins

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller Sep 2003

Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklore, popular culture, and mass media. In American culture, the Divine Idiot is a hybrid form which grows out of the crossings of numerous literary and historical currents, both secular and non-secular. This unwieldy hybridity -- the fact that …


An Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Benton Jay Komins Sep 2003

An Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Benton Jay Komins

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Qu(E)Erying Comic Book Culture And Representations Of Sexuality In Wonder Woman, Brian Mitchell Peters Sep 2003

Qu(E)Erying Comic Book Culture And Representations Of Sexuality In Wonder Woman, Brian Mitchell Peters

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Qu(e)erying Comic Book Culture and Representations of Sexuality in Wonder Woman," Brian Mitchell Peters proposes that youth culture is responsible for an arbitrary yet highly structured appropriation of what we can call high-contemporary culture. Hence, notions of pop-culture take from the past and use the present to create a highly fluid now, capable of transcending its present moment in a stereotypical fifteen minutes of fame. Part of twentieth-century pop-culture phenomena is the evolution of the comic book. The comic, in its habitual split of binaries, creates a space where young people have tapped consistently into queer themes. …


Heidegger, The Erotics Of Ontology, And The Mass-Market Romance, Deborah Lutz Sep 2003

Heidegger, The Erotics Of Ontology, And The Mass-Market Romance, Deborah Lutz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Heidegger, the Erotics of Ontology, and the Mass-Market Romance," Deborah Lutz explores a particular formula of mass-market romance -- the dangerous lover or "sweet savage" one -- as an allegory for Heidegger's theories of nearness and being-toward-an-end in Being and Time. The postponements, secrets, and failed presence of the final immanence of love in these narratives allegorize the flight and entanglement of Dasein in the everyday. The romance's narrative movement as always in relationship with its end -- the full presence of love -- and its structure of being always ahead of itself, mirrors the narrativity of …


Symbolism, Popular Drama, And Politics And Art In Belgium, 1886-1910, Joan Gross Sep 2003

Symbolism, Popular Drama, And Politics And Art In Belgium, 1886-1910, Joan Gross

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Symbolism, Popular Drama, and Politics and Arts in Belgium, 1886-1910," Joan Gross examines what effects the reign of terror in the Congo and the silence that masked it might have had on popular performance traditions and literary practices in Belgium. Gross examines a popular puppet play by Léopold Leloup and an essay by Maurice Maeterlinck, both of which are called The Massacre of the Innocents. The third text she explores is a parliamentary speech given by Émile Vandervelde in 1903 in which he protested brutal practices in the Congo. Gross explores the interconnections between these three disparate …


Teaching Merchant-Class Virtues With Chushingura And The London Merchant, David S. Escoffery Jun 2003

Teaching Merchant-Class Virtues With Chushingura And The London Merchant, David S. Escoffery

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Teaching Merchant-Class Virtues with Chushingura and The London Merchant," David S. Escoffery examines the different styles of teaching merchant-class virtues in eighteenth-century Japan and England through an analysis of the classical Japanese play Chushingura and the didactic British play The London Merchant. He holds that in both Europe and Japan, the eighteenth century saw the rise of a whole new class, the middle class, to either economic or social power or both. That century was also a didactic age for the theatre. For the first time, the audience could see characters from the new merchant class on …


Science, Sexuality, And The Novels Of Huxley And Houellebecq, Angela C. Holzer Jun 2003

Science, Sexuality, And The Novels Of Huxley And Houellebecq, Angela C. Holzer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Science, Sexuality, and the Novels of Huxley and Houellebecq," Angela C. Holzer begins with an introduction to recent discourse about contemporary culture by Francis Fukuyama, notably in his book Our Posthuman Future (2001). Next, Holzer introduces twentieth-century literary representations of genetic engineering. Focusing on Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and on Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998), Holzer discusses differences in "utopian" literature when linked to metaphysical aspects of reproduction and that are owing to changes in the life sciences and medicine. Further, Holzer explores the implications for poetics resulting from scientific developments and relates Houellebecq's perspectives to …


And The 2002 Nobel Prize For Literature Goes To Imre Kertész, Jew And Hungarian, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek Mar 2003

And The 2002 Nobel Prize For Literature Goes To Imre Kertész, Jew And Hungarian, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents an introduction to the recepient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, Imre Kertész, and his work. Tötösy de Zepetnek places Kertész's work in the context of Central European culture and within that in the genre of Central European Jewish memoir literature (but not autobiography). In Tötösy de Zepetnek's opinion the cultural and social relevance of Jewish memoir writing today is of particular importance precisely for the same reasons Kertész articulates when he says, "I am a survivor. …


Nobel In Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics Of The Holocaust, Sára Molnár Mar 2003

Nobel In Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics Of The Holocaust, Sára Molnár

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Nobel in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics of the Holocaust," Sára Molnár discusses aspects of Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész's reception in Hungary. In her analysis, Molnár discusses aesthetic features of the author's use of language. Molnár's study illuminates the problem of authorship and questions relating to intersections of fiction and autobiography in Kertész's oeuvre. Molnár's argument is that although the author's personal history is indeed important in his texts, this "author" should not be identified with Kertész himself and that although Kertész's themes and subjects appear to be autobiographical, not even his diaries should or can be …


Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" And (Finnish) Identity Construction, Kimmo Jokinen Dec 2002

Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" And (Finnish) Identity Construction, Kimmo Jokinen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' and (Finnish) Identity Construction," Kimmo Jokinen proposes the validity of common belief today that a shift into a late-modern era is taking place. It has often been claimed in contemporary sociological debates that our "post-industrial" life has become more thoroughly imbricated with culture and signs and sociologists, in their analyses of contemporary life, are interested especially in stories people tell, hear, and read. Based on readers' survey data in Finland, Jokinen analyses the ways in which Rosa Liksom's short story "We Got Married" is being employed in identity construction. For Jokinen, …


Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In Post-Communist Bulgaria, Kornelia Slavova Dec 2002

Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In Post-Communist Bulgaria, Kornelia Slavova

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Kornelia Slavova, in her paper "Reading Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' in Post-communist Bulgaria," discusses the intricate interrelations of texts and social practices in postcommunist Bulgaria by analysing Rosa Liksom's short story read by sixty readers. Further, Slavova proposes the study of the uses of stereotypes in fiction and their discursive hardening in extratextual practices at times of radical political and cultural change. With this notion, she focuses on two major stereotypical patterns concerning gender and the supranational opposition East/West. Slavova argues that the latter function as palimpsest structures on which earlier bipolar representations from the communist Cold-War era …


Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In A Cultural And Political Perspective, Erkki Vainikkala Dec 2002

Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In A Cultural And Political Perspective, Erkki Vainikkala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Reading Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' in a Cultural and Political Perspective," Erkki Vainikkala examines Rosa Liksom's short story as well as one reader's response to the text. In Vainikkala's analysis, the short story is described as a structure of inversions and reversals where sequences are opened and cut short, standpoints are offered and taken back immediately, and where the code of realism is suggested but not carried out as the development of the story lacks convincing motivation. The resulting effect of exhaustion, evident also in the manifestation of pathological narcissism in the story, is seen …


Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In Post-Communist Estonia, Malle Järve Dec 2002

Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In Post-Communist Estonia, Malle Järve

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Reading Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' in Post-communist Estonia," Malle Järve discusses the reception of Rosa Liksom's text in post-communist Estonia. After gaining independence, Estonians became exposed to varieties of literature including avant-garde texts which did not fit easily with the expectations and rules of interpretation developed during Soviet rule. Based on data collected in 1993 and 1998, Järve focuses on the cultural repertoire (discourses, stereotypes, values, literary expectations, etc.) used by readers while constructing meaning to the text, perceived predominantly as foreign/Other. Järve's objective is an attempt to explain: 1) who/what the Other in the …


Introduction To Cultural Text Analysis And Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married", Urpo Kovala Dec 2002

Introduction To Cultural Text Analysis And Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married", Urpo Kovala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Comparative Literature In An Age Of "Globalization", Lois Parkinson Zamora Sep 2002

Comparative Literature In An Age Of "Globalization", Lois Parkinson Zamora

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Lois Parkinson Zamora, in her paper "Comparative Literature in an Age of 'Globalization'," presents a definition of globalization and considers how its cultural and spatial displacements have, and might, change traditional disciplinary practices of comparative literature. Zamora discusses how contemporary Latin American writers dramatize and evaluate the forces of globalization in their fiction and she exemplifies her observations with texts by Carpentier, Borges, Paz, Fuentes, Puig, García Márquez, and Vargas Llosa. Further, the author proposes that the cultural specificity of fictions by contemporary Latin American writers may serve as an antidote to current processes of cultural homogenization.


Towards A Map Of The Current Critical Debate About Latin American Cultural Studies, Julio Ortega Jun 2002

Towards A Map Of The Current Critical Debate About Latin American Cultural Studies, Julio Ortega

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Towards a Map of the Current Critical Debate about Latin American Cultural Studies," Julio Ortega surveys the shifting disciplinary, critical, and methodological paradigms used to study Latin American culture in both the United States and Latin America. Describing the post-theoretical period as a moment when grand analytical models are abandoned in favor of microanalyses, Ortega sees great potential in this new paradigm shift. In his paper, Ortega pays particular attention to the ways that the field of cultural studies has emerged and transformed in Latin American academic inquiry and he considers the disavowal of master critical models …


A Historical Account Of Difference: A Comparative History Of The Literary Cultures Of Latin America, Mario J. Valdés Jun 2002

A Historical Account Of Difference: A Comparative History Of The Literary Cultures Of Latin America, Mario J. Valdés

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Historical Account of Difference: A Comparative History of the Literary Cultures of Latin America," Mario J. Valdés addresses the well-recognized limitations of literary history as historical research. Valdés outlines the theoretical thinking that has guided the editors of The Oxford Comparative History of Latin American Literary Cultures to plan, organize, and complete the first history of literary culture of Latin America. The project is comparative, recognizing the radical diversity of the continent while at the same time it is an open-ended history that informs but does not attempt to provide a totalizing account of more than …


Comparative Literature And Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation To Dialogue, Sophia A. Mcclennen Jun 2002

Comparative Literature And Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation To Dialogue, Sophia A. Mcclennen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation to Dialogue," Sophia A. McClennen surveys the profound changes that characterize Latin American cultural studies today. McClennen reads these changes in light of recent transformations in the fields of comparative literature and cultural studies and suggests that scholars in these fields are now in a position to embark on productive dialogue and exchange. Before such interaction takes place, however, McClennen cautions, we should recall why there has historically been little intellectual exchange between comparatists and scholars of Latin American literature. Barriers to exchange between these areas have been: The …


Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, And Comparative Theory, Román De La Campa Jun 2002

Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, And Comparative Theory, Román De La Campa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Comparative Theory," Román de la Campa explores the post-1989 era of Latin American literary studies, particularly the way in which theoretical production has responded to the collapse of left-wing state projects and the growing influence of market forces in academia. De la Campa suggests that in this context it becomes even more important to study the different ways in which national and regional imaginaries continue to shape Latin American literary studies in both Latin America and the United States. He asks whether we are witnessing the onset of new paradigms better able to …