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]

This paper examines cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief (2007) and Open City (2011). The protagonists of both novels maintain cosmopolitan identities largely by embracing an international literary culture in which elite cosmopolitan fiction relays the experiences of marginalized cosmopolitan subjects, such as the migrant w…[Read more]

Introduction to the literary theory, form, and style of Modernism, a literary movement that dominated the first half of the 20th century and continues to exert its influence over literature today, which, tellingly, is described by the label post-Modernism.

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

This article examines the conversion to Christianity of the prince Tayco in the comedia de santos Los mártires del Japón by Lope de Vega and the creation of the Dominican missionary Alonso de Navarrete as a dramatic character. Lope portraits Tayco as a young prince who has to learn how to become a king, having Navarrete as a role model. Lope c…[Read more]

India’s re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a victory speech that presented himself as a selfless and humble Hindu ascetic. This vision goes far to promote a Hindu nationalist ‘new India.’

Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]

The problem of the “yes,” of affirming an historical identity that is potentially harmful to oneself, troubles some of the imaginative leaps necessary to how readers desire to identify with texts. With that in mind, this article reads Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred as a story about memory, history, and embodiment as written both on and thr…[Read more]

We are inviting proposals for the forthcoming “Re-membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean” International Conference that will be held on March 26-27, 2020 in Toulouse, France (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès).
Abstracts (300 words) are due by September 15, 2019 to yasser elhariry (yasser.elhariry@dartmouth.edu), Isabelle Keller-Privat (isa.…[Read more]

This document contains brief statements about the approaches that the 7 roundtable panelists will take in responding to _The Testaments_, Margaret Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to _The Handmaid’s Tale_.

Abstracts for the panel “Graphic Atwood” proposed by the Margaret Atwood Society for the 2020 MLA Convention.

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

The critic, as guide, is here in the penultimate of a four-part series on “Lord of the Rings,” suggested to be, if not Sarumon himself (Sarumon’s voice is used), certainly someone who could readily imagine him as someone who could have been presented in the text as a flat-out ally, if he himself wasn’t relegated to being the reader’s guardian and…[Read more]

Argues that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an adventure in reverse, an “argument” for “your” regression. Rather than play with your ability to maybe succeed in threatening environments, it confirms your worst suspicions about yourself, lending you in mood to cling to others in a master-slave relationship, so long as they’ll agree to…[Read more]

Argues that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an adventure in reverse, an “argument” for “your” regression. Rather than play with your ability to maybe succeed in threatening environments, it confirms your worst suspicions about yourself, lending you in mood to cling to others in a master-slave relationship, so long as they’ll agree to…[Read more]