This primer in “cognitive cultural studies” explores the cultural fantasy of perfect access to mind through body. It shows that different genres and media—movies, novels, classic Chinese operas, medieval ribald tales, musicals, paintings, documentaries, stand-up comedy, and photography—have different strategies for making us think that we have ju…[Read more]

Introduction to Modernism: Evolution of an Idea, which traces the emergence and coherence of the term “modernism”, and the field of modernist studies, from the late 1800s to the present.

Early American studies scholar and feminist literary critic, Annette Kolodny, offers three projects that she would take on if she were not now retiring from the profession. These three projects include a feminist analysis of women’s interactions on the earliest contact and frontier landscapes; the development of a cross- and inter-disciplinary…[Read more]

Argues that the documentary Paper Clips exemplifies the ways in which Holocaust education can unwittingly foster competing victimization narratives between blacks and Jews, sanitize both European and U.S. history, and serve subtle
but pernicious forms of supersessionism.

This article shows how Rachna Mara’s collection of short stories Of Customs and Excise puts forth a cosmopolitan feminism that reveals the losses and gains of diaspora in an arena of partiality and relationality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is the beginning of the chapter:

Ungleichzeitigkeit and global modernisms

Over the last twenty-five years, the modernist canon has been significantly revised as theoretical and empirical interventions have emphasised its transnational and globalised patterns of connection through a range of disciplinary…[Read more]

In lieu of an abstract, here is the beginning of the chapter:

Ungleichzeitigkeit and global modernisms

Over the last twenty-five years, the modernist canon has been significantly revised as theoretical and empirical interventions have emphasised its transnational and globalised patterns of connection through a range of disciplinary…[Read more]

This article explores what Gershom Scholem has called Herbert Marcuse’s “unacknowledged ties to [his] Jewish heritage.” At the core of Marcuse’s vision of transformed, non-repressive social relations, I argue, is a struggle over time, which rests upon a distinctly Jewish approach to the twin questions of remembrance and redemption. One example…[Read more]

In lieu of an abstract, here is the beginning of the article: In a recent discussion of modernism, Peter Osborne argues that the terms “modern,” “modernity,” and “modernization” need to be understood through their shared philosophical status as temporal constructions. The emergence of the modern within Western philosophy is predicated on a subjec…[Read more]

In lieu of an abstract, here is the beginning of the article:

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in the former Soviet bloc, the concept of utopia was blighted with the stigma of Stalinist totalitarianism. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s despotism at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in 195…[Read more]

This is a longer version of my conference paper, in which I provide some ideas on how to merge scholarship on 18th-c France, especially the revolutionary period, with the kinds of advocacy promoted by the MLA. I foreground exciting new work done by colleagues in the US, UK, and Italy, and provide a “sneak peek” at materials to be included in the…[Read more]

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is reflection of Pakistani masculinity in a metamorphosed state. A disturbingly masculine vocabulary frames the appearance and actions of the female characters. In contrast, the speech and thought of the male characters is minified in words of loss and regret. Their material ambitions and the r…[Read more]