Comparative Literature Commons^™

Politics Of Writing: Latin American Testimonio, Brazil's Literatura Marginal And The Question Of Neoliberalism, Ana Maria Todescan Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the light of Latin American testimonio theoretical approach, which includes questions such as the cultural production under the intensification of neoliberal policies and the inquiry of the complicity between literary practices and the state as formulated by Rama in The Lettered City, this study examines the novel Capão Pecado, representative work of the writer and cultural activist Ferréz, and the potential relation to the formal elements of the former criticism. By thinking alongside John Beverley's case study on I, Rigoberta Menchú's testimonial narrative and Ferréz, prominent author of the contemporary production of literatura marginal and representative of the expression …

Beyond Gothic : Ye Si's Spectral Hong Kong And The Global Culture Crisis = 哥特之外 : 也斯的鬼怪香港與全球化危機, Andrea Riemenschnitter

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

A Ghost Tour In Rouge = 遊魂《胭脂扣》, Ho Yin Fong

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper discusses how Fleur's association to some of the worldwide ghost tours insinuates the haunting quality of the past, time, and the cityscape; in other words, it discusses how the tragic love story between Fleur and Twelfth Master can also be allegorically read as a tragic cultural story of Hong Kong. This discussion allegorically reads Fleur, Twelfth Master and Yuen as figures hauled by modernity.

《紅梅記》的文化政治 = Cultural Politics Of Red Flowering Plum, Ping Kwan Leung, So Yee Chan

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

鬼魂傳說與香港地方記憶 : 兼論敘述群體的轉變 = Ghostlore And Local Memory Of Hong Kong : The Shift Of The Narrating Communities, Wan Kan Chin

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Wu's The Man With The Compound Eyes And The Worlding Of Environmental Literature, Shiuhhuah Serena Chou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Wu's The Man with the Compound Eyes and the Worlding of Environmental Literature" Shiuhhuah Serena Chou discusses Mingyi Wu's novel in the context of ecocriticism's transcultural turn. Chou presents an overview of the cultural milieu in which Wu rises onto the world literary scene and proceeds by examining the problematics and potentials of ecocritical studies' transnationalization. Chou argues that while Wu's desire to understand the local through the vocabulary of the global, his readership reveals a sense of ecocosmopolitanism. The globalized local or localized global in Wu's novel reveals a cosmopolitan sense of the world and the …

Ecocriticism And Persian And Greek Myths About The Origin Of Fire, Massih Zekavat

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ecocriticism and Persian and Greek Myths about the Origin of Fire" Massih Zekavat argues that some contemporary ecological biases are rooted in ancient thought. Further, Zekavat argues that the study of mythology is relevant to the understanding of culture and ecology thus assisting ecocriticism. The investigation of man/woman, culture/nature, and human/nature binary oppositions conveys that Greek and Persian myths are mostly anthropocentric and androcentric. Zekavat postulates that one way to revise contemporary ecological conceptions is to study myths to shed light on the mind and context of their creators and believers, their representation of natural phenomena, and …

Situating A Badiouian Anthropocene In Hagiwara's Postnatural Poetry, Dean A. Brink

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Situating a Badiouian Anthropocene in Hagiwara's Postnatural Poetry" Dean A. Brink discusses the ecological dimension of the poetry of one of the founding voices in modern Japanese poetry, Sakutarō Hagiwara (1886-1942). Brink argues that Hagiwara developed a poetics characterized by engagements with nonhuman organisms and actants to situate the materiality of these actants in ways that diffuse the binary of "language" and "nature" and present a postnatural relationality that Bruno Latour describes. Drawing on the recent work of Alain Badiou, Brink explores materialist alternatives to representationalism—including the Lacanian triangle of the imaginary real and symbolic—by emphasizing human-nonhuman …

Indigenous Taiwan As Location Of Native American And Indigenous Studies, Hsinya Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Indigenous Taiwan as Location of Native American and Indigenous Studies" Hsinya Huang uses Taiwan as a specific intellectual crossroads to examine, both pedagogically and theoretically, transnational/trans-Pacific flows, as well as transnational indigenous formations which take shape across national/international/local American Studies in this key moment of heightened U.S./Taiwan interaction in the Asia-Pacific security zone. Huang argues that Taiwanese scholarship has helped reorient understandings of environment and ecocriticism and that it has provided significant impulses, especially in the fields of Native American and comparative indigenous studies. Moreover, Taiwan has contributed both in its own positioning and in its academic …

Introduction To New Work In Ecocriticism, Simon C. Estok, Murali Sivaramakrishnan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering Local Environmentalism In Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Rediscovering Local Environmentalism in Taiwan" Peter I-min Huang challenges the domination of "the global" and the marginalization of "the local." Huang argues that by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century globalism seemed to have toppled localism in ecocriticism debates. Ecocritics embraced enthusiastically such concepts as Ursula K. Heise's "eco-cosmopolitanism" and the arguments associated with it that spoke for global forms of environmental thinking and practice. Yet, arguments for "the local" persist in part because of Heise's constructive criticisms of it. Focusing on local environmental movements in Taiwan, Huang identifies and discusses scholarly work …

Japanese Poetry And Nature In Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida, Shoshannah Ganz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Japanese Poetry and Nature in Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida" Shoshannah Ganz shows how the limited focus of research on Roo Borson oversimplifies the poetry and ignores the tradition that Borson is aligning her work with both in form and content: classical Chinese and Japanese poetry and their perspectives on nature. Further, Ganz explores the ways in which Borson's poetry overcomes intuitively the binaries of East/West, human/non-human, and the further binaries within the human/non-human created through representational language. Ganz contextualizes Borson's work within the master/disciple lineage of Chinese and Japanese tradition and explores how Borson …

The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, And Ecocide In Australia, Iris Ralph

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, and Ecocide in Australia" Iris Ralph summarizes an argument in defense of disciplinarity ("openness from closure") that Cary Wolfe makes in What is Posthumanism? She also comments on an implicit argument that Wendy Wheeler makes in The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. As Ralph argues, Wheeler's implicit claim is that biosemiotic language, which humans share with other biological beings, connects human animals and nonhuman animals on moral and affective grounds. Ralph summarizes Wolfe's defense of disciplinarity that literary and cultural studies scholars who engage with the "question …

Rulers, Rhetoric, And Ray-Guns: A Post Colonial Look At 90'S Alien Invasion Media, Logan Matthew Hudspeth

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis opens discussion on American alien invasion films of the 90s as a self-critique, a reaction to being an imperial power at the end of the Cold War. The alien menace in these films is not the "other" but rather the U.S. itself being the colonizer or conqueror looking to expand its sphere of influence. Furthermore, it discusses how Presidential rhetoric in the films play a role in this postcolonial reading. Specific works studied are: Independence Day (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Babylon 5: In the Beginning (1998), and The Puppet Masters (1994).

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

“The Other One”: An Unpublished Chapter Of Sarah Orne Jewett’S The Country Of The Pointed Firs, Melissa J. Homestead, Terry Heller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) has long been central to literary critical debates about the nature and character of American literary regionalism. In the early 1990s, some New Historicist critics aligned the emergence of the literary movement with the rise of tourism as two means by which urban elites defined themselves as a socially and racially privileged class in the postwar nation. In an influential analysis of the mutually reinforcing development of the literary marketplace and class and cultural hierarchies, Richard Brodhead describes regionalism in Cultures of Letters (1993) as evidencing “an elite need for …

Paul S. Kinderstedt. Cheese And Culture: A History Of Cheese And Its Place In Western Civilization, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Islamic Capitalism: The Muslim Approach To Economic Activities In Indonesia, Hisanori Kato

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Quixote Code: Reading Between The Lines Of The Cervantes Novel, Massimiliano Adelmo Giorgini

Open Access Dissertations

This study in two parts reexamines the notion that Don Quixote was originally seen as no more than a humorous story, and suggests that due to a variety of factors, a closer, more exegetical reading of the text may well be appropriate. In the first section of this work, focus is placed on the long history of the reception of the Cervantes novel as containing some deeper truth beneath the literal surface of the novel. This is complemented by a review of some examples of when several esoteric readings—done without academic rigor and adequate contextual research—have struck dramatically off-target and …

Memories Of An Editor, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Essay: The Great Literary Utopias Have A Nightmarish History, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Kafka's German-Jewish Reception As Mirror Of Modernity, Abraham Ariel Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the diverse and contradictory ways German-Jewish intellectuals identify what they commonly refer to as Kafka's "Jewish essence." Focusing on the commentaries of Margarete Susman, Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Gershom Scholem, and Max Brod, I claim that Kafka's German-Jewish reception reflects a broader historical dilemma that grew out of the Jewish encounter with modernity: Are Judaism and Jewishness best defined through religious, cultural, national, or ethnic categories? It is precisely this ambiguity that forms the historical backdrop to Kafka's Jewish interpretations. Situating the early phases of Kafka's posthumous reception within the broader context of interwar German-Jewish culture, my dissertation examines …

Jean Sénac, Poet Of The Algerian Revolution, Kai G. Krienke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work presented here is an exploration of the poetry and life of Jean Sénac, and through Sénac, of the larger role of poetry in the political and social movements of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, mainly in Algeria and America. While Sénac was part of the European community in Algeria, his position regarding French rule changed dramatically over the course of the Algerian War, (between 1954 and 1962) and upon independence, he became one the rare French to return to his adopted homeland. I will argue, sometimes polemically, that Sénac was and should be considered a properly Algerian …

If You See Something, Say Something: A Look At Experimental Writing On Art, Charlotte Lucy Latham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Signs all over New York City state, "If you see something, say something," but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, "Experiments in Art Writing," examines two texts: T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic's Dime Store …

The One: A Comparison Of The Solitary Hero In Eastern And Western Narrative Traditions, Mark Lovins

Student Theses and Dissertations

The solitary hero is a familiar archetype in the history of literature. The American Western genre of literature and film faithfully follows this tradition: many of this genre's most recognizable characters also stand as quintessential representations of the archetype. At the same time, the accessibility of film allows audiences access to a broader range of narrative traditions: many Western films reinterpret the samurai narratives of Kurosawa, and the later Hong Kong action films of the Shaw brothers and Raymond Chow borrow heavily from the American Western. While the lone hero figures prominently in both of these familiar film traditions, close …

Mo Yan In Context: Nobel Laureate And Global Storyteller, Angelica Duran, Yuhan Huang

Purdue University Press Books

In 2012 the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.” The announcement marked the first time a resident of mainland China had ever received the award. This is the first English-language study of the Chinese writer’s work and influence, featuring essays from scholars in a range of disciplines, from both China and the United States. Its introduction, twelve articles, and epilogue aim to deepen and widen critical discussions of both a specific literary author and the globalization of Chinese literature …

African E-Government Research Landscape, Jean Vincent Fonou Dombeu, Nelson Rannyai

The African Journal of Information Systems

Over the past decade, African governments have followed the worldwide trends towards establishing e-government with the aim of improving public service delivery to citizens through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As a consequence, authors from academia, government departments and agencies, civil society, industry, non-governmental and international organizations have embarked into e-government research focusing on Africa. However, the state of the art of e-government research in Africa is poorly documented. This study analyzes the status of e-government research in Africa. A qualitative technique based on online searches and literature reviews is used to collect data that have addressed …

Interpreting Law: Jesus, The Lawyer, And The Parable Of The Good Samaritan, Calum M. Carmichael

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Conscience's De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen (The Lion Of Flanders) And Its Adaptation To Film By Claus, Gertjan Willems

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Conscience's De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders) and Its Adaptation to Film by Claus" Gertjan Willems discusses Hugo Claus's 1984 filmic adaptation of Hendrik Conscience's 1838 historical novel, a landmark in the history of the Flemish Movement. Willems's analysis is executed by means of a textual film analysis and archival research. Willems pays special attention to the Flemish-Dutch coproduction's complex relations with the national question. Despite various difficulties concerning Flemish nationalist sensitivities of the project, the producers wanted the film to be as faithful as possible to Conscience's novel. This resulted in an …

Translation As Relation And Glissant's Work, Sandra Bermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Translation as Relation and Glissant's Work" Sandra Bermann proposes that in today's complex world of migration, war, and globalization, translation among languages and cultures is everywhere evident. Indeed, as citizens of the twenty-first century, we inevitably think in and through translation. Yet we have only begun to explore its contemporary modes of operation, its challenges, and its promise for study. Bermann suggests ways to think about translation — its difficulties, as well as its promise. Looking first to some traditional views of translation, Bermann then turns to particular ways in which it might be recast in terms …