Comparative Literature Commons^™

Our Flag (And Spaceship) Means Queer: Monstering The Majority Culture, Sara Brown, Kristine Larsen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman …

Gazing Queerly: The Art And Text Around Saruman’S Non-Normativity, Christopher Vaccaro

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The queer is often defined by its relation to normativity. Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal situates queerness in opposition to normalcy, even gay normalcy. Karma Lochrie’s Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t deconstructs a monolithic hetero-normativity. Within the fantasy genre, protagonists frequently reside in a queer relation to normative communities. J. R. R. Tolkien quite often depicts his major characters within his mythopoeic framework as in some way outside of the normal; they’re often odd, fringe outsiders in relation to the larger community to which they are a part. The texts of his legendarium present this queerness fairly clearly—so …

Tolkien’S Queer Landscape: Three Papers On Middle-Earth’S Heterotopias, Will Sherwood, Marita Arvaniti, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.

Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.

Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and …

Welcome And Announcements, The Mythopoeic Society

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video in the 'Track 1' room, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!

Libraries And Changing Humanities Fields, Peter Hesseldenz

2024 R&I Day

A description of a project which explores how Humanities fields are changing as they grapple with diversity and inclusion issues, focusing particularly on curricula and teaching methods. The project also seeks to understand how well libraries are working with and supporting these changes with particular emphasis on the role of Academic Liaisons.

The Royal Astronomer And The Astronomer Royal: Tar-Meneldur And Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Elsewhere I argued that there are parallels between Tar-Meneldur and the lives of several pre-20^th century astronomer-nobles (Ulugh Beg, Johannes Hevelius, Wilhelm IV, Tycho Brahe, and James Ludovic Lindsay) and noted several real-world astronomical events that may have informed/motivated Tolkien’s development of Tar-Meneldur’s avocation, including political controversies concerning the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford and the Royal Observatories at Greenwich and Edinburgh. Since that publication I have continued to ponder Tolkien’s depiction of Tar-Meneldur as an astronomer (and king), and offer another possible source of inspiration for the royal astronomer in the form of the tenth Astronomer Royal, Sir Harold …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

Más Allá De La Crisis Y La Emergencia: Aproximaciones A Los Movimientos Migratorios Contemporáneos A Través De La Traducción Y La Comedia, Fabiola Fernandez Peer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Esta investigación propone una reflexión original sobre la migración más allá de los marcos de la crisis y de la emergencia en referencia a acontecimientos concretos de estos últimos diez años de “crisis/emergencias migratorias” en y entre las regiones sur y norte del continente. El análisis del ensayo visual de la escritora/artista visual Verónica Gerber; el ensayo y la escritura ficcional de la escritora Valeria Luiselli y los performances de comedia de los comediantes/influencers George Harris y Jóse Rafael Guzmán revela que estos materiales pugnan con el discurso oficial, mediático, artístico, humanitario referido a la migración. Señala el impacto …

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations Of “Peau D’Âne” In Contemporary French And English Texts, Amy M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations of “Peau d’Âne” in Contemporary French and English Texts explores trans-genre and transmedia adaptations of Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tale using feminist and narratological theories to examine gendered aspects of storytelling and the treatment of father-daughter incest and blame in the work of selected French, British, and American creators. Texts are read comparatively, with analyses of the adaptations’ plots, motifs, characterizations, and modifications, both in relation to Perrault and to the other adaptations. This dissertation features prose and poetry texts by female authors—including Christine Angot, Catherine Cusset, and Emma Donoghue—in the first two chapters. Reading these …

Against Conflict, Against Occupation: Protest Songs In India And Kashmir, Mridula Sharma

Comparative Woman

The establishment of All India Progressive Writers’ Association in colonial India encouraged artists to articulate and examine social realities. Literary-cultural productions, particularly popular songs in Hindi films, in independent India continued to remain preoccupied with social conflicts such as religious bigotry and communalism. Sahir Ludhianvi’s “Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye” (trans. “What can one gain, even if one gains this world?,” 1958 ) and “Yeh Kiska Lahu Hai, Kaun Mara” (trans. “Whose Blood Has Spilled? Who Died?,” 1961) are early examples of a lasting tide of pessimism owing to communal violence during the 1947 India-Pakistan …

Ladybugs, Gabrielle Bologna

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Rayed Arcs And The ‘Rory Bory Aylis’: Primary World Aurorae And Tolkien’S 'Father Christmas Letters', Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Previous research has demonstrated that Tolkien was well-versed and well-practiced in the use of etiological myths in his world-building activities. But we should remember that Middle-earth was not his sole Secondary World; in fact, one of the most interesting can be found at Tolkien’s version of the North Pole, in his Father Christmas Letters. As might be expected of Tolkien the impressive collection of astronomy in the letters is largely scientifically accurate, especially concerning the aurora borealis, the northern lights. This paper explores the instances of auroral references (in text and illustration) in the Father Christmas Letters and connects …

Japanese-English Translation: Three Poems By Takeuchi Kozo: Death In Winter; To The North Sea; Sunset (「冬に死す」・「「北海に」・「夕焼け」), Translated By Christopher Southward, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Three Poems by Takeuchi Kozo: Death in Winter; To the North Sea; Sunset (「冬に死す」・「「北海に」・「夕焼け」), Translated by Christopher Southward

Pedro Mexía And The Politics Of Translation In The Early Modern World, Erin Fairweather, Robert Fritz

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Spanish humanist Pedro Mexía (1497-1551) wrote two highly influential texts in the sixteenth century, the Silva de varia lección (1540) and the Historia imperial y cesárea (1545), which were, notably, written in Spanish, a vernacular language, as opposed to Latin, the academic language of the age. As these books presented previously inaccessible scientific and historical knowledge to the common person, they were soon translated into several languages, achieving widespread fame and influence. However, the texts have been mostly forgotten and have seen little study in recent times. Nevertheless, the Silva and the Historia can help us better understand the politics …

Similes Mini Lesson Plan, Kristen S. Addessi

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Words: A Study Of The Origins And Employment Of The Terms إسلامي, إسلاموي And إسلامجي In Modern Arabic Political Discourse, Ayman Haj-Yasīn

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study discusses the coinage and uses of the terms إسلامي , إسلاموي , and إسلامجي in modern Arabic political discourse. It aims to show that the construction and employment of these terms is connected to specific 'developments' in Arabic language and in modern Arab history, and that these 'developments' cannot be separated from the Western impact on Arabic thought and modern Islam. The study strives to uncover the logic behind the construction of each term in relation to the other terms and to certain developments in modern Arabic discourse. It also shows the important role translation, as a linguistic …

Guest Editor's Introduction, Ranwarat Kobsirithiwara

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Four Poems, Sakul Boonyatat, Sompong Duangsawai, Satchaphum La-Or, Siwakan Pathumsoot, Ritthisak Wongyutthipong

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Signifying And The Feeling Of Differences, Samuel Weber

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

What does Werner Hamacher's concept of archiphilology have in common with Saussure's view of intralinguistic， differential function in language? Perhaps the way in which the indefinite of language itself “slowly defines itself，” both in response to past acts of appropriations， and appealing for new signifieds the meaning of which can only be seized and unseized over time. Several of Kafka's short stories illustrate how literary works play out the same tension within what can be called a “progressive and digressive” narrative， warding off any internal principle of closure or conclusiveness while continuing to require endings and answers. Holderlin's “Remarks on …

Guest Editor's Overview, Yue Zhuo

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Developing And Sustaining A Graphic Scholarship Collection For Academic Libraries, Stewart Brower, Toni Hoberecht, Zane Ratcliffe, Bethie Seay

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

In early 2021, the Schusterman Library at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa satellite campus took a new step towards building a culture of interest by creating the Graphic Scholarship Collection. This new endeavor is a curated collection of graphic novels, primarily non-fiction, aligned with the academic programs on campus, as well as promoting University initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion. A new organizational structure for the collection materials and their circulation metrics will be examined in detail. There will also be consideration of the challenges of selection and acquisition by a mixed team of selectors, some of whom have no experience …

Do We Need Multiple Translations Of The Same Text? I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Analyzed, Candelaria Barrientos Jiménez

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In 2018, the New York Times Bestseller I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (2017) by the Mexican American poet, novelist and essayist, Erika L. Sánchez was translated into Spanish. Two editions were published: La hija que no soñaste in Mexico and Yo no soy tu perfecta hija mexicana in the United States. Although the paratextual information of each edition differs–that being the title and the brief resources on mental health–the body of the translation is the same. The target audience of each edition lives in a different country which implies understanding different cultural references. This thesis examines the original …

Two Stories, One War: Arturo Barea, George Orwell, And The Spanish Civil War, Autumn Howard

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

While studying abroad in Spain, I learned the Spanish Civil War is a controversial, even taboo, subject not broached outside the classroom, and this sparked a curiosity to know the truth. Both Arturo Barea and George Orwell wrote books about the Spanish Civil War based on their personal experiences in order to portray the truth as they lived it. This essay analyzes Spanish author Barea's La llama and George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia individually and comparatively. Both authors were immersed in similar experiences on paper, but their portrayal differs greatly. I discuss how various literary tools employed - insider versus …

Translation As Consciousness-Building In The Portuguese Lesbian Press (1990–2002), Grace Holleran

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The following article examines the political potential of the intimate, affective translation practices of Portuguese lesbian feminist activists in the publications Organa (1990–1992) and Lilás (1993–2002). Both publications, which I analyze through the rubric of the countercultural genre of “zine” or “fanzine,” arose in response to the repression and invisibilization that Portuguese lesbians faced, from criminalization and censorship at the hands of the fascist Estado Novo [New State] dictatorship (1933–1974) to exclusion from post-1974 feminist groups. Disconnected from any notion of lesbian identity and isolated from each other, the first lesbian activists turned toward experiences and connections abroad to build …

Outpatient Fall Prevention In Ambulatory Adults 65 Years Old And Over, Dorothy L. Osborne-White

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Projects - Archive

Background: In the United States (U.S.), falls are the leading cause of injury among adults 65 and over, resulting in 36 million falls yearly (Moreland et al., 2020). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2023), one in four older adults experiences a fall each year. Falls are the world's second most prominent cause of accidental deaths (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021). Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries among older adults (Moreland et al., 2020).

Methods: A quality improvement project that included a fall bundle was implemented in a primary clinic. A …

Kukrit Pramoj's Four Reigns As World Literature: Translation And The Worlding Of Siam, Nuttapong Boonyasri

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

While contemporary world literature theories encourage the global circulation of national literatures, the full potential of the term “world”in world literature, as argued by Cheah (2016), remains underemphasized. Normative forces such as teleological time and worlding influence how national literatures are received globally. This paper argues that MR Kukrit Pramoj’s Four Reigns (1981) offers an alternative reading through Cheah’s (2016) concept of world literature, positioning the novel as a contestation of European teleological time. As the novel transcends its geographical and cultural origins, the transformative potential of translation reshapes the normative forces influencing its global reception. This study examinesthe worlding …

Interculturality, Creolization, And Globalization In "Ángeles Nómadas" By Minelys Sánchez, Cecily Bernard

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer

Comparative Woman

Madness in literature has a long and colourful history. While its representation varies significantly in different literary periods, madness is nonetheless a consistent theme responding to inherent conflicts of civilisation. Thus, in the eighteenth-century novel, madness is subdued and forced to express itself in the language of rationality, while in the nineteenth century the theme becomes increasingly subversive. In the form of the madwoman trope (Gilbert and Gubar 1979), madness is simultaneously a reaction to restrictive patriarchal norms, and a frame in which the gender conflicts of the time can be safely and effectively played out. In the twentieth century, …

"Too Immoral To Be Narrated By A Woman": Censoring Erotic Fiction Of Arab Women Writers In Girls Of Riyadh And Distant View Of A Minaret And Other Stories, Muhammed Salem

Comparative Woman

In the Arab world, bargaining with censorship has been an ongoing struggle for writers, particularly female authors. How could we explain that only male writers were allowed to discuss sexuality in the Arabic canon, insofar as female characters are portrayed as passive sexual objects? Are Arab women writers victims of double censorship? One is imposed on their fellow male writers, and another is tacit censorship which judges women’s morality based on their writing. Girls of Riyadh (2007) by Saudi novelist, Rajaa Abdullah Alsanea, and Distant View of the Minaret and Other Stories (1987) by Egyptian novelist, Alifa Rifaat, are two …