Comparative Literature Commons^™

El Arte De "Lágrimas En La Lluvia", Todd K. Mack

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Uno de los elementos destacados de Lágrimas en la lluvia, la excelente novela de ciencia ficción de la madrileña Rosa Montero, es la genial inclusión de obras de arte con fines simbólicos dentro de la obra. Entre estas obras de arte se incluye el famoso cuadro de Johannes Vermeer, Una señora escribiendo una carta con su criada. En este artículo, el dr. Todd Mack muestra cómo este cuadro presagia el principal dilema de la protagonista de la novela. Bruna Husky es una replicante, y por eso sabe exactamente cuánto tiempo vivirá. El conocimiento de su inescapable fin hace …

Políticas De Lo Estético En La Ilustración De Ciencia Ficción. El Caso De “Think Blue, Count Two” De Cordwainer Smith, Silvia Gabriela Kurlat Ares

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Desde el período del Dadá se han ido borrando los límites entre las formas artísticas y sus soportes, entre las estéticas de uso y las estéticas formales, entre los espacios altos y bajos de producción cultural, y también, entre la percepción de centros y periferias que parecen haberse astillado y reproducido a la interioridad de espacios hasta hacer de la hegemonía misma, al decir the Beasley Murray, un concepto no sólo inestable sino casi inexistente. En el caso de la ciencia ficción, esa porosidad hace a la constitución misma de una estética que opera desde la factura del naturalismo pero …

The Maze Of Shanghai Memory In Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, Biwu Shang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Maze of Shanghai Memory in Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans" Biwu Shang analyzes the memory writing of the novel by combining current memory studies with narratology. The paper pursues three major goals. First, it delves into the maze of Shanghai memory embedded in this novel, which is typically formulated by two contrasting aspects: Christopher Banks's naïve and beautiful childhood memory of Shanghai, and his unhappy adulthood memory of it. Second, it explores how memory plays a dual function of deception and decoration. That is to say, Christopher deliberately uses his memory to create positive …

A Comparative Minoritarian Study Of Language Poetry Of Iran And The United States, Sama Khosravi Ooryad

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "A Comparative Minoritarian Study of Language Poetry of Iran and the United States" Sama Khosravi Ooryad analyses Language poetry of the United States (1970s) and Language poetry of Iran (1990s) through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concepts of minor literature and rhizomic text. The argument of the article is that the two movements, in both their poems and theoretical passages, carry potentialities to be related to Deleuzian concepts. The practice of minor literature, rhizomic text and book as machine is more evident in the works of U.S. language poets. Moreover, Iranian language poetry, while being analyzed alongside …

Curricular Requirements, Critical Traditions, And Adaptation In The Paratext Of Chinese And American School Editions Of Robinson Crusoe, Haifeng Hui

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Curricular Requirements, Critical Traditions, and Adaptation in the Paratext of Chinese and American School Editions of Robinson Crusoe" Haifeng Hui analyses a Chinese new curricular edition and an American common core edition of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to reveal how the paratext can be utilized to reveal different ways of understanding in different educational cultures. He argues that the paratext powerfully exerts the publisher's authority over the text and the reader, thus shaping readers' interpretation of the story in the service of fulfilling specific national curricular needs. The Chinese edition aims more at how Crusoe's story should …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Not My Queer: Queer Representation In Contemporary Italian Serial Television, Julia Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary Italian television, like many national televisions, has entered a period in which the relationships the producers and consumers of televisual content are increasingly indistinguishable. In this age of media convergence the new participants of this medium work across platforms to actively engage, consume, create, and recreate both televisual content and our understanding of the medium. These new relationships require a new understanding of the semiotic and discursive changes taking place in television so that we may reconceptualize the contemporary interplay between media and society.

This dissertation maps out a new understanding of the televisual economy through an elaboration of …

Things We Dare Not See: Media Revisions Of Incestuous Relationships, Mattheus M. Oliveira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nowadays we can see a steadily growing acceptance of queer relationships in our films and novels, whether they are romance films or violent war movies. What we don’t get to see are examples of incestuous relationships that are consensual and harmless. For example, when Luke and Leia accidentally share some romantic feelings in Star Wars, that bond is suppressed. We don’t get an acknowledgment of a brother and sister’s emotional support in the movie adaptation of V.C Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic. This erasure stems from a long history of cultural and legal censorship of incest that only discusses …

A Comparative History Of Resurrection Plants, John Charles Ryan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Comparative Literary History of Resurrection Plants" John Charles Ryan assembles a comparative history of resurrection plants through textual analysis of early botanical commentaries, herbal references, prose, poetry, and other sources. Resurrection plants include a diverse range of botanical species, typically of arid regions, that appear to come back to life after complete desiccation. Historical and contemporary observers—from sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard to contemporary Australian poet John Kinsella—have expressed an abiding fascination for resurrection plants' capacity to survive harsh environmental conditions. The plants court their own deaths by paring down—then restoring—physiological processes in relation to shifting ecological …

Urhobo Folklore And Udje Aesthetics In Tanure Ojaide's In The House Of Words And Songs Of Myself, Mathias I. Orhero

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Urhobo Folklore and Udje Aesthetics in Ojaide's In the House of Words and Songs of Myself" Mathias Orhero argues that Ojaide's poetry incorporates Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje style. Using African New Criticism as its theoretical anchor, this paper reveals that Ojaide amply deploys Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje aesthetics in both the form and contents of his poetry and thus, he continues as a modern Urhobo Udje maestro of the hybrid tradition. This paper also brings Ojaide's recent collections to critical lenses, especially as masterpieces of his Urhobo folkloric and Udje adaptations. Orhero concludes by …

The Representation Of Instinctive Homosexuality And Immoral Narcissism In Gide’S The Immoralist (1902) And Mann’S Death In Venice (1912), Louise Willis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Representation of Instinctive Homosexuality and Immoral Narcissism in Gide’s The Immoralist (1902) and Mann’s Death in Venice (1912)" Louise Willis examines two early literary representations of homosexuality in André Gide's The Immoralist (1902) and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912). She reads them with fin-de-siècle sexological theory, mainly Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Willis argues that the texts reflect the reconception of homosexuality as a latent instinct with pathological expression, rather than a sinful act of free will. The article explains that visual imagery conveys homoerotic desire, by incorporating Nietzsche's concept of …

The Indian Empire And Its Colonial Practices In South Asia, Yubraj Aryal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The India, Empire and its Colonial Practices in South Asia" Yubraj Aryal claims that Bharatiya discourse supports colonization in South Asia. This discourse justifies oppression of institutions, practices, of the non-Bharatiya colonized. The article examines Indian Empire's colonialism toward the weaker, smaller nations along its border and the Bharatiya ideology at the heart of the repressive empire, which is taken to represent the South Asian subcontinent. The article looks at the way in which Bharatiya is perhaps a more oppressive ideology than Orientalism and gives a glimpse into how society, culture, history, and textuality work around power …

Adoption, Cynical Detachment, And New Age Beliefs In Juno And Kung Fu Panda, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Adoption, Cynical Detachment, and New Age Beliefs in Juno and Kung Fu Panda" Fu-Jen Chen situates his study within today's prevailing climate of global consumption to argue that the 2007 film Juno—featuring an unconventional portrayal of the adoption triad and a cynical detachment from public values—not only trivializes and depoliticizes the practice of adoption but also serves as an ideological supplement to today's global capitalism. Furthermore, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 (2008; 2011) provide two ideological messages of contemporary New Age spirituality—"the belief in nothing" in part I, and "the attitude of inner peace" …

Memory And Identity-Focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book', Nicoleta D. Ifrim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'" Nicoleta Ifrim analyses România mea (My Romania), Virgil Tănase's first book published after the fall of Ceausescu's regime, a collection of interviews in which personal history is fictionalized according to the narrative rules of a "spoken book." The text is representative for the Eastern intellectual travelling to the West, carrying out his own personal post-totalitarian traumas now mirrored in a self-oriented narrative.

Widerstandsidentitäten: Identitäts- Und Heimatsuche Der Nachfolgegenerationen Türkischer Migranten In Fatih Akins Gegen Die Wand, Feo Aladağs Die Fremde Und Feridun Zaimoğlus Kanak Sprak, Anja Ruxanda Barr

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how Fatih Akin’s film Head-On/Gegen die Wand (2004), Feo Aladağ’s film When We Leave/Die Fremde (2010), and Feridun Zaimoğlu’s text Kanak Spraak construct a new Turkish-German identity that is established through resistance to a homogenously imagined culture. With the current influx of immigrants to Germany, the debate about integration, hybridity, and divergence has become more important than ever. The emergence of hybrid migrant identities that are being problematized in Turkish-German movies and texts has shown that issues of belonging and identity caused by multipositionality have become an integral part of Turkish-German narratives. Over time, representations …

Images, Speech Balloons, And Artful Representation: Comics As Visual Narratives Of Early Career Teachers, Julian Lawrence, Ching-Chiu Lin, Rita Irwin

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The ways in which teachers adjust to challenges in the process of becoming professionals are complicated. Teacher mentorship, however, is an important step to creating and sustaining a strong professional career. This article discusses new understandings from a Canadian research project: Pedagogical Assemblage: Building and Sustaining Teacher Capacity through Mentoring Programs in British Columbia. Through our use of an a/r/tography informed methodology in teacher mentorship, we have come to understand how the use of comics permits an unfolding of visual narratives as a unique way of contextualizing the complex stories of teaching and learning. Our motivation in employing comics as …

Review Of Captain Marvel And The Art Of Nostalgia, By Brian Cremins, Sean Kleefeld

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Short Story And The Photographic: Twentieth-Century Imagetexts In And Of The Americas, Lucienne Muller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the visuality of the short story from an intermedial point of view, that is, with a focus on the relationship between the short story and the photographic visual. This analysis draws from photographic theory and from the writings of photographer and writer Julio Cortazar whose philosophy puts forward the idea of a reader who becomes the inventive co-creator of the fictional work.

Course Syllabus (W17 Online) Coli 211m: "Superhero Film And Contemporary Culture", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

What might the current popularity and ubiquity of superhero film say about contemporary culture? This course will explore three possible implications of this question: (1) that the superhero genre reflects a moment in our species’ history of reconciling the human being-technology relation, which we shall view as a complex system constituted by our productive relations to material and ideological tools and their ensembles, the needs and aspirations that determine how we conceptualize and activate these relations, and the technically rationalized social reality that is their result, (2) that this ongoing process of reconciliation evinces, at once, the …

Fashion And Female Beat Identity In The Writing Of Jones, Johnson, And Di Prima, Raven J. See

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Fashion and Female Beat Identity in the Writing of di Prima, Johnson, and Jones" Raven J. See discusses how the women writers of the Beat Generation have become iconically defined by their fashion choices. Clothing and accessories offer Beat women a means to construct and express their identity and Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, and Hettie Jones write about fashion in their narratives of self-creation. Like their male contemporaries, Beat women make style choices that allow them to reject mainstream culture and identify within Beat subculture. However, these women write about their decisions to accept or reject …

Tangier And Kerouac's Oriental Experience In Liminality, Peggy Pacini

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Tangier and Kerouac's Oriental Experience in Liminality" Peggy Pacini discusses Kerouac's production derived from his Tangerian experience. Since the Tangier narratives have no existence of their own in the Duluoz Legend and are included in larger volumes about traveling and passing through, Pacini examines how this production cohered within the entire Legend and the terminology and world vision Kerouac had already fashioned. Focusing on two texts, "Big Trip to Europe" and "Passing through Tangiers, France and London," Pacini considers Kerouac's and his alter ego Duluoz's visions of Tangier and their journey to Tangier as many thresholds or …

Bowles's Up Above The World As Beatnik Murder Mystery, Greg Bevan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Bowles's Up Above the World as Beatnik Murder Mystery" Greg Bevan discusses Paul Bowles's fourth and final novel, which at the time of its publication was met with mixed reactions from reviewers and its creator alike, and has seen relatively scanty critical attention in the years since. Gena Dagel Caponi perceives in the novel a reflection of Bowles's struggle for control, during the time of its writing, in the face of his wife Jane's terminal illness. Building on this insight, the current essay notes the same tension in the writings of the Beats—a movement with which Bowles …

The Road Trip As Artistic Formation In Defeo's Work, Frida Forsgren

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Road Trip as Artistic Formation in DeFeo's Work" Frida Forsgren discusses previously unpublished photographic material documenting Jay DeFeo's road trip in Europe and North Africa in the 1950s. Forsgren argues that the Beat road trip is by no means an exclusively masculine enterprise and quest: DeFeo's journey helped open the door to her emancipation as a female artist and propelled her artistic development. Moreover, the global experience represented by the trip helped shape her local Beat milieu upon her return to San Francisco. While European, Medieval, Italian Renaissance, and Hebrew influences in DeFeo's oeuvre have been …

Selected Bibliography For The Study Of The Beat Generation, Oliver Harris, Polina Mackay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Beat Contenders (Micheline, Sanders, Kupferberg), A. Robert Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Beat Contenders (Micheline, Sanders, Kupferberg)" A. Robert Lee asks if we are in danger of too fixed a Beat canonization. That is, do the Usual Suspects—Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, with Corso, Ferlinghetti, Cassady, and Snyder in the frame—assume too presiding a role? There is, for sure, rightly, increased recognition of Beat women writers and attention has been given to the Afro-Beat circuit and, indeed, to a wider multicultural roster to include Latino/a and Asian American authorship. Beat's international reach has won its place, from the United Kingdom and Continental Europe to Japan and Australia. Even so, other …

Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Theories of Opiate Addiction in the Early Works of Burroughs and Trocchi" Richard English discusses William S. Burroughs's and Alexander Trocchi's representations of opiate addiction with special reference to their early writings. English examines the concept of homo heroin that can be attributed to Burroughs and lists and expounds its qualities. Among these are: immorality, criminality, mono-objectuality, self- and other-indifference, and, most importantly, the radical physical transformation into a new species, which Burroughs extends in Naked Lunch. English shows how homo heroin relates to Trocchi's conception of a heroin addict, which serves to illustrate that homo …

The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Cultural Translation of Ginsberg's Howl in Turkey" Erik Mortenson examines three Turkish translations of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl in order to explore the ways in which Ginsberg's poem becomes redeployed in new cultural contexts. Orhan Duru and Ferit Edgü's 1976 translation presents a more politicized Ginsberg that draws on his anti-establishment credentials as a social activist. This comes as little surprise, since in pre-1980 coup Turkey rebellion was thought in purely political terms of right verses left. Hakan Arslan's 1991 update provides a less political and more familiar Ginsberg, in keeping with a society that left …