The argument in this essay is that Dickinson’s poetics of inner life makes us see anew the long-standing philosophical problem of expression. Dickinson’s poetry invests itself in an understanding of subjectivity that rearranges the anchors we often turn to in thinking about how lives and identities take on shape in expressive forms. Poetry for…[Read more]

Michael Fried has returned to the distinction between “absorption” and “theatricality” in all of his art-historical criticism since he first introduced the dyad in 1980. This essay argues that the term “absorption” is rich with a philosophical significance that echoes central concerns long at play in philosophy’s thinking about the status of art…[Read more]

This essay traces the development of the right-hand inscription (zuoyouming 座右銘) from its birth in the second century CE through its culmination as a complex literary subgenre in the tenth. Over the course of these eight centuries, right-hand inscriptions were used by some of the most prominent poets of their respective eras, including Cui Yuan…[Read more]

This essay suggests that with the increasing prominence of “historical poetics” as a set of social collectives, methodologies, and debates (especially about literary analysis), now seems to be an ideal time to assess its history and consider its future. The first part of the essay offers a genealogy of historical poetics, accounting for some of…[Read more]

This article examines socio-historical dimensions and cultural and dramaturgic implications of the Greek playwright Euripides’ treatment of the myth of Medea. Euripides gives voice to victims of adventurism, aggression and betrayal in the name of ‘reason’ and the ‘state’ or ‘polity.’ Medea constitutes one of the most powerful mythic forces to…[Read more]

This article examines socio-historical dimensions and cultural and dramaturgic implications of the Greek playwright Euripides’ treatment of the myth of Medea. Euripides gives voice to victims of adventurism, aggression and betrayal in the name of ‘reason’ and the ‘state’ or ‘polity.’ Medea constitutes one of the most powerful mythic forces to…[Read more]

This Spanish-language unit contains an excerpt of an Arabic treatise composed by ʿAlī ibn Ḥazm (d. 1063) to lament the capital of the province of Córdoba, a city in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. This treatise was composed during the civil war (fitna) that started in 1009 and ended in 1031 with the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of C…[Read more]

This unit contains an excerpt of an Arabic treatise composed by ʿAlī ibn Ḥazm (d. 1063) to lament the capital of the province of Córdoba, a city in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. This treatise was composed during the civil war (fitna) that started in 1009 and ended in 1031 with the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba.

T…[Read more]

Comparative analyses of poetry by the German Sarah Kirsch, the Emirati Ahmed Rashid Thani, and the St Lucian Derek Walcott identify three distinct ecopoetic elements their work has in common. The three poets, born before the origin of ecocriticism, favour metaphors that represent natural landscapes. These metaphors express a certain…[Read more]

This course is a study of the literature of the U.S.-Mexico border from the 1980s to the present. We begin with Gloria Anzaldúa’s foundational texts, Borderlands / La Frontera, and her landmark feminist anthology, co-edited with Cherríe Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color. We then consider the legacies and aft…[Read more]

Birds are everywhere in nineteenth-century American literature, including the work of Emily Dickinson. Women poets often referred to their poems in terms of making songs. This essay rethinks the birds in Dickinson’s letters and poems. It suggests that Dickinson’s birds, and their songs, show her awareness of business. They exist within com…[Read more]

This article is a slightly revised version of a plenary panel address presented at the ‘Passages’ Symposium at the Sorbonne, Paris on the 12th of June 2019, in honor of the centenary of the birth of the American poet Robert Duncan. The article traces some of the mutual interest and influence between the poets Robert Duncan and Hilda Doolittle…[Read more]

This article is a slightly revised version of a plenary panel address presented at the ‘Passages’ Symposium at the Sorbonne, Paris on the 12th of June 2019, in honor of the centenary of the birth of the American poet Robert Duncan. The article traces some of the mutual interest and influence between the poets Robert Duncan and Hilda Doolittle…[Read more]

Emily Dickinson’s unique style of poetic composition is marked by ambiguity and open-endedness, leading to the genesis of a privileged space wherein reader and writer are able to meet as co-creators of meaning. As a poet, Dickinson addresses many themes in ways that are subject to countless layers of interpretation. This essay focuses p…[Read more]

This commemorative and retrospective memoir examines events fifty years ago in the interests of tracking and placing the editorial ideals and dynamics of the journal “Works & Days”, founded in 1978 and published through 2019. The author was one of the original co-founders of the journal, as well as a contributor and member of the editorial board…[Read more]