Comparative Literature Commons^™

Forgács's Film And Installation Dunai Exodus (Danube Exodus), Zsófia Bán

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Forgács's Film and Installation Dunai exodus (Danube Exodus)" Zsófia Bán analyzes film maker and video artist Péter Forgács's film The Danube Exodus (1998) and compares it with the installation Dunai exodus. A folyó beszédes áramlatai (Rippling: Currents of the River) (2002). Combined with additional materials, the two works are based on footage by ship captain Nándor Andrásovits documenting two successive journeys of forced displacement aboard his vessel, the Queen Elizabeth. Bán's analysis includes the 1939 event of the Jewish exodus from Slovakia to the Black Sea with the eventual goal of reaching Palestine followed by …

Makine's Postmodern Writing About Exile, Memory, And Connection, Mary Theis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Makine's Postmodern Writing about Exile, Memory, and Connection" Mary Theis explores the implications of some of the many literary epiphanous moments that Andreï Makine shares with his readers in his neo-Romantic metaphysical literary quest to transcend lyrically the limitations imposed by our human condition. The analysis of this theme in Makin's literary career features several of his most important novels, his one play, and his subsequent meta-utopian reflections in Alternaissance, written under the pen name Gabriel Osmonde.

Miłosz's Quest For Affirmation And His Reflections On Us-American Culture, Joel J. Janicki

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Miłosz's Quest for Affirmation and His Reflections on US-American Culture" Joel J. Janicki discusses Czeslaw Miłosz's writings in exile devoted to his home in California. Miłosz, a Polish Lithuanian poet, essayist, and historian of literature, after experiencing five years of the nazi regime in Warsaw and six years of Stalinized rule in post-World War II Poland, threw himself "into the abyss" of exile. Miłosz's writings and translations have served as a bridge between the Polish and Anglo-Saxon cultures seldom encountered on such a scale. At the same time, his ability to look at a distance, his sensitivity …

Nádas's A Book Of Memories And Central European Journeys, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Nádas's A Book of Memories and Central European Journeys" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses theoretical, literary, political, social, etc., aspects of travel in Péter Nádas's novel. "Travel" in the novel represents both a conceptual and lived experience at a time when travel between the East and the West in Europe was restricted and when a person hailing from the "East" considered a journey to the West a complex and ideological matter. Further, the aspect of urbanity, that is, cultural and social spaces and the journey and what such entails in terms of ideology, points of origin, knowledge, …

Metropolitan (Im)Migrants In The "Lettered City", Stacey Balkan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the 'Lettered City'" Stacey Balkan employs Ángel Rama's discussion of audience as a means of analyzing a Latin American diaspora that exists beyond the "rational periphery" of the state. Herein, the term diaspora is redefined as a translocal phenomenon wherein the metropolitan (im)migrant moves from rural margin to urban center. Normative definitions of exile — persons displaced from autonomous nation-states — are likewise scrutinized in the context of what the Rama terms a post-contemporary "city of letters." This post-contemporary city is the subject of what Mabel Moraña refers to as a "subaltern boom" — …

In Defense Of Adaptation: Aestheticism Versus Functionalism In The Wicked Franchise, Amanda S. Adams

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This project serves as an extended case study on the adaptability of an aesthetic text into a popular text. It focuses on Gregory Maguire’s original novel Wicked, which drew its inspiration from the universally known land of Oz, and the subsequent stage adaptation by the same name. The first half of the project involves an extensive text-to-stage analysis, delineating the differences between the two mediums. The second half of the project involves an examination of the sequels to the original novel as commodities. Each of the novels is a literary text created for a narrower audience, while the popular …

New Forms Of Contemporary Aesthetics: A Review Article Of New Works By Camerotti And Quaranta, Marina Mantini

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull" Brian R. Johnson approaches The Turducken as a travesty of The Seagull, examining six iconic scenes from The Seagull, in order to explore the satirical effect of the altered scenes. In December of 2008, Bedlam Theatre of Minneapolis presented The Turducken, "a holiday dinner theater spectacular inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." Playwright Josef Evans takes Chekhov's 1895 work and turns the classic piece into a musical and farcical satire. The plot of The Turducken follows the plot of The Seagull, and some scenes …

Barthelme's "Paraguay," The Postmodern, And Neocolonialism, Daniel Chaskes

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Barthelme's 'Paraguay,' the Postmodern, and Neocolonialism," Daniel Chaskes explores the analytic opportunities afforded by conjoining globalizing critical approaches with a story by an author who has often been circumscribed by the postmodern rubric. Donald Barthelme's "Paraguay," written the summer after Nelson Rockefeller's fact-finding mission to South America in 1969, provides a chance to consider modes of anti-colonial critique in Barthelme's work. It also offers examples of a more self-reflective criticism aimed at the U.S. counterculture and the indeterminacies of postmodernism. Chaskes reads "Paraguay" with the aim of understanding Barthelme's hemispheric interest and he investigates the multiple cultural …

Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ, Ana María Martín Castillejos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Evoking A Memory Of The Future In Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Doro Wiese

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According to Anselm …

Egypt's Police State In The Work Of Idris And Mahfouz, David F. Dimeo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz" David F. DiMeo examines how two leading twentieth-century authors of politically committed fiction addressed an angry generation's confrontations with former members of the oppressive state police apparatus. Yusuf Idris's The Black Policeman (1962) and Najib Mahfouz's al-Karnak (1974) remain particularly relevant as today's Egyptian activists confront the vestiges of the former regime's security forces. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival as a paradigm for analysis, DiMeo examines how both texts present sharp contrasts between hollow quests for public revenge through purges and a genuine overturning of …

Metaphor Translation As A Tool Of Intercultural Understanding, Ipshita Chanda

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of …

Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores specific …

Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field as the urban …

Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky" Marta Wilkinson argues that urbanity in its nineteenth-century setting functioned as the culpable agent in criminal behavior found in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and in several of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. Wilkinson an analysis of the novels based on Merlin Coverly's concept of psychogeography which supports the extension of the cityscape as an integral part of the novels' characters. Further, Wilkinson illustrates how in Zola's and Dostoevsky's novels the city reigns triumphant as characters fall victim to disease, drink, or are left with desperate choices: in Dostoevsky's novel …

To Kill A Vampire?: Through The Hearth, Charlsie Lamos

All Theses

Long before Dracula was terrorizing English families, Emily Brontë's Heathcliff captivated Victorian audiences. Critics such as James Twitchell propose that Emily Brontë carefully creates the possibility of Heathcliff as a metaphorical vampire, using his unknown parentage and his physical descriptions throughout the novel as evidence for this claim. Indeed, my thesis examines how Heathcliff exhibits characteristics of the vampire in his decimation of the English families in the novel by consuming the Earnshaw's and Linton's properties, monies, and women. In Brontë's and Bram Stoker's novels, the vampires prey upon humanity, consuming property, lives, and bloodlines. However, although vampires are often …

Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of cultural critique and institutional …

Memory, Identity, And Narration: A Book Review Of New Work By Assmann And Conrad And Tilmans, Vree, And Winter, Simona Mitroiu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Building The New Rome: Charles Cameron As The Architect Of Catherine The Great's New Eternal City, Inna A. Bell

Theses and Dissertations

Catherine the Great, The Empress of Russia, considered herself to be an enlightened ruler. Like many enlightened minds of the eighteenth century, she was fascinated with classical antiquity, especially with ancient Rome. In 1779, she invited a Scottish architect named Charles Cameron to complete a series of building projects for her that would create a "second Rome" in Tsarskoye Selo and in Pavlovsk, Russia. Cameron, an expert on classical antiquity because of his studies of the Roman ruins and the publication of his book, The Baths of the Romans, had a special interest in and a dedication to classical …

Haunting The Imagination: The Haunted House As A Figure Of Dark Space In American Culture, Amanda Bingham Solomon

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary America the haunted house appears regularly as a figure in literature, film, and tourism. The increasing popularity of the haunted house is in direct correlation with the disintegration of the home as a refuge from the harsh elements of the world. The mass media populates society with dark images and subjects, portraying America as a dark place to live. Americans create fictional narratives of terror and violence as a means of coping with their own modern horrors. Their horrors are psychologically displaced within these narratives. The haunted house is therefore a manifestation of contemporary anxieties surrounding the dissolution …

When The Virtual Meets The Real: An Assessment Of The Benefits And "Costs" Of Open Access Texts For First Year Writing Courses At Cuny, Johannah Rodgers

Publications and Research

An assessment of the advantages, drawbacks, and costs of Open Access / OER texts for First Year Writing courses at CUNY.

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

Review: Stranger In The Woods, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: One Leaf Rides The Wind, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: Alphabet Under Construction, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

Character Themes: Determination, Imagination, Knowledge

Review: Thanks For Thanksgiving, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: Sylvia Jean: Scout Supreme, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: Wilfred Gordon Mcdonald Partridge, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: The Lion & The Mouse, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.