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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Children's Video Games As Interactive Racialization, Cathlena Martin May 2008

Children's Video Games As Interactive Racialization, Cathlena Martin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cathlena Martin explores in her paper "Children's Video Games as Interactive Racialization" selected children's video games. Martin argues that children's video games often act as reinforcement for the games' television and film counterparts and their racializing characteristics and features. In Martin's analysis the video games discussed represent media through which to analyze racial identities and ideologies. In making the case for positive female minority leads in children's video games, Martin examines the games and franchises of Rugrats and Dora the Explorer. She argues that the influx of games with a greater diversity of minority female characters has only been a …


Racism, Disable-Ism, And Heterosexism In The Making Of Helen Keller, Andy Prettol May 2008

Racism, Disable-Ism, And Heterosexism In The Making Of Helen Keller, Andy Prettol

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Racism, Disable-ism, and Heterosexism in the Making of Helen Keller" Andy Prettol offers an analysis of prevailing narratives about Helen Keller. Prettol focuses on the dynamic interplay of race, (dis)ability, sexuality, and gender inherent to all Keller stories of triumph that are so popular in elementary schools across the U.S. He examines three specific works: William Gibson's playscript The Miracle Worker, written in 1956; the film of the same title directed by Arthur Penn in 1962; and the compiled letters of Anne Sullivan in Helen Keller's The Story of Life. Prettol's analysis works to unpack the articulations …


A Bibliography Of Work On Racial Narratives For Children, Marie Drews May 2008

A Bibliography Of Work On Racial Narratives For Children, Marie Drews

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


The Ambiguous Nature Of Multiculturalism In Two Picture Books About 9/11, Jo Lampert May 2008

The Ambiguous Nature Of Multiculturalism In Two Picture Books About 9/11, Jo Lampert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "The Ambiguous Nature of Multiculturalism in Two Picture Books about 9/11," Jo Lampert looks at how some of the Western discourses of multiculturalism and cultural diversity have shifted since 11 September 2001 by discussing two exemplar picture books about 9/11. Lampert begins with a general discussion of children's books as significant cultural producers of knowledge and provides brief summaries of Patel's On That Day: A Book of Hope for Children and Carlson's There's a Big, Beautiful World Out There! Lampert discusses how the imagined readers of these books are positioned problematically in order to embrace racial tolerance, …


Marx, Postmodernism, And Spatial Configurations In Jameson And Lefebvre, Arina Lungu Mar 2008

Marx, Postmodernism, And Spatial Configurations In Jameson And Lefebvre, Arina Lungu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Marx, Postmodernism, and Spatial Configurations in Jameson and Lefebvre," Arina Lungu discusses the connection between Marxist sociology and postmodernist theory. Lungu examines Fredric Jameson's volume Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism under the light of the spatial theory developed in the 1970s by Marxian theoretician Henri Lefebvre. For Jameson, the spatial turn is a consequence of the gap between the limited abilities of the human perceptive apparatus and the unrepresentability of the multinational hyperspace. In Lungu's view, Jameson reaches his definition of "culturally-dominant" sensibility by disregarding the rich body of spatial criticism outside postmodern theory. …


Nation Building, Utopia, And The Latin American Writer/Intellectual, María Odette Canivell Mar 2008

Nation Building, Utopia, And The Latin American Writer/Intellectual, María Odette Canivell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nation Building, Utopia, and the Latin American Writer/Intellectual," María Odette Canivell discusses the role of utopia in the foundational myths of Latin American cities and its nations. Nation building, in Latin America, Canivell claims, is tied to European myths regarding the New World, as well as to the function of writers' (escribidores) and intellectuals' (letrados) re-formulation of these myths along with their own desires/dreams as to what the ideal of Latin America means. Escribadores and letradas, who make history while re-writing the story/history of their nations, have a direct effect on the policy making and construction of …


Thompson's And Acosta's Collaborative Creation Of The Gonzo Narrative Style, Shimberlee Jirón-King Mar 2008

Thompson's And Acosta's Collaborative Creation Of The Gonzo Narrative Style, Shimberlee Jirón-King

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Thompson's and Acosta's Collaborative Creation of the Gonzo Narrative Style," Shimberlee Jirón-King presents an analysis of Hunter S. Thompson's and Oscar Zeta Acosta's works and a correction about the origins of Gonzo Journalism. Jirón-King suggests that Thompson's and Acosta's writings express the authors' disillusionment about the loss of the American Dream and that their texts suggest the revolutionary movements they hoped for would transform a disintegrating culture have only fallen prey to the shortsightedness of US-American culture. The counter culture they observe simply develops its own forms of racism, classism, power-mongering, and corruption that re-inscribe hegemonic discourses …


On The Convergence Of Innis's International Political Economy And Sebald's Novels, Joseph S. Pinter Mar 2008

On The Convergence Of Innis's International Political Economy And Sebald's Novels, Joseph S. Pinter

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "On the Convergence of Innis's International Political Economy and Sebald's Novels" Joseph S. Pinter contributes to the development of an area of scholarship on Harold A. Innis and Canadian political economy which deals with issues of representation, landscape, and memory. Pinter draws attention to a specific aspect of Innis's approach to political economy and focuses on ways in which Innis was able to represent fundamental aspects of the settlement process in Canada. Pinter argues that Innis focussed on landscape as a basic element in the European experience of North America (US and Canada) that, in turn, enabled …


Achebe, Conrad, And The Postcolonial Strain, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng Mar 2008

Achebe, Conrad, And The Postcolonial Strain, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Achebe, Conrad, and the Postcolonial Strain" Eric Sipyinyu Njeng presents an analysis of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in a context of postcolonial thought and argues that while Achebe's text is often placed against Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a counter discourse -- thus interrogating Conrad's portraiture of Africans as savages -- Achebe's text in fact represents anti-Africanism and subservience to Occidental values. Examining Achebe's authorial intention in Things Fall Apart, especially as epitomized in the character of Okonkwo, the protagonist, Njeng argues that Achebe corroborates Conrad's portrait of the African. In writing Things Fall Apart, …


The Methodology Of Architectonic Truth-Finding In Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), Stephan Schaffrath Feb 2008

The Methodology Of Architectonic Truth-Finding In Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), Stephan Schaffrath

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Stephan Schaffrath, in his paper "The Methodology of Architectonic Truth-Finding in Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)," discusses how Günter Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) negotiates the treacherous terrains that lie between positivism and nihilistic relativism by means of a truth-finding methodology. Schaffrath proposes that truth-finding methodology applies approximative, and therefore architectonic, approaches to conventional concepts of narration and history. Grass's novel breaks down and reassembles playfully the conventions of narration and history, not to negate or devalue them, but to reappraise them by means of an approximative truth-finding methodology, an approach that corresponds to Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of …