Thomas Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure (1895) is centred on its working-class
protagonist Jude Fawley’s efforts first to become a scholar, then his experiences of
resisting the orthodoxies of his society and lastly defying Christianity as a restrictive
social force on the individuals. This paper aims to discuss Jude’s liminal character…[Read more]

The idea that the US media is biased against organized labor may seem too obvious to require comment and research, but the details are quite important to understanding to to communicate more effectively between voices of the labor community and voices of management. The common assumption that labor media coverage became more skewed with the…[Read more]

Can we entertain the idea that The Taming of the Shrew can be performed and received as comedy in the post-Women’s March US? If so, would the laughter be empathetic and solidary rather than callous? The answer lies in physical theater which is uniquely poised to activate elements of farce in the play. Shrew is one of the Shakespearean comedies t…[Read more]

Early works of dramatic criticism seeking to draw parallels between ritual and drama in Africa concentrated on examining the dramatic characteristics of ritual to see how drama evolved from ritual. However, a closer application of the theories of Girard, Schechner, Smith, Hubert Mauss and Turner reveal new perspectives on the interaction between…[Read more]

Early works of dramatic criticism seeking to draw parallels between ritual and drama in Africa concentrated on examining the dramatic characteristics of ritual to see how drama evolved from ritual. However, a closer application of the theories of Girard, Schechner, Smith, Hubert Mauss and Turner reveal new perspectives on the interaction between…[Read more]

Syllabus and Course Reader (Creative Commons Licensed) of survey course of premodern Hispanic literature and culture taught as a series of debates on social questions (see https://davidwacks.uoregon.edu/2017/12/14/survey4/)

Course description: This class introduces students to a variety of texts written in Spain and the New World from 1100-1600…[Read more]

Syllabus and Course Reader (Creative Commons Licensed) of survey course of premodern Hispanic literature and culture taught as a series of debates on social questions (see https://davidwacks.uoregon.edu/2017/12/14/survey4/)

Course description: This class introduces students to a variety of texts written in Spain and the New World from 1100-1600…[Read more]

Syllabus for a graduate-level course with the following overview: “We will examine how theoretical discourse has evolved through shifting technological platforms, with particular attention to the challenges software, code, and networks present to our understanding of texts. We will engage with examples of complex procedural works ranging from…[Read more]

A contribution to Transition’s “I Can’t Breathe” forum, an online space for responses to the murders of unarmed black Americans by police. My piece, which was chosen for publication in the print edition of the magazine, reflected upon the similarities between the death of Eric Garner in New York City and the death of an enslaved sugar refiner nam…[Read more]

This article assesses the longstanding myths and debates surrounding the supposed African ancestry of German Romantic composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It argues that the “blackwashing” of Beethoven against all historical likelihood is a failed attempt at historical revisionism—while endeavoring to claim Beethoven’s genius as a testament to black…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

Статья является введением к трехтомной антологии русского модернизма.

The first international journal of comparative literary studies, entitled Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877-1888), was published in Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg (in former Hungary, today in Romania). The research on the pioneering multilingual journal usually foregrounds only one of the editors, Hugo von Meltzl, the young university…[Read more]

The professor character is no stranger to readers of contemporary African American literature. Indeed, the variety and ubiquity of a professorial character across a range of post soul fictional novels is not simply a curiosity to comment on, but phenomena available for critical interrogation. This analysis explores the location of Deck Lee’s c…[Read more]

Postcolonial theory has a people problem. By this, I am unabashedly suggesting that postcolonial theoreticians’ overemphasis on people as the site of analysis lies at the heart of the limitations of the field’s key terms, epistemological boundaries, and approach to understanding phenomena as a whole. Indeed, if postcolonial theory and its rel…[Read more]