Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Bibliography Of Work On Landscape And Its Narration, Sofie Verraest, Bart Keunen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Towards An Urban Narrative Layers Approach To Decipher The Language Of City Films, François Penz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Towards an Urban Narrative Layers Approach to Decipher the Language of City Films" François Penz investigates how film narratives may provide us with the perceptual tools to grasp complex urban phenomena. He posits that, in order to elicit the mechanisms that make up the projected image of city films, new analytical tools need to be devised. Penz demonstrates that the cinematic image is composed of a succession of narrative layers and suggests that the eye of the unsuspecting film spectator encounters a succession of narrative layers recomposed seamlessly into a single movie image on the screen. Penz …

Tell-Tale Landscapes And Mythical Chronotopes In Urban Designs For Twenty-First Century Paris, Bart Keunen, Sofie Verraest

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Tell-tale Landscapes and Mythical Chronotopes in Urban Designs for Twenty-first Century Paris" Bart Keunen and Sofie Verraest outline a methodology for the examination of narrative structures projected onto landscapes and exemplify it by analyzing four urbanist projects submitted for the international workshop for Greater Paris launched by President of France Nicholas Sarkozy in 2009. Keunen and Verraest focus on phantasmagorical urban spaces considered to be profane remnants of what Ernst Cassirer referred to as "mythical thought." Since the spatiotemporal structure of these phantasmagorical places is understood as fundamental to their affective appeal and seductiveness, they are treated …

The World Of The Landscape, Bart Verschaffel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The World of the Landscape" Bart Verschaffel analyzes the visual logic of the landscape genre in painting as it was developed from the sixteenth century onward. He argues that the structure of a minimal foreground, a middle ground cut off from the foreground, and a background that gives way to the distant, corresponds to a meditative attitude, proper to the nature of the image as such. The landscape is essentially a calm image. Second, Verschaffel puts forward that the middle ground in landscape images is not, as in history painting, a waiting room adjacent to the action …

The Avatar As A Methodological Tool For The Embodied Exploration Of Virtual Environments, Kris Pint

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Avatar as a Methodological Tool for an Embodied Exploration of Virtual Environments" Kris Pint proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of environments which cannot be entered physically because they are fictional, inaccessible, or destroyed. As phenomenology has already emphasized, the analysis of space has to take into account the bodily involvement of the researcher. Pint introduces the notion of the avatar to compensate for the impossibility of actually accessing the aforementioned spaces. Borrowed from game design, the avatar allows us to include this bodily aspect in the exploration of virtual environments, without neglecting the specific …

The Instrumentality Of Gibson's Medium As An Alternative To Space, Raymond Lucas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Instrumentality of Gibson's Medium as an Alternative to Space" Raymond Lucas analyzes the alternative to space presented by James J. Gibson and the potential role of narrative in a more holistic process of design. The concept of space exerts a powerful influence on architecture, urban design, and other disciplines concerned with the environment. Many recent critiques have measured space against place, recognizing the deficit in memory and identification within space, but the problems with the concept are more deeply felt. Understanding the medium rather than space offers architects and theorists opportunities to examine the role of …

Urban Landscape And The Postsocialist City, Krzysztof Nawratek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Urban Landscape and the Postsocialist City" Krzysztof Nawratek discusses contemporary capitalism as shaping the urban environment of Riga, a multiethnic and bilingual postsocialist, post-Soviet, and postindustrial city. When communism collapsed at the end of the twentieth century the majority of European socialist cities in central and East Europe adopted two ideas: 1) the idea of neoliberal deregulated management based on private, multi-agent ownership of land (and on land speculation) and the weakened role of the city council and 2) the "cultural turn" rejecting the industrial heritage of the socialist city and the ideology of the proletariat and …

Jenck's "Enigmatic Signifier" And Cathartic Narrative, Emmanuel Rubio

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Jenck's 'Enigmatic Signifier' and Cathartic Narrative" Emmanuel Rubio takes Charles Jencks's definition of the "enigmatic signifier" as a point of departure. For Jencks, the post-modern "iconic building" should present a "redundancy of popular signs and metaphors" that allows for multiple interpretations. But these numerous metaphorical references could also be inserted in a less simultaneous network to construct a narrative sequence. As one of these sequences, the "cathartic narrative," which is particularly adapted to the troubled era of post-modernity, is defined as a narrative that brings back, in a symbolic way, memories and experiences of past suffering, before …

Not You/Like You, With You: Toward A Praxis Of Love, Learning, And Liberation In Teaching Efl Writing — On Zombies, De-Colonial Feminisms, And Freire In Efl Contact Zones, Jessmaya Morales

MA TESOL Collection

This paper explores EFL writing as a critical contact zone in which identity and subjectivity are found, denied, contested, de/constructed and occupied. The author opens with an account of a dream, utilized as a metaphor to examine EFL learning through the analytical lens of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The paper’s first section is a self-reflexive discussion of Freire’s pedagogy and why his unambiguous analyses of power, subjectivity, and the “banking system of education” are vital to the field of ELT. In the second section, the author discusses subjectivity, identity, and intersectionality as rooted in the work of …

Extending Story Listening As A Practice Of Communal Formation At The Lake Orion Church Of Christ, Eric R. Magnusson

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that explores the potential for extending a practice of story listening as a way of forming community across social circles at the Lake Orion Church of Christ in Lake Orion, Michigan. The intervention involved guiding a group of six participant-researchers, each of whom had previous experience in story listening, through six sessions in the fall of 2011. Each phase of the project was informed by a participatory social Trinitarian theology. The first three sessions were designed to empower participant-researcher pairs to facilitate story listening groups of four to five …

Creating A Millennial Generation Contextualized Church Culture, Christopher Deitsch

Masters Theses

The Millennial generation, or Generation Y as some people know them, is the biggest generation in the United States of America history. As they flood schools, universities, and the job market it is easy to see that there are major differences between them and previous generations. Simultaneously, the church in America has hundreds of individual churches each year closing and tens of thousands each year declining; most churches are ceasing to grow. The inability to reach Millennials is one of the reasons for this decline. This thesis purposes to give a snapshot of the Millennial generation, overview a few of …

Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The singular—maybe more aptly put as the pre-eminent—image that occurs when reading Gaming Matters is that of duelling dualisms. While this is a tried-and-true method of covering a topic, from the dissoi logoi to “The Owl and the Nightingale” and beyond, it is the site and the subject of these apposites that makes for an intriguing if (intentionally) unsettling read. The very title of the book makes the exercise of reading (and likely of writing) a part of and apart from this process. Gaming Matters stands as both call and catalogue. Gaming matters, most certainly, in terms of its audience, …

The Indian Diaspora And Reading Desai, Mukherjee, Gupta, And Lahiri, Amit Shankar Saha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Indian Diaspora and Reading Desai, Mukherjee, Gupta, and Lahiri" Amit Shankar Saha argues that displacement produces a point of encounter between the alien and authority. Saha analyses aspects of (im)migration in texts about the Indian diaspora: if the host society is intolerant then it is through reactionary self-fashioning that the (im)migrant asserts his/her ethnicity as a defensive mechanism to rescue self-respect. However, while the host society is welcoming, it does not guarantee ready assimilation because there is always the question of severing the (im)migrants ties with his/her home land. (Im)migrants start living in two worlds simultaneously …

History And Politics In Parthasarathy's Play Aurangzeb, Shubh Brat Sarkar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "History and Politics in Parthasarathy's Play Aurangzeb" Shubh Brat Sarkar analyzes the use of history in a dramatic text, the underlying politics and ideology of a literary product, and the modes by which the materials are shaped through dramaturgy. The name Aurangzeb, the title of the play, has a strong presence in history textbooks and has perhaps become an integral part of a grand historical, "Indian" nationalist discourse. In the play multiple contradictions co-exist and find new projections in translations and theater adaptations in different historical contexts. Indira Parthasarthy's 1974 play is based on events leading …

Women's Worlds In The Novels Of Kandukuri And Gilman, Suneetha Rani

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Women's Worlds in the Novels of Kandukuri and Gilman" Suneetha Rani discusses Veeresalingam Kandukuri's Satyaraja Poorvadesayatralu (Satyaraja's Travel to the Distant Lands) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland. While the novels were published in two different contexts — one in pre-independence India and the other in pre-World War I in the U.S., one in Telugu and the other in English, one by a man and the other by a woman — there is an interesting connecting thread that brings them together. Both were satires on the contemporary male chauvinistic world. While the Telugu novel pleads for a better …

Gender Anxiety And Contemporary Indian Popular Fiction, Elen Turner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Anxiety and Contemporary Indian Popular Fiction" Elen Turner discusses two examples of Indian "popular literature" which reflect contemporary Indian middle-class anxieties surrounding globalization and social change. The recent proliferation of foreign business process outsourcing companies in India has changed the financial and lifestyle opportunities available to young, urban Indians. While sociological and ethnographic studies have found that workers embrace what they perceive to be westernized lifestyles, the novels under discussion present a more nuanced picture. Chetan Bhagat's One Night at the Call Centre (2005) and Shruti Saxena's Stilettos in the Boardroom (2010) demonstrate that young workers …

Elements Of Hinduism In Chandra’S Red Earth And Pouring Rain, Corinne M. Ehrfurth

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Elements of Hinduism in Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain" Corinne M. Ehrfurth explores how Hindu tenets in the Bhagavad-gītā continue to provide a didactic framework that inspires contemporary Indian literature. Ehrfurth highlights the similarities between characters, consumed with doubt and seeking understanding, in the ancient Indian text and Vikram Chandra's novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain where protagonists represent the diversity and complexity of Hinduism to a global audience. In examining how the novel's protagonists handle dilemmas, Ehrfurth presents Chandra's novel as illuminating how healthy and destructive actions affect one's ability of achieving the peaceful …

Ancient Hindu Society And Eliot's Ideal Christian Society, Anita Bhela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ancient Hindu Society and Eliot's Ideal Christian Society" Anita Bhela examines the influence of Hindu thought and Hindu philosophy on T.S. Eliot's critical writings. In The Idea of a Christian Society Eliot gives a hypothetical account of an ideal society that would contribute towards the well-being of all its members, while in Notes towards the Definition of Culture he enumerates the essential conditions needed for the growth and survival of culture. Bhela argues that religion and culture were inseparably interrelated in Eliot's mind. She then traces similarities in the concepts of family, culture, and religion as expressed …

Africa And India In The Novels Of Dai And Emecheta, Debarshi Prasad Nath, Juri Dutta

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta" Debarshi Prasad Nath and Juri Dutta discusses the work of two writers belonging to different continents, India and Nigeria. Interestingly, the novels of the two writers Dutta is analyzing — Lummer Dai and Buchi Emecheta —never heard of each other. Both novels are based on the custom of bride price, both writers speak out against the stifling rigidity of traditional customs, and uphold aspects of modernity in languages other than their native tongues. At the same time, both writers affirm the sanctity of the traditional institutions and …

Introduction To New Work In Comparative Indian Literatures And Cultures, Mohan G. Ramanan, Tutun Mukherjee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Duality Of Illusion And Reality In Desai's In Custody, Narinder K. Sharma

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Duality of Illusion and Reality in Desai's In Custody," Narinder K. Sharma analyses Anita Desai's internal confrontation of choices. In the novel, Desai's narration offers various options at every step and the author suggests that it becomes difficult to decide what actually should be done. The attempt is to personalize impersonal time and space thereby brings it into the domain of conflicting choices signifying an existential desire to manifest freedom. Going a step further, it can be deciphered that the individual desires to make an ideal choice to experience "authenticity"; however, the desire of making an …

World Literature And The Case Of Joyce, Rao, And Borges, Bhavya Tiwari

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "World Literature and the Case of Joyce, Rao, and Borges" Bhavya Tiwari discusses the work of James Joyce and poses the question why Joyce is considered an important figure in Latin America and South Asia. Have Indian languages (e.g., Bengali and Hindi) responded differently to Joycean aesthetics? If yes, can there be political reasons behind this difference? Joyce's own position in Europe as a modernist aesthetician complicates his reception in the "periphery," India and Latin America. Hence, Tiwari queries as to what happens when Joyce's texts are received on two different continents. In this context, Tiwari discusses …

Redefinitions Of India And Individuality In Adiga's The White Tiger, Kathleen Waller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Redefinitions of India and Individuality in Adiga's The White Tiger" Kathleen Waller discusses Indian individualism as being supported by a democratic and secular society, but also stymied by traditions and socioeconomic realities which keep most of its people living in poverty. In The White Tiger, Adiga challenges Indian culture to create a society in which individuals are truly free. Waller argues that the relevance of Adiga's novel is that it is social structure and practices of hierarchy keep many people in the lower classes of Indian society and that this state of affairs is counter …

The Idea Of England In Eighteenth-Century Indian Travel Writing, Amrita Satapathy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Idea of England in Eighteenth-century Indian Travel Writing" Amrita Satapathy discusses how Dean Mahomed's 1794 The Travels of Dean Mahomed maps out territories of the mind of the colonizer and the colonized, how the narrative redefines contours of two diverse communities and cultures, and determines forms of cultural representations. Mahomed's Travels presented for the first time the idea of England from an Indian immigrant's point of view and altered the prejudiced outlook of early Western travel writings about the East. Mahomed's narrative opened an alternative vista for the wide-eyed Easterner of the world of the West …

Shakespeare Reception In India And The Netherlands Until The Early Twentieth Century, Vikram Singh Thakur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Shakespeare Reception in India and The Netherlands until the Early Twentieth Century" Vikram Singh Thakur locates Shakespeare in two different cultural contexts by looking at its reception in The Netherlands and India. His analysis is based on the fact that Shakespeare was a foreign playwright to both cultures yet both have gradually assimilated his works into their respective cultures and made him, probably, the most performed foreign playwright since the 1870s. Thakur aims at understanding how the reception of a work in different cultures is mediated by various social, cultural, historical, and ideological sieves through which the …

Theories Of Culture, Identity, And Ethnomusicology: A Synthesis Of Popular Music, Cultural, And Communication Studies, Alyssa Santos

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

The Initiation Of Growth-Focused Relationships Involving Healthy Accountability At The Carbondale Church Of Christ, Stephen Shaffer

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

After several years of transition, the Carbondale Church of Christ is in the early stages of becoming a spiritual growth-focused community. However, the emerging growth community appears to reflect the prevailing cultural assumptions that growth is a personal, private, and an individual task. To shape this emergent growth culture, this project initiated a group of congregational opinion leaders, organized in pairs, into the practice of growth-focused relationships involving healthy accountability. The initiation involved a theological orientation followed by a four-week healthy accountability praxis.

The theological framework of the project involved three main aspects. First, the project used the body image …

From A Rodent To A Rhetorician: An Ideological Analysis Of George Alexander Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric, James Begley

Masters Theses

George Alexander Kennedy, a professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has given birth to a new understanding of rhetorical studies: he argues for the evolution of rhetoric from animals to humans. Using Sonja Foss's methodology of "ideological criticism," this thesis examined Kennedy's case as presented in his book, Comparative Rhetoric: an Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. This study discovered that the book was heavily influenced by a secular, pro-evolutionary ideology which dually contributed to its selective use of scientific evidences and production of inconsistent arguments. Evaluated on the basis of Biblical principles, this thesis concluded …

Orientalism And Three British Dames: De-Essentialization Of The Other In The Work Of Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark, And E.S. Drower, Lynn Sawyer

Masters Theses

Although postcolonial criticism has run its course for thirty years, a fresh look at Edward Said's Orientalism offers insight into how Orientalism functions in the writings of three British dames. Gertrude Bell in The Desert and the Sown, Freya Stark in The Southern Gates of Arabia, and E.S. Drower in The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, however, challenge Said's theory. Their writing raises questions about how gender alters the discourse about the Other, and whether Said essentializes the Occident. Bell, Stark, and Drower serve as case studies in which to analyze the politically and rhetorically complex interactions between the West …

You Sir Are A Fine Young Gentleman. Thank You, My Lady: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Eighteenth Century Conversations Regarding Gentility And Gender, Kati Overbey

Masters Theses

This study rhetorically analyzed the eighteenth century work of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Eliza Haywood's The Female Spectator using Kathleen Turner's framework for rhetorical history as social criticism integrating text and context. Ten essays from The Spectator as well as ten essays from The Female Spectator were selected based on content and subject matter regarding manners and gentility. When Turner's framework for analysis was applied to the essays, defining characteristics of gentility were revealed. A presentation of the results of the textual and contextual analysis of these twenty selected essays is provided. An analysis of the …