Comparative Literature Commons^™

Anime And Identity: The Reception Of Sailor Moon By Adolescent American Fans, Darrah M. Hewlett

East Asian Studies Summer Fellows

This project looks at the way fans think, talk, and feel about the anime they watch and the manga they read. Specifically, it looks at fans of Sailor Moon, a series of Japanese anime and manga made in the 1990s that have been dubbed and translated into English and have been met with an enthusiastic reception among girls and young women in the United States. Sailor Moon is considered one of the first mass cultural productions to present images of girl power and gender equality and has generated a large and enthusiastic online community of fans. Most of its …

Utopian And Dystopian Literature: A Review Article Of New Work By Fokkema; Prakash; Gordin, Tilley, Prakash; And Meisig, Barnita Bagchi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Agency, Desire, And Power In Schnitzler's Dream Novel And Kubrick's Adaptation Eyes Wide Shut, Ari Ofengenden

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Agency, Desire, and Power in Schnitzler's Dream Novel and Kubrick's Adaptation Eyes Wide Shut" Ari Ofengenden explores Arthur Schnitzler's novella and Stanley Kubrick's adaptation to offer insights into the ways in which desire disrupts and clashes with social structures (i.e., family, relationships, and society in general). Ofengenden shows how the dynamic in which disruptive desire is ideologically narrativized back into acquiescence with the status quo. Ofengenden interprets the narrative of the film as unique intuitions into action and agency where sources of agency are opaque to the subject and arise by an impenetrable combination of desire …

Paradigms Of Communication In Performance And Dance Studies, Nicoleta Popa Blanariu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Paradigms of Communication in Performance and Dance Studies" Nicoleta Popa Blanariu approaches from an interdisciplinary perspective the measure in which performing arts (theater, music, ballet, Indian classical dance, folk dance, etc.), as well as ritual performance constitute a corpus that may be analysed by means of theoretical and conceptual tools in communication studies and semiotics. Popa Blanariu analyses the relation between signification and communication in performing arts, between different codes and artistic expressions through which these are realized, between verbal and the other artistic "languages," and takes into consideration how "linguistic" functions manifest themselves within "languages" specific …

A Cross-Cultural Approach To Brokeback Mountain, Jono Van Belle

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "A Cross-Cultural Approach to Brokeback Mountain" Jono Van Belle draws on insights from film theory and cultural narratology in order to analyse Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" and its filmic adaptation by Ang Lee. Van Belle's analysis is about how culturally different worldviews play a role in the construction of meaning by audience and she links the different narrative levels of semantics, genre typology, and worldviews in the short story and the film to the scholarship of the story. Further, Van Belle argues that worldviews and the problematics of gayness represented in "Brokeback Mountain" and …

Why Jin's (金庸) Martial Arts Novels Are Adored Only By The Chinese, Henry Yiheng Zhao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Why Jin's Martial Arts Novels Are Adored Only by the Chinese" Henry Yiheng Zhao posits that while the martial arts novel has a long history in China and that its modern school boasts of a number of authors of extraordinary popularity. Yong Jin (金庸) is the best known among them and his novels are read by Chinese wherever they are. Yet, English translations of his works have failed to impress. Zhao attempts to find out what is uniquely Chinese in Jin's novels and that makes his literary achievements ignored in the rest of the world. Zhao posits …

Clairvoyant Learning: The Strangeness Of Playing Games, Jeremy Shipley

Graduate School of Art Theses

In retelling multiple stories of my research, this document serves as a quest to archive my interest in games as evolved systems of play that continue to manipulate the way we view literacy. In describing the subtly of these terms while examining the folkloric histories that contextualize the language of this media, I have doubly manipulated the form of my paper to be like a choose-your-own-adventure tale, reflecting the estrangement of time and authorship unique to the narrative space in games. Unlike the formal structures found in literature or cinema, games animate collaborative and nonlinear systems that return the craft …

Course Syllabus (Sp15) Coli 214 Literature & Society: "Societies Of Discipline And Control", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course description:

Optics is central to the arts of producing human subjects and governing our spatiotemporal deployment of vital forces. Yet, in the transition of societies from industrial to post-industrial modes of production, there seems to have occurred a parallel shift in governmental focus from merely producing and disciplining subjects at the material level to controlling them at the ideological. In this discussion-driven course, we will turn to works of theory and fiction in order to examine the basic tenets of discipline and control and consider the extent to which these social practices diverge and converge in our present era.

Introduction To The Study Of Chinese Literature In The Anglophone World, Shunqing Cao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Reception Of Mao's 'Talks At The Yan'an Forum On Literature And Art' In English-Language Scholarship, Qilin Fu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Reception of Mao's 'Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art' in English-language Scholarship" Qilin Fu examines the three waves of the reception of Mao Zedong's 1942 text. Fu elaborates on the understandings of Mao's ideas about literature and art and discusses the changes depending on historical and political contexts. Fu argues that the changes are explicit or implicit representations of cultural politics ranging from an anti-communist criticism based on Cold War ideology to the concerns of literary theory and the cultural critique of discourse in the context of globalization.

About English-Language Scholarship On Humor In Ancient Chinese Literature, Peina Zhuang, Lei Cheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "About English-language Scholarship on Humor in Ancient Chinese Literature" Peina Zhuang and Lei Cheng present an overview of scholarship by English-language Sinologists on humor. Zhuang and Cheng argue that while English-language scholars have played a path-breaking role in making prominent an important aspect of ancient Chinese literature, their studies also display weaknesses including questionable choices of source material, decontextualized analysis, or even mistranslation. They posit that the study of humor in ancient Chinese literature ought to be performed in a contextual perspective including linguistics, literary history, society, politics, etc.

Bibliography For The Study Of Chinese Literature In The Anglophone World, He Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Mapping Chinese Literature As World Literature, Yingjin Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Mapping Chinese Literature as World Literature" Yingjin Zhang revisits the challenge of mapping Chinese literature as world literature in three steps: 1) he delineates of positions of view as proposed by Western scholars who engaged in rethinking world literature(s) in the age of globalization, 2) evaluates consequences of such a new mapping for Chinese literature and tests a different set of "technologies of recognition" (Shih) in the context of Chinese versus Sinophone studies, and 3) returns to the notion of world literature(s) by considering issues of language and translation and entertains a new vision of mobility via …

About Chinese-Western Comparative Poetics: A Review Article On Liu's, Miner's, Owen's, And Yip's Work, Yina Cao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

About The Chinese School Of Comparative Literature, He Lin, Danqing Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "About the Chinese School of Comparative Literature" He Lin and Danqing Huang discuss the development of the Chinese school of comparative literature since the 1980s. Lin and Huang describe how based on traditions in Chinese literary history, comparatists constructed a system of theoretical frameworks and methods. They argue that the Chinese School should not be criticized as "Chinacentric" just for the fact that its practitioners perform Chinese-Western comparative studies within its own historical and cultural context. Further, they defend the Chinese School by examining the achievements it has made in comparative poetics and the study of reception …

Designations Of Poetry In Translations Of Liu Xie's (劉勰) Work On Literary Genres, Ying Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Designations of Poetry in Translations of Liu Xie's (劉勰) Work on Literary Genres" Ying Liu discusses how Liu Xie (劉勰 465-521 AD) in his文心雕龍 (Wenxin diaolong) followed the tradition of The Book of Songs (詩經) and synthesized the original concept of sung (genre of classical poetry) in the Book of Songs with some later variations and thus constructed and shaped the notion of the genre sung. Liu analyses translations by selected scholars and explores the subtle nuances between sung and its English counterparts historically including "ode," "panegyric," "eulogy," and "hymn" in …

Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

I, Stereotype: Detained In The Uncanny Valley, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In "I, Stereotype," Seo-Young Chu applies Mori's theory of the uncanny valley not to robots but to a different species of humanoid artifact: stereotypes of the "yellow peril." Through analyses of stories by Sax Rohmer, World War Two propaganda, and films from the Bond franchise, Chu investigates ways in which the logic of the uncanny valley has interacted with and shaped Orientalist and techno-Orientalist stereotypes (as well as the stereotype-as-a-perceived-type-of-person more generally). In the process, Chu explores what it means to find one's ethnic group detained in the uncanny valley, what it means to use stereotyping as a time-saving technology …

Cumulative Index Of Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture (1999-), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Bibliography For The Study Of Literature, East Asia, And Globalization, Zhaomei Zheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Canon Formation In The Study Of The Environment In China And Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Canon Formation in the Study of the Environment in China and Taiwan" Peter I-min Huang discusses how the canon of ecocriticism taught in English studies in China and Taiwan is becoming increasingly of a local perspective by scholars who publish in Mandarin, address environmental issues specific to Mainland China and Taiwan, and thus engage with ecocriticism based on local perspectives rather than Western ones. The study and teaching of English-language literature in China and Taiwan inevitably encounters charges of neocolonialism or other argumentation that it is being used in ways that betray the legacy of past colonialist …

Introduction To New Work On Electronic Literature And Cyberculture, Maya Zalbidea, Mark C. Marino, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Gender Identity Construction Through Talk About Video Games, Sara M. Cole

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Identity Construction through Talk about Video Games" Sara Cole discusses the construction of gender identity in terms of experiences of digital media and interactive play. Digital literacy expresses, shares, and reaffirms gendered self-identification through experiences of video game play with narratives that either confirm or deny stereotypical biases. In-depth interviews were used to explore the effects of play practices on conceptions of masculinity and personal identity in males who grew up in the 1980s by focusing on a linguistic analysis of the pragmatics of their shared thoughts on play, fantasy, use of digital media, and violence. …

The Racial Formation Of Chatbots, Mark C. Marino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Racial Formation of Chatbots" Mark C. Marino introduces electronic literature known as chatbot or conversation agent. These programs are all around us from automated help centers to smartphones (e.g., Siri). These conversation agents are often represented as text or disembodied voices. However, when programmers give them a body or the representation of a body (partial or full), other aspects of their identity become more apparent—particularly their racial or ethnic identity. Marino explores the ways racial identity is constructed through the embodied performance of chatbots and what that indicates for human identity construction on the internet.

Introduction To Western Canons In A Changing East Asia, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Environmental Literature And The Change Of Its Canon In Korea, Won-Chung Kim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Environmental Literature and the Change of Its Canon in Korea" Won-Chung Kim examines how US-American ecocritical writings were introduced and received in Korea and how the change of educational curricula in Korea is influenced by changes owing to globalization. Kim shows that the limited reception of US-American ecocritics' works led Korean scholars to reformulate the canon of works in Korean ecocriticism and how they reinvestigate their own cultural heritage and ecological ideas. Kim refers in particular to the thought of thirteenth-century Kyubo Lee and today's Chiha Kim and argues that Korean ecological discourse has the potential to …

Pullinger's And Joseph's Inanimate Alice And Intercultural Engagement, Ana Abril

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Pullinger's and Joseph's Inanimate Alice and Intercultural Engagement" Ana Abril analyzes Kate Pullinger's and Chris Joseph's digital graphic novel and game. Inanimate Alice offers a model for online education environments and has been widely acclaimed. However, Abril's ana-lysis suggests possible ways for improving the empathic and educational potential of the novel/game for interpersonal and intercultural benefit. Abril bases her analysis on the theories of human interpersonal communication and then applies these findings to Inanimate Alice and suggests improvement so that participants would be able to decide if they want to play from the viewpoint of their own …

E-Literature, New Media Art, And E-Literary Criticism, Janez Strehovec

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "E-Literature, New Media Art, and E-Literary Criticism" Janez Strehovec explores the commonalities between electronic literature and new media art. Rather than deploying the traditional conceptual apparatus of e-literary criticism directed first and foremost to the new media elements of e-literature, Strehovec takes into account approaches from current theories in the social sciences and humanities. In doing so, he draws upon examples of new media art as a practice in which the novel's social paradigms change the way of art-making and challenge the very function of art. Close-readings of some new media art projects including Bookchin's Mass Ornament …

The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Meaning and Relevance of Video Game Literacy" Jeroen Bourgonjon argues that video gaming deserves scholarly attention as a social practice and a site for meaning-making and learning. Based on an overview of contemporary trends in literacy and cultural studies, he argues that video games cannot be approached like traditional text forms. He contends that video games serve as an important frame of reference for young people and call for informed decision making in the context of culture, education, and policy. Bourgonjon provides an integrated perspective on video game literacy by employing theoretical insights about their distinctive …

Review Article About Chinese Comparative Humanities Journals Published In 2013, Yuan Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.