This review essay approaches Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller’s Thinking Literature across Continents (2016) from a set of questions about what it means to read in the age of hyperarchival accumulation. Written against the background of events in the United States and elsewhere during the fall of 2017, the essay tracks and assesses Ghosh and…[Read more]

Because it is all too easy to (accidentally) make assumptions about what first-year students know about language, in 2019-2020 my lit and comp type courses will begin with a segment on language, before moving on to sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

Our exploration of language will start by jumping into a story, to help us identify the 8 parts…[Read more]

Explores ‘information history’, or the study of information and its practices, as a way to arrange investigations of past and present. An invited contribution for the volume, “Information and Power in History: Towards a Global Approach,” edited by Ida Nijenhuis, Marijke van Faassen, Joris Gijsenbergh, Wim de Jong, and Ronald Sluijter (London:…[Read more]

The Iberian Peninsula during the Latin Middle Ages was home to large populations of Muslims and Jews. During the period we like to call the Middle Ages, much of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the entire peninsula was under Christian rule, and Judaism and Islam were officially banned.…[Read more]

The recent surge of interest in Afrofuturism has resulted in some groundbreaking work looking at the ways technology and race intersect in film, fashion, music and literature, as is evidenced by the important collection of essays “Afrofuturism 2.0” (2016), edited by Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones. However there has not yet been an aca…[Read more]

The convivencia between the followers of the different religions of the Mediterranean persisted despite the fraught politics of Christianity and Islam. Despite the long arm of the Inquisition the protagonists in the plays of Cervantes and Lope struggle to maintain fraternal ties.

Despite being an army officer Don Fernando is drawn towards the Muslim Princess Arlaxa. He defies army convention to meet her much to the chagrin of fellow Spanish soldiers in the presidio where they are stationed.

This article discusses “politically correct” desire as opposed to the outlaw desire of witches and non Christians. Though the leading couple is shown most favourably yet the portrayal of the Others raises questions in the mind of the reader which is what Cervantes might have intended.

In this article I try to show how the Mexican Revolution was not only national in nature but also helped ordinary individuals break down barriers in their personal lives. The protagonist of Nadie me verá llorar was considered a madwoman in Porfirian society and with the Revolution she comes into her own and finds a space in post revolutionary Mexico D.F.

An analysis of the life and corridos of Jenni Rivera the sole woman narco corridista

The travels and writings of Octavio Paz and Severo Sarduy in India.

The lives of Spanish immigrants during the Mexican Revolution, their participation therein.

El retrato de la Ciudad de México en la literatura.

The reception of Jesuit priests at the the court of Akbar the Mughal emperor of India

A series of derivative verses from the late-third century has pride of place in one of the foundational collections of Chinese poetry. These verses, “Filling out the Missing Odes” by Shu Xi, can be found at the beginning of the lyric-poetry (shi 詩) section of the Wenxuan. This essay seeks to understand why such blatantly imitative pieces may have…[Read more]

In this article I investigate the portrayal role of the Aztecs, indigeneous peoples and movements in the writings of Carlos Fuentes.