The link between asimovian universe and Sherlock Holmes

The late Victorian era was imbued with progressive scientific reform and palpable anxiety regarding the future of the British empire. These two topics may seem distinct, but they find mutual expression in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, in which the soulless Count travels from Transylvania (literally, “beyond the forest”) and invades Engla…[Read more]

In this essay, I discuss salient themes of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). I hold that The Child To Come’s main thrust is this: ‘The issue is not that there is no future but rather that there is no sure way of orienting toward that future, either to save it or to survive it’. The chall…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

Critics often discuss works of fiction by condensing them into a few resonant scenes. We are so attached to this strategy, in fact, that we sometimes apply it to history itself: New Historicists explicitly theorize the anecdote as an appropriately literary representation of the past. But why should minutes and hours be more literary than months…[Read more]

The tension between feminism and national liberation is a commonplace of political mobilization across the postcolonial world. This essay traces how postcolonial nationalist and transnational feminist agendas were brought into conflict during the defense of a thesis on the novels of the Syrian writer Ghada al-Samman (b. 1942) that took place in…[Read more]

From 1852 the Hôtel Drouot was the space where the French auctioneers (Commissaires-Priseurs) – who held a stately sanctioned monopoly – organized their auctions. By processing data from the art auction catalogue repertory by Frits Lugt and the extended version Art Sales Catalogues Online, it is possible to map the networks of art marketing at…[Read more]

Call for Papers

The literary relation between Parvin E’tesami and Walt Whitman remains a largely unexplored field. This article analyzes the connection between “God’s Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to shed light on Parvin’s creative reception of Whitman. Creating a mixed-breed spider, combining characteristics from both
Whitman’s insect and the Persi…[Read more]

Throughout historic developments, the publicly ascertained and published price of an artwork repeatedly served as a reference point for art theoretical discussion. Particular importance was attached to the auction sale price, since this financial evaluation of art was of such a public nature. While there is a long history of these ideas about the…[Read more]

Die französische Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts über das Pariser Auktionshaus kreist um das Thema des Betrugs. In Büchern der Historiker und Kunstkritiker Jules Champfleury, Victor-Charles Préseau und Henri Rochefort werden Fälschungen und betrügerische Expertise in Zusammenhang gebracht und Experten als Störung für die Abläufe des Kunstmar…[Read more]

Panel Description: Rising with the popularity of printed music, binders’ volumes became a particularly important and popular cultural artifact around 1830, flourishing into the 1870s and beyond. Since the beginning, these volumes have presented a conundrum to librarians: how does one deal with a compilation of different musical works? How can c…[Read more]

Panel Description: Rising with the popularity of printed music, binders’ volumes became a particularly important and popular cultural artifact around 1830, flourishing into the 1870s and beyond. Since the beginning, these volumes have presented a conundrum to librarians: how does one deal with a compilation of different musical works? How can c…[Read more]

This article considers how state-mandated veiling and unveiling reinforce modern capitalism. State regulations regarding veiling incorporate the female body into the political economy of the commodity form. In addition to serving as an empty signifier to be filled with exchange value for the male observer, the veil operates as an ideological…[Read more]

Draft Version des Beitrags: In dem vorliegenden Artikel möchten wir der Frage nach den Möglichkeiten eines weiblichen bzw. feministischen Zugangs zu wissenschaftlicher Forschung in verschiedenen Hinsichten beleuchten. Wir werden uns dem Thema exemplarisch anhand des Forschungsfeldes der Primatologie zuwenden, wobei die Antwort auf die Frage, w…[Read more]

This paper assesses nine prominent readings of the imperial context/content of Verdi’s ‘Aida’ and offers a new perspective more adequate to basic tensions in the work. Readings have ranged from the literal (imperial Europe here stages an archaeological “ancient Egypt”) to the metaphorical (“Egypt” here is any repressive government). Or–somew…[Read more]

Commentators often express disappointment that the music for the main characters in _Aida_ is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. It has also been argued that exotic style-elements here are mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Such…[Read more]

A review of the 2017 retrospective of painter Mernet Larsen at the Tampa Museum of Art.