Bound by market pressures, twenty-first century academia finds itself fettered by the demands of “student success” that a capitalist knowledge economy places on its participants. Humanities scholars are, as Jonathan Dollimore noted in his 2014 SAA address, pressed with their back against the wall, “in a marketplace pretty indifferent to what…[Read more]

The silent film era, usually defined as 1895-1927, coincided with a revival of belief in spiritualism in America. Desperate to find meaning in the deaths of the Great War and the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, the bereaved sought contact with the dead and evidence of an afterlife. Given this fascination with spiritualism, it is not surprising that the…[Read more]

Reads William of Rubruck’s mission to Asia as an instance of premodern ethnographic representation and the shape of the precolonial European ethnographic gaze upon Asia.

“‘Bruised with Adversity’: Reading Race in The Comedy of Errors” examines the role of the body, and of the somatic mark in particular, in the social production of both individual subjects and racial groups. In The Comedy of Errors, two sets of twins experience the benefits as well as the pitfalls of mistaken identity, revealing the ease with which…[Read more]

This article compares the 1950s and 1960s short story writing of two influential yet underexamined women writers, Mannu Bhandari (1931–) and R. Chudamani (1931–2010), who are considered key representatives of the Hindi and Tamil literary canons, respectively. Mani demonstrates that from within their specific geographic and historical contexts, Bha…[Read more]

CFP for a special issue of the European Journal of Humour Research

An overview of proposed categories for the growing graphic medicine genre of cancer comics (i.e. cancer narratives in comic book form) and an initial theory on the significant linkage between this illness and particular medium.

This collection of scholarly essays offers a new understanding of local and global myths that have been constructed around Shakespeare in theatre, cinema, and television from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a definition of myth as a powerful ideological narrative, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance examines…[Read more]

An examination of the cyborg potential of wearable technology as located in dress-body-technology assemblages and a call for public humanities work, such as Fashioning Circuits, that extends the Quantified Self to think instead about the Quantified Other or the Quantified Self-in-kinship.

This essay calls for a reflection on the links between literature, activism, and social change in the Hispanic Caribbean, privileging certain interventions led by women, who have contributed to the defense of better living conditions and a more equitable social pact. Taking into account the diversity and mobility that characterizes the Caribbean…[Read more]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh seeks to redress the divisive work of women’s democratic political representation by way of poetic form to ask whether women must always be regarded as partial citizens. Women are not counted as integral units—ones—politically or culturally. Barrett Browning connects women’s ability to produce writing a…[Read more]

Our work in this course will center around two questions. First, what were the material and social conditions for Black men, women, and children living in the territory that would become the United States, from roughly 1750 until on or about 1860? While slavery is likely the first concept that comes to mind, additional concepts such as racism,…[Read more]

From the Teddy Boys of the post-war decade to the heroin chic of “Cool Britannia,” the many tribes and subcultures of Britain’s teenagers have often been at the forefront of social change. Youth Culture and the Post-War British Novel is the first book to chart that history through the work of the most important contemporary British wri…[Read more]

Jordan and Iraq are not countries that are often associated with a local film culture. Recently, however, a nascent film industry has started to grow in both Iraq and Jordan, producing films that have been shown in international film festivals. Even though the Jordanian film industry remains in its infancy, the films that have emerged of late…[Read more]

Jordan and Iraq are not countries that are often associated with a local film culture. Recently, however, a nascent film industry has started to grow in both Iraq and Jordan, producing films that have been shown in international film festivals. Even though the Jordanian film industry remains in its infancy, the films that have emerged of late…[Read more]

In this essay I explore the use of musical mimesis in the score for D. W. Griffith’s 1921 film Orphans of the Storm. I demonstrate that the score, created by Louis F. Gottschalk and William Frederick Peters, offers coherence through the use of central themes and the employment of several characteristic leitmotivs; provides recognizable musical c…[Read more]