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Minerva 2007, The Honors College

Minerva

This issue of Minerva includes an article on the hiring of first-ever full-time Honors faculty members, Mimi Killinger and Mark Haggerty; an article on Honors alumna Molly Barker '00; and a reflection by former Honors Program Director Sam Schuman.

Maggy Corrêa : Passer Le Témoin, Avec Ou Sans Le Feu Sacré, Isabelle Favre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In her book entitled Tutsie, etc., Rwandan Swiss author Maggy Corrêa recounts how in july 1994, she was able to rescue her mother from the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi. This essay begins by examining the status of the testimonial genre within the literary institution. Then, based on Maggy Corrêa’s text, the analysis will demonstrate how Derrida’s concept of sacramentum can be traced in Corrêa’s adventure, and how this same notion proved to be absent from the United Nations’s discourse taking place in Geneva at the same time.

Bent Familia De Nouri Bouzid : Enjeux De L’Amitié, De La Clairvoyance Féminine Et Du Questionnement, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Bent Familia by the Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid breaks down silences by questioning norms and power structures, including patriarchal authority. Centered on an exceptional friendship between three women and examining their preoccupations as well as their needs, the film reveals the empowering forces of sharing, insightfulness and engagement. Through the character of Aïda and the intertwinement of arts – in particular music and painting – the film dismantles absolutes and illusions. It encourages deep questioning in order to trace new paths, valuing the clear-sighted contributions of women in a continuously changing society.

L’Écriture Tumulaire : Témoignage Sur La Mort, Pour La Vie, Philippe Basabosa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article proves how the testimony narrative, in writing death and genocide-related atrocities, attempts to restore human dignity to the victims. The narrative space that becomes in that way a burial place and a funeral monument plays also the role of the ''redemption'' of history in order to secure the future. The narratives that the article analyzes constitute at the same time a hymn to life. By creating themselves other destinies, other reasons for life, the survivor and witness authors succeed in overcoming the world-weariness that threatens every survivor of the Itsembabwoko slaughter.

« La Femme Qui Pleure » : La Nouvelle D’Assia Djebar Et Le Tableau De Picasso, Farah Aïcha Gharbi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article is a study of the dialogue that is maintained between the novel « La femme qui pleure » by Assia Djebar and the Picasso painting that bears the same title. This article also aims to show author’s achievement of the liberation of the feminine subject through an aesthetic means, in other words, through an angle that allows for an encounter between that which has been written and the painting, which combined give the women the right to the word and the image portrayed. The form and the structure that are shared between the novel and the painting appear …

La Pensée Du Témoignage : De La Scène Du Génocide À La Scène Judiciaire, Sélom Gbanou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper intends to study the stories of witnesses of the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda from the angle of both History and Justice. It analyses how the actual event is brought back by the victims’s stories and shows the tormentors that the lives they have undone have been redone in defiance of the effort to wipe out all traces, the basic idea of genocide. Furthermore, the witnesses report seems to be a judiciary scene where, trying to understand what has happened, the victims put themselves in the witness box of their conscience in order to find their …

La Poétique Du Fragment Dans Le Récit De Survivance Au Rwanda, Eugène Nshimiyimana

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The narrative about surviving is by definition an impossible narrative due to the enormity and absurdity of the tragedy. It is characterized by a fragmentary aspect which is a sign of its resistance to utterance. Based on Révérien Rurangwa’s Génocidé, the following reflection proposes to read the fragment as a manifestation of a traumatic memory that language fails to carry out due to the distortion of the signifying process in which the signified seems to take priority to the signifier. The fragment, thus, can be seen as an attempt to recuperate the symbolic, attempt that is always ''unsuitable'' due to …

Le Témoignage Dans L’Oeuvre De Yolande Mukagasana, Théopiste Kabanda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

this article analyzes the status of testimony in Mukagasana’s La mort ne veut pas de moi and N’aie pas peur de savoir, by bringing out the main narrative strategies allowing to get round the unspeakable. It demonstrates the connection of the testimony, the memory and the history of the genocide in Rwanda as event which marked the humanity in 20th century. This link is studied through the conditions and the postures of testimony, the textual marks of dentification of the addressees and the roles of the testimony.

Témoigner : Les Voies De La Connaissance, Catalina Sagarra

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The author analyzes the narrations of Survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi, in 1994. A particular attention is paid to how the witnesses express two affects : guilt and responsibility. Their life stories explore these concepts which help them to carry out a search for Truth, which is deeply linked with the sufferings the horror of the past inflicted to them to the point of being haunted by the past. The Survivors ask themselves an array of questions, not always finding a satisfying answer which could bring them some peace. They address their questioning to different agents, telling them …

Le Témoignage De L’Itsembabwoko Par La Fiction. L’Ombre D’Imana, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Following the Tutsi genocide in 1994, many African writers went to Rwanda, in 1998, and then wrote some novels and other fictional texts about the horror they saw. This study shows how Véronique Tadjo’s L’ombre d’Imana adopts several mechanisms of Traveler’s Narratives, but poses also their limits in ethical thinking about genocide. Tadjo uses indeed the subversion of Traveler’s Narratives by adding other forms of genres like reportage and testimonies. She discusses about the limits of testimony narratives on a genocide.

National And Regional Identities In Central And East Europe After 1989: A Review Of Books By Donskis, Foster And Wigmore, And Koczanowicz And Singer, Agata Anna Lisiak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Literary And Cinematic Responses To The Crime Story In Contemporary France, Deborah Streifford Reisinger

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Literary and Cinematic Responses to the Crime Story in Contemporary France," Deborah Streifford Reisinger examines society's relationship to violence in an era of increased media dominance. Reisinger's interdisciplinary approach integrates media, cinema, and literary studies to analyze how the crime story functions as a site of discursive struggle. Reisinger focuses on the sensational Paulin and Succo affairs that became mobile signifiers about crime, insecurity and the Other in France in the 1980s. By situating these crime stories in a larger historical and political context, she analyzes how media and politicians use the crime story as a tool …

Chinese Feminisms And Adaptation-As-Translation Readings Of Letter From An Unknown Woman, Jinhua Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Chinese Feminisms and Adaptation-as-Translation Readings of Letter from an Unknown Woman," Jinhua Li investigates the complex cultural and political issues engendered by an increasingly popular phenomenon of transnational film adaptations. Through a comparative reading of Jinglei Xu's 2004 adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novella Brief einer Unbekannten (Letter From an Unknown Woman), Jinhua Li argues that the adaptation-as-translation approach, as a valuable theoretical model for feminist cultural studies of Eastern-Western dynamics, allows the film to be read not only as a "translated/adapted" literary discourse that functions on different narrative levels, but also as a trope for the reimagination …

Unreliable Narration Through Representations Of The Grotesque In Lagerkvist's The Dwarf, Nitya Morales Vázquez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nitya Morales Vázquez, in her paper "Unreliable Narration through Representations of the Grotesque in Lagerkvist's The Dwarf," begins with the hypothesis that most direct expression of ideology in discourse is found in the semantics of discourse. In literature, one can analyze this ideology by examining whether the narration is reliable or whether it is unreliable. Based on these presuppositions, Morales Vázquez analyses discourse in Pär Fabian Lagerkvist's novel, The Dwarf. Morales Vázquez argues that through the use of the conceptual frames of characterization, voice, and focalization the dwarf's character offers an unreliable narration. Through representations present in the novel, Morales …

Gustav Shpet's Literary And Theatre Theory, Galin Tihanov

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Gustav Shpet's Literary and Theatre Theory," Galin Tihanov introduces Shpet's theoretical work on literature and theatre, until recently little studied. Neither has been sufficient attention paid to Shpet's overall presence on the Russian cultural scene in the 1910s-1930s. As a result, our knowledge and appreciation of the scope of his writings and the variety of Russian literary and theatre life in the first third of the twentieth century have remained less rich and well-informed than they could otherwise have been. Tihanov explains that Shpet's participation in contemporary literature and theatre assumed different forms: he wrote both from …

Historical Assessment And Archeological Survey Of 4.9 Miles Of Fm 2092 From Menard To Fivemile Crossing, Menard County, Texas, Jennifer K. Mcwilliams, Douglas K. Boyd, Celine Finney

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

This preliminary report describes historical research and an intensive archeological survey conducted for a 4.9-mile-long stretch of FM 2092 in Menard County by Prewitt and Associates, Inc. The work was performed for the Texas Department of Transportation in conjunction with a road improvement project beginning at the eastern Menard city limit and extending eastward to just beyond Fivemile Crossing. Crossing over Pleistocene and Holocene alluvial terraces of the San Saba River, the project area is located in a high-probability area for buried prehistoric sites and has a dynamic history of intensive use since Spanish colonial times. Investigations included geoarcheological mapping, …

Tensions Between Evangelical Protestants In The Former Soviet Union And America Since 1989 - A Reflective Commentary, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Debra L. Delaet On War Crimes And Genocide, Debra L. Delaet

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder by Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley. Princeton University Press, 2006. 288 pp.

and

The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda by Scott Straus. Cornell University Press, 2006. 273 pp.

and

The Witnesses: War Crimes and the Promise of Justice in the Hague by Eric Stover. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 252 pp.

The Role Of Faith In The Midst Of Transformed Societies, Charles West

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Tensions Within Religious Communities In The Balkans, Paul Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Payton's "Light From The Christian East: An Introduction To The Orthodox Tradition" And Letham's "Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective" - Book Review, Donald Fairbairn

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Aleksov's "Religious Dissent Between The Modern And The National: Nazarenes In Hungary And Serbia 1850-1914" - Book Review, Angéla Ilić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Living On The Edge, Paul Crego

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Caree Carries Subversive Memories: Recent Reflections On Ministry In Former Yugoslavia, Gerald Shenk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

An Ethnically Well-Mixed Christian, Peter Kuzmič

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Globalizing Compassion, Photography, And The Challenge Of Terror, Ariel Dorfman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Globalizing Compassion, Photography, and the Challenge of Terror," Ariel Dorfman reflects on the use of photography to make global violence visible and to mourn the losses caused by acts of terror. Dorfman draws on events that range from the attacks on the World Trade Center to Pinochet's dictatorship to other similar atrocities and he shows that, while these events always feel singular in the moment, they are best understood comparatively. At the core of the paper is a central question: does the shared practice of using photos to represent terror help build bridges across humanity or does …

Democracy's Promise And The Politics Of Worldliness In The Age Of Terror, Henry A. Giroux

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Democracy's Promise and the Politics of Worldliness in the Age of Terror," Henry A. Giroux draws attention to how the crisis in US-American democracy has been heralded and exacerbated by the nation's increasing skepticism -- or even overt hostility -- toward the educational system. Part of such a challenge means that educators, artists, students, and others need to rethink and affirm the important presupposition that higher education is integral to fostering the imperatives of an inclusive democracy and that the crisis of higher education must be understood as part of the wider crisis of politics, power, and …

Us Policy On Small Arms Transfers: A Human Rights Perspective, Susan Waltz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From Somalia and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, small arms and light weapons were a common feature of the human rights calamities of the 1990’s.

© Susan Waltz. All rights reserved.*

*A shorter version of this paper is published as “U.S. Small Arms Policy: Having It Both Ways,” in the Summer 2007 issue of World Policy Journal.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission …

Popcorn N' Picture Books: Promoting Children's Books In Academic Libraries, Laurie Charnigo, Carley Suther

The Southeastern Librarian

The educational value of children’s literature is supported by a numerous body of research. Helping children to read, write, develop fluency, critical thinking skills and multicultural awareness are just a few of the essential benefits children’s books provide. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, children’s book publishing has risen from a small publishing venture to big business. About 2,000 books were published for children in 1960. By the nineties, this number increased to 5,000 and has continued to rise. The “voluminous body of high-quality literature” published yearly makes selection by librarians difficult. As Bernice Cullinan and Lee Galda note, “Our …

Black Expressive Art, Resistant Cultural Politics, And The [Re] Performance Of Patriotism, Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

Trotter Review

During World War I, the Boston editor William Monroe Trotter described black American patriotism as a cautious endeavor and America's willingness to participate in the World War while it turned its back on domestic issues as misguided. In an era when freedom bypassed most black women and men within the nation-state of America and in an era of mass lynching in the American South, he proclaimed that black Americans and the U.S. government might refocus their efforts on making the world safer for "Negroes."

Like William Monroe Trotter, the rap group Public Enemy's rap odyssey "Welcome to the Terrordome," from …