Most critics of contemporary literature have reached a consensus that what was once called “postmodernism” is over and that its signature modes—metafiction and irony—are on the wane. This is not the case, however, with videogames. In recent years, a number of self-reflexive games have appeared, exemplified by Davey Wreden’s The Stanley Parable (…[Read more]

This study is premised upon my experience of translating _Ekattorer Chithi_ (Bengali title) or _Letters of 1971_ (English version of the title), an anthology of letters written by the freedom fighters of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, into English. Letters of 1971, a collection of letters, diverse as they are in meaning and…[Read more]

This paper argues that there is a need to look beyond what is merely “homeward” in the work of Thomas Wolfe. I take up Wai Chee Dimock’s expansive conception of American literature as “a crisscrossing set of pathways, open-ended and ever multiplying, weaving in and out of other geographies, other languages and cultures,” demonstrating how Thomas…[Read more]

This is a book about the power game currently being played out between two symbiotic cultural institutions: the university and the novel. As the number of hyper-knowledgeable literary fans grows, students and researchers in English departments waver between dismissing and harnessing voices outside the academy. Meanwhile, the role that the…[Read more]

n his address at the Madrid Peace Conference, the Head of the Palestinian Delegation, Dr Haidar Abdul-Shafi challenged the persistent myth that has defined Palestinian existence for at least a century by saying: “For too long the Palestinian people have gone unheeded, silenced […] we have been victimized by the myth of ‘a land without a peopl…[Read more]

The “Urlo”. From the deconstructive rage/fury to the ‘yes’ assertion.
In this article we offer a series of tableaux belonging to contemporary Romance literatures written by women, through a focus on a common feature which is that of the “urlo” (scream). Based on a selection of works mainly Italian, but also taken from other literatures of the Rom…[Read more]

The “Urlo”. From the deconstructive rage/fury to the ‘yes’ assertion.
In this article we offer a series of tableaux belonging to contemporary Romance literatures written by women, through a focus on a common feature which is that of the “urlo” (scream). Based on a selection of works mainly Italian, but also taken from other literatures of the Rom…[Read more]

This article gestures to the 1930s through 1950s inter­national anarchist literary networks that ran from Paris to London and Athens, Cairo and Alexandria, Shang­hai, Oxford and Cambridge, New York and San Francisco, and finally Big Sur and Vancouver. The distribution across these nodes was intense and sustained, but this project only hints at t…[Read more]

Title of short story: WHITING RICH AND STRANGE

A story of ethnic people in an oil refinery town in NW Indiana.
Comments are most welcome. This is part of a series of stories based in the industrial part of Chicago’s Indiana suburbs.

I am also placing the story in the Shakespeare group because–after all–it is a Romeo and Juliet story.…[Read more]