This article combines qualitative and quantitative methods to rethink the literary history of late medieval China (830–960 CE). It begins with an overview of exchange poetry in the Tang dynasty and its role in the construction of the poetic subject, namely, the poetic subject’s distributed textual body. A total of 10,869 poems exchanged between 2…[Read more]

Developing less burdensome and more equitable ways to support scholarly difference is a preeminent challenge when thinking about the future of assessment and promotion in higher education. At stake in this is the very capacity of institutions to do the work of scholarly inclusion, to recognize the range of approaches well captured in the digital…[Read more]

The growing accessibility of digital technology has been met with an increased willingness on the part of scholars to integrate new digital methods into their interpretive and presentational practices. At the same time, the academic assessment structures that support scholarly work have not always been able to keep pace, thus making the pursuit of…[Read more]

Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]

The syllabus for a graduate course on “Digital Literary Studies” taught in the UVA English department. Course was co-taught and co-constructed by Alison Booth and Brandon Walsh.

This essay takes a long view of Wright’s work, arguing that his racial consciousness always extended beyond national boundaries and was forged from a globalist perspective. This outlook is not, as some critics have maintained, a late-stage development in Wright’s career, but rather the predominant theme that unites his oeuvre with a single con…[Read more]

Desde mediados del 2005, archivistas- activistas del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala han estado digitalizando documentos policiales ocultos por más de un siglo para protegerlos, organizarlos y proporcionar acceso a los mismos — 23 millones de páginas hasta la fecha. Encontramos que la digitalización amplificó la reuti…[Read more]

This document contains brief statements about the approaches that the 7 roundtable panelists will take in responding to _The Testaments_, Margaret Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to _The Handmaid’s Tale_.

Abstracts for the panel “Graphic Atwood” proposed by the Margaret Atwood Society for the 2020 MLA Convention.

Sophisticated digital platforms and infrastructures offer scholarly editors opportunities to make textual materials accessible and negotiable online. Still, we feel pressure to reify the passive reading experience within a web browser. The challenge lies in constructing (or reconstructing) our texts to best provide for dynamic text and data…[Read more]

What is the current status of the discipline of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature? How has the work published by 452ºF. Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature contributed to the field? These questions are the starting point for the reflections included in these critic’s notes, which have been conceived as a collective te…[Read more]

Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

This essay serves as a guardian, as a true friend of the reader, encouraging them to recognize that if they identify with the hobbits in this book, to be wary of the text trains the reader to become someone who would mistake their actual proud moments of self-decision, self-realization… of bravery, of the genuine kind, for something evil or bad,…[Read more]

Argues that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an adventure in reverse, an “argument” for “your” regression. Rather than play with your ability to maybe succeed in threatening environments, it confirms your worst suspicions about yourself, lending you in mood to cling to others in a master-slave relationship, so long as they’ll agree to…[Read more]

Delineates how much of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring” is about preparing Frodo especially so that if caught out alone, he’d never dare venture a decent listen to anyone who might attempt to sway him to consider the due fate for the Ring, other than according to Gandalf’s specifications. Positions the text as one that bates the reader…[Read more]

Explores Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X” as almost a Gen Xer’s “version of John Updike’s Couples”; that is, as, a place where, like Updike’s book, friends create a community isolated only to themselves. Though unlike Updike’s work, where — considering the time it was written in, the ’70s, where a generation succeeded in overtly contesting and…[Read more]