Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Reading Wordsworth With Hegel And Deleuze, Douglas Berman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reading Wordsworth with Hegel and Deleuze" Douglas Berman reexamines Wordsworth poem, The Ruined Cottage, in terms of the importance of the Pedlar, who serves as the witness and singular moral authority in the text. Berman focuses on the inherent tension between impermanence, as exemplified by the trope of wandering, and the redemptive vision which shapes the ending of the second version of the poem (1798). While recognizing the strength of earlier critics, particularly the New Historicists, who emphasized Wordsworth's displacement of social and material reality into nature, Berman argues that wandering, both in its physical form, and …

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" — …

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 …

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.

Bias In A Just World? Sexual Prejudice, Gender Self-Esteem, And Intimate Partner Violence, Crystal D. Mahoy

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Each year, approximately 835,000 men and 1.3 million women are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV; American Bar Association, n.d). Although the prevalence of same-sex intimate partner violence (IPV) is approximately the same as IPV in heterosexual couples (Alexander, 2002), fewer studies have examined perceptions of IPV in same-sex couples or of IPV perpetrated against heterosexual men compared to heterosexual women. In the current study, Just World Theory (Lerner & Miller, 1978) is used as a framework for understanding factors associated with perceptions of heterosexual and same-sex IPV, including sexual prejudice and gender self-esteem. Perceptions of IPV were examined in …

Mind The Gap: An Analysis Of The Function Of Love In The Works Of Tom Stoppard And C.S. Lewis., Jacqueline C. Lawler

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Writers C.S. Lewis and Tom Stoppard, though philosophically different, both write about love that embodies the natural law. The natural law can be defined as law that is inherent in man and can be discerned by reason rather than by revelation. Both writers use their observational style in order to reason their way to nearly identical laws of love. Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, Arcadia, Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Real Thing will be analyzed using the framework of C.S. Lewis’s book, The Four Loves.

West Virginian Dancers: The Creation And Development Of The West Virginia Ballet Festival/West Virginia Dance Festival Community, Lauren Angel

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis examines the West Virginia Ballet Festival (WVBF), which began in 1968 and became the West Virginia Dance Festival (WVDF) in 1981. This work studies the four groups that made up the festival community, including the West Virginia performance dance teachers who founded the festival, the West Virginia performance dance students who attend the events, the out-of-state professional guest artists who taught and performed at the festivals, and the nonartistic professional administrators who organized the WVDF. The WVBF/WVDF was part of West Virginia regional culture and the national performance dance boom. I argue that performance dance must be incorporated …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

Moral Performances: Melodrama And Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Jeffrey Taylor Pusch

Dissertations

Despite a high number of ticket sales, theater reviews, and innumerable letters and diary entries detailing trips to the theater, the stereotype that theater in nineteenth-century America was almost culturally invisible continued well into the twentieth century. Indeed, a scan of anthologies of American literature fails to yield any examples of nineteenth-century drama, even though figures like Henry James were also theater critics and playwrights. Just as it did in American life, theater exhibits a strong presence in the literature of the time. Considering theater’s pervasiveness, this dissertation seeks to restore it to its proper place in our study of …

Perception Of Social Presence In Asynchronous And Synchronous Online Discussion From The Perspective Of Native And Non-Native Speaker, Abdullah A. Alruhaimi

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The technology innovation of telecommunication gave confidence to educational institutions to substitute some of their courses from traditional courses into virtual ones. This switch in education inspired globalization. The learners use either synchronous or asynchronous communication tools to interact with each other. Most previous studies in this field show that social presence is correlated with learner achievement satisfaction and interaction. So the researcher measured the level of social presence for both groups of learners, native and non-native speakers, across both types of online communication, synchronous and asynchronous communication. The researcher conducted a 2x2 split-plot ANOVA design with repeated measure for …

Assessment And Impact Of Gentrified Public Housing Neighborhoods In The United States: A Case Study Of Chicago, Todd W. Sink

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social-mix housing policies play a unique role in shaping the geography of gentrification in cities throughout the U.S. and Europe. The HOPE VI program in the U.S. is one popular example. Since its inception in 1992, HOPE VI has simultaneously displaced thousands of urban poor from their homes and neighborhoods, reduced their housing opportunities, and created and encouraged housing development for a more affluent population. Yet over the years, very few empirical studies have emerged that examine the place-based outcomes of HOPE VI within the context of gentrification. As such, important empirical questions remain unanswered. This study focuses on the …

So You Think You Know Dance?: Popular Dance And Cultural Identity On Television, Eleni Koutroumanis

American Studies Senior Theses

Dancing has reached new levels of popularity in America due to its publicity in new television shows over the past seven years. These shows have changed the image and ways of dance world, but more importantly the shows have brought dance into the Public Sphere and allowed the excluded to comment on, and in a way join, the dance world. Furthermore, these shows are bringing forward commentary on subaltern counterparts of two levels. One is dance culture, and those who make dance what it is today, being acknowledged in a greater public. The other refers to subaltern counterparts of a …

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

The Performance Production Process Of An Outstanding High School Choir, Kathy K. Rolsten

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the interest in and importance of producing high quality choral performance, the question "How is superior performance produced?" has not been addressed in a holistic and naturalistic way. A synthesis of previous research findings suggests that a combination of actions, interactions, relationships, and conditions produce superior choral performance. Yet a holistic examination of this multi-faceted production process has not been conducted. In order to identify all factors contributing to the production of superior performance and how these factors work together, I comprehensively examined an extreme case of superior performance. This extreme case of superior performance was one high school, …

Shifting Blackness: How The Arts Revolutionize Black Identity In The Postmodern West, Reginald Eldridge Jr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary experiences of racially marginalized people in the West are affected deeply by the hegemonic capitalist Orthodox cultural codes, or episteme, in which blackness operates as the symbol of Chaos. As it relates to people of African descent, these affects are marked by a denial of the black person's full status as an unproblematic subject, by ontological voids arising from the practice of enslavement over the past centuries, and by problems of representation within the West, where examples and points of reference for black identity are always tied up with conflicting interests.

Utilizing Sylvia Wynter's model of the Ceremony …