Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Of Macbeth, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2007/12/macbeth-2006.html

Review Of Petulia, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Richard Lester's Petulia: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2006/06/petulia.html

Review Of The River's Edge, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Allan Dwan's The River's Edge: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2006/07/the-rivers-edge-1957.html

“Sons Of Adam”: Text, Context, And The Early Modern African Subject, Herman L. Bennett

Publications and Research

Seeking to dislodge the prism that a singular political practice—represented as the story from savage to slave—informed the slave trade, this essay points to a distinct genealogy shaping the earliest encounters between Europeans and Africans.

Out Of The Blue: Re-Evaluating Electra-Glide In Blue, William Blick

Publications and Research

The 1970s was a time of moral ambiguity for the cinema. The cult- favorite, Electra Glide in Blue demonstrates the polarization of ideologies in America at the time. In this film, there are several conflicting views of the Vietnam War, "Hippies", drugs, conservatism, communes, and the mistrust of authority that made up a zeitgeist of the time. This short article defines the film as a examination of the ambiguity of the 1970s.

Lost And Found: The Imagined Geographies Of American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In the days after September 11th, 2001, and continuing until now, the national guard and other military personnel fanned out around New York City. Automatic rifles slung over their camouflaged shoulders, they "guarded" New York City's transportation stations, vital corners and thoroughfares, marquee buildings, and each and every bridge and tunnel entrance. Their comportment was usually cordial and rarely vigilant. Exuding the antithesis of an urban sensibility, they complemented the beefy boredom of the police who usually stood nearby, with an almost surreal sense of incredulity; not just "Why am I here?" but a sort of bafflement that anyone would …

La Invención De Los Clásicos: Nacionalismo, Filología Y Políticas Culturales En Argentina, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

Este artículo estudia el lugar que tuvo el discurso filológico en las disputas por la consagración de una versión legítima del canon argentino a comienzos del siglo XX. A través del análisis del modo en que algunos críticos utilizaron argumentos y estrategias de fijación discursiva derivados de la crítica textual para legitimar una versión anti-jacobina y anti-socialista de los orígenes de la nacionalidad en un momento crucial de la vida política del país (la sanción de la Ley Sáenz Peña y las primeras elecciones presidenciales limpias), el trabajo se propone indicar las estrechas relaciones entre legitimación crítica y legitimación política …

Review Of Boudu Saved From Drowning, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Jean Renoir's 1932 film.

Charting An Ethics Of Desire In "The Wings Of The Dove”, Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Publications and Research

James’s characters are nothing if not willful—and ultimately alone—in their quests. Like figures from ancient Greek drama, they demand everything and give up nothing, enacting Jacques Lacan’s ethical claim that “the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one’s desire.”[i] In doing so, they seem to call into question, or at least complicate, the Kantian categorical imperative and the ideal of disinterested action, offering a radical ethical alternative. James’s characters enact, I will argue, an ethic of desire.

[i]Lacan, Seminar VII, 319.

What Adorno Makes Possible For Music Analysis, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Conceived as a commentary on four responses to Adorno’s 1928 essay, “Schubert,” by Esteban Buch, Jonathan Dunsby, Scott Burnham, and Beate Perrey, this article explores some of the implications of Adorno’s essay as they center on notions of hybridity, the interstitial and especially the provisional. It urges a critical strategy that is self-critical, that seeks to name without naming, and that draws on rigorous formal analysis without presenting its outcomes as ends but as means toward various narrative ends.

"More Than Ever Can Be Spoken": Unconscious Fantasy In Shelley's Jane Williams Poems, Thomas R. Frosch

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Creole Carnival: Unwrapping The Pleasures And Paradoxes Of The Gift Of Creolization, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

In this essay Kevin Frank goes against the current in questioning the social and intellectual embrace of the poetics of creolization, in terms of its the efficacy in subverting biases that underpinned colonial subordination and exploitation.

Two Kinds Of Utility: England’S ‘Supremacy’ And The Quest For Completion In David Dabydeen’S The Intended, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

This essay concerns the Caribbean writer’s crucial confrontation with colonial literary models. In it, Kevin Frank argues that the central protagonist of David Dabydeen’s The Intended, the unnamed narrator, resembles the author in that he is torn between cultures (English, East Indian, and West Indian), and torn between two kinds of utility: one base, mechanical, and calculating, and the other, romantic. The latter predicament, Frank demonstrates, is a natural consequence of the convergence of romantic and utilitarian ideology underpinning British colonialism. Moreover, Dabydeen’s ambivalence about his allegiances and literary heritage is similar to that of one of his literary …

Review Of The Book Historical Dictionary Of Turkmenistan, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Historical dictionary of Turkmenistan.

Habitar El Límite: Una Aproximación A La Ética De Eugenio Trías [Reseña Del Libro], Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Reseña del libro: Trías, Eugenio, Ética y condición humana, Barcelona, Ediciones Península, 2000, 154 pp.

Review Of The Book Dictionary Of Literary Biography, Vol. 299: Holocaust Novelists, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Dictionary of literary biography, Vol. 299: Holocaust novelists.

Oy Science Fiction: On Genre, Criticism, And Alien Love: An Interview With Marleen S. Barr, C. Jason Smith, Ximena C. Gallardo, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

Marleen S. Barr is a pioneer of feminist science fiction criticism and a leader in the fight against the ghettoizing influences of genre-labeling in literary criticism. While the noteworthy Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction (University of Iowa Press, 1992) has been praised as Barr's seminal work in feminist science fiction criticism and theory, it is in Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies (U of Iowa P, 2000) where she takes on literary critics' discriminatory practices against "genre fiction" in general and fantasy and science fiction in particular.

Currently teaching at Fordham University in New York City, Barr has …

Female Iconography In Invisible Man, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

Argument concerning female visuality in Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man.

From Center To Margin: A Feminist Journey In The Roman Catholic Church, Susan A. Farrell

Publications and Research

Using a socio-religious approach to autobiography, a sociologist traces her development within the Roman catholic Church and her journey from the center of that religious faith to the margins. As a Feminist sociologist critiquing the institution and its practices which exclude women from ordination, Women-Church, an umbrella organization of feminist groups within the Roman catholic tradition, is used as an example of what a more inclusive religious organization could look like.

La Música En Los Cultos Dionisiacos, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Para penetrar en el mundo musical griego es preciso alejarnos de nuestras categorías estéticas habituales y pensar en modos, ritmos y armonías diferentes. Al mismo tiempo, es indispensable advertir que en la sociedad griega arcaica la música ocupaba un lugar fundamental, pues mantenía estrechos vínculos con la medicina, la astronomía, la religión, la filosofía, la poesía y la pedagogía, entre otras disciplinas. Lo anterior responde a que la música era considerada un arte peculiar y ambiguo dotado de “poderes especiales” porque actuaba como fuerza capaz de precipitar al hombre a la locura, al mismo tiempo que la curaba, o bien, …

Lenguas, Naciones Y Multinacionales: Las Políticas De Promoción Del Español En Brasil, José Del Valle, Laura Villa

Publications and Research

Este artigo descreve as políticas espanholas para promover o status do espanhol como uma língua valiosa, com especial atenção à sua promoção no Brasil. Salienta-se a conexão entre essas políticas lingüísticas e os interesses geoestratégicos da Espanha, e analisam-se algumas das falhas nos argumentos que legitimam o valor do espanhol.

This article describes Spain's policies designed to promote the status of Spanish as a valuable language with special attention to its promotion in Brazil. The connection between these language policies and Spain's geostrategic interests is highlighted and some of the inconsistencies in the arguments that legitimize the value of Spanish …

How Much Does Chaos Scare You?: Politics, Religion, And Philosophy In The Fiction Of Philip K. Dick, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

"Certain themes appear with surprising consistency in Dick’s fiction. They crop up in the early short stories, called by some critics, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Dick’s “apprentice” fiction. They appear in the novels of Dick’s most productive period, the 1960s. And they are a part of the last novels, the VALIS trilogy and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer—written when Dick was, according to Eric Rabkin and others, insane. These themes fall into three inter-related categories: metaphysics, religion, and politics. The first concerns perception and the world, and the individual’s interaction with both. The second, the moralities of creator/creation relationships. The …

Review Of Analogías Musicales: Kandinsky Y Sus Contemporáneos, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

It is hard to believe that curators and scholars still find something to say about the relationship between music and art of the twentieth century. Still, in recent years there has been a relentless boom of exhibitions, scholarly studies, and books dedicated to this topic. This interest, to be sure, is due, in part, to the prestige that modernist art commands among wealthy collectors and institutions, but also to its immense popularity among the general public. Less popular in appeal, though equally revered among the happy few, is modernist music. When both manifestations – art and music – are brought …

Like Falling Off A Log: Rubato In Chopin's Prelude In Ab Major (Op. 28, No. 17), William Rothstein

Publications and Research

Rubato is widely regarded as a purely intuitive art. While it may be true that most performers rely solely on intuition for their rubato, a conscious approach may also be helpful. For the teacher of “analysis for performers,” a conscious approach is essential if rubato is to be discussed at all.

Rubato is a difficult subject to theorize. The late David Epstein made an admirable attempt in his book Shaping Time, using recordings by performers he admired to construct quantitative models. My approach here will be qualitative rather than quantitative, and introspective rather than empirical. Unlike Epstein, I will …

On White Fish And Black Men: Did Stephen Bishop Really Discover The Blind Cave Fish Of Mammoth Cave?, Aldemaro Romero Jr., Jonathan S. Woodward

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Scientists Seeking To Identify Skull As That Of Copernicus, Aldemaro Romero Jr., Andrew T. Sustich

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Sacco And Vanzetti: The Italian American Legacy, Fred L. Gardaphé

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Innocents, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Jack Clayton's The Innocents: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2005/10/the-innocents.html

Review Of Somewhere In The Night, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Somewhere in the Night: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2005/11/somewhere-in-the-night.html

"You Better Work": Underground Dance Music In New York City By Kai Fikentscher, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

You Better Work!: Underground Dance Music in New York City is arguably the first ethnography of electronic dance music culture; it is also one of the first ethnomusicologically-influenced monographs on mediated dance music. Kai Fikentscher deftly avoids the wealth of music industry genre tags (such as "deep house" or "two step garage") that plague many writings on electronic dance music, instead focusing on a specific dance community in New York City which began its social dance practice in the days of disco and continued the practice well into the 1990s. His study took place over the course of thirteen years, …