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Comparative Literature

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Full-Text Articles in Other Film and Media Studies

En-Gendering Memory Through Holocaust Alimentary Life Writing, Louise O. Vasvári Sep 2015

En-Gendering Memory Through Holocaust Alimentary Life Writing, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "En-gendering Memory through Holocaust Alimentary Life Writing" Louise O. Vasvári aims to underline the cultural and gendered significance of the sharing of recipes as a survival tool by starving women in concentration camps during the Holocaust and the continuing role of food memories in the writing of Holocaust survivor women she considers a genealogy of intergenerational remembrance and transmission into the postmemory writing of their second generation daughters and occasionally their sons. Vasvári argues that the study of multigenerational Holocaust alimentary life writing becomes important today because as direct survivors of the Holocaust disappear there is a …


Why Jin's (金庸) Martial Arts Novels Are Adored Only By The Chinese, Henry Yiheng Zhao Jun 2015

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 …


A Cross-Cultural Approach To Brokeback Mountain, Jono Van Belle Jun 2015

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 …


Utopian And Dystopian Literature: A Review Article Of New Work By Fokkema; Prakash; Gordin, Tilley, Prakash; And Meisig, Barnita Bagchi Jun 2015

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.


Mapping Chinese Literature As World Literature, Yingjin Zhang Mar 2015

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 …


Bibliography For The Study Of Chinese Literature In The Anglophone World, He Lin Mar 2015

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

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 Mar 2015

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.


Intermedial Strategies Of Memory In Contemporary Novels, Sara Tanderup Dec 2014

Intermedial Strategies Of Memory In Contemporary Novels, Sara Tanderup

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Intermedial Strategies and Memory in Contemporary Novels" Sara Tanderup discusses a tendency in contemporary literature towards combining intermedial experiments with a thematic preoccupation with memory and trauma. Analyzing selected works by Steven Hall, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Judd Morrissey and drawing on the theoretical perspectives of N. Katherine Hayles (media studies) and Andreas Huyssen (cultural memory studies), Tanderup argues that recent intermedial novels reflect a certain nostalgia celebrating and remembering the book as a visual and material object in the age of digital media while also highlighting the influence of new media on our cultural understanding and …


The Canon And Shakespeare's Plays On The Contemporary East Asian Stage, I-Chun Wang Dec 2014

The Canon And Shakespeare's Plays On The Contemporary East Asian Stage, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Canon and Shakespeare's Plays on the Contemporary East Asian Stage" I-Chun Wang argues that although globalization often refers to the phenomenon of international trade and (im)migrants, globalization has made strong impacts in all aspects of culture and literature. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar have attracted attention of East Asian playwrights and directors in the last several years. By juxtaposing the trends of local cultural performing arts with representations of local cultural legacies, Wang discusses the staging of these two Roman plays in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. By probing into the imperial themes represented …


Canon Formation In The Study Of The Environment In China And Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang Dec 2014

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 …


Pullinger's And Joseph's Inanimate Alice And Intercultural Engagement, Ana Abril Dec 2014

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 …


The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon Dec 2014

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 …


Ecocriticism And Persian And Greek Myths About The Origin Of Fire, Massih Zekavat Dec 2014

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 …


Reverse Anti-Semitism In The Fiction Of Bellow And Roth, Jay L. Halio Jun 2014

Reverse Anti-Semitism In The Fiction Of Bellow And Roth, Jay L. Halio

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reverse Anti-Semitism in the Fiction of Bellow and Roth" Jay L. Halio discusses anti-Semitism in Philip Roth's fiction that what might be called reverse anti-Semitism: the active reaction by Jews who are subjected to anti-Semitism. This aspect of Roth's work is not often discussed: it is not the same as philo-Semitism, which takes a different form entirely. Since Roth was an admirer of Saul Bellow, Halio begins by considering reverse anti-Semitism in Bellow's early novel The Victim. In the novel the protagonist, Asa Leventhal, is accused by a character named Allbee of costing him his job …


Literary Adaptations Of James In Roth's, Ozick's, And Franzen's Work, John Carlos Rowe Jun 2014

Literary Adaptations Of James In Roth's, Ozick's, And Franzen's Work, John Carlos Rowe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Adaptations of James in Roth's, Ozick's, and Franzen's Work" John Carlos Rowe posits that Henry James continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary writers. Given the dramatic social, economic, and political changes from modern to postmodern eras, his continuing influence requires explanation. Rowe considers three US-American novelists—Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Jonathan Franzen—who are influenced by James and presents an interpretation of James's continuing impact. Despite James's reputation as a cosmopolitan modern who influenced global literature in significant ways, US-American writers attempt to "Americanize" him. Their effort expresses the problem of contemporary US-American literary practice …


Intertextuality In Beckett's And Ağaoğlu's Work, Elmas Şahín Mar 2014

Intertextuality In Beckett's And Ağaoğlu's Work, Elmas Şahín

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Intertextuality in Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's Work" Elmas Şahín discusses Adalet Ağaoğlu's 1973 novel Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die) and Samuel Beckett's 1950 Malone Dies in terms of intertextuality. Şahín employs tenets of comparative literature in order to analyze the two texts with regard to form and content and focuses on the on protagonists' worlds. In Şahín's interpretation, Ağaoğlu's protagonist Aysel is narrated in postmodern intertextuality as an individual of our days alienated from society, searching for her self/selves as she cannot succeed in dying. Both Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's protagonists attempt to "escape" from their selves and …


Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox Dec 2013

Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Is First, They Killed My Father a Cambodian testimonio" John T. Maddox discusses aspects of the testimonial. Dialoguing with leading Latin Americanists, Maddox argues that Cambodian writer Loung Ung's First, They Killed My Father (2000) challenges this uniqueness and opens studies on the testimonio to new possibilities for intellectual reflection and political activism. In Maddox's view, the continued use of the term testimonio would serve as a reference to this long-standing tradition of writing and thinking about political violence in Latin America. After a discussion of the debate of the definition and function of testimonio and …


Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, And Human Rights, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng Mar 2013

Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, And Human Rights, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, and Human Rights" Eric Sipyinyu Njeng argues that Chinua Achebe exposes failings in the fabric of African society and engages with violations of human rights. Achebe is careful not to hurt the pride of Africans who in the Zeitgeist of the nationalist ferment of the 1950s were wary of European powers. Achebe does not "write back" to the empire: he writes the empire in and he lays bare the weaknesses in African culture grounded in the father-son-grandson trajectory he narrates. Achebe presents what may be termed a cultural dialectics: the thesis (flawed African customs …


Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson Dec 2012

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 …


Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson Dec 2012

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 …


Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee Dec 2012

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 …