Critics have characterized E.M. Forster as an advocate of what Jürgen Habermas calls the “secular public sphere.” Yet Forster was critical of liberalism’s insistence that religious experiences should be translated into the language of secular rationality. The discussion of the Clapham Sect in “Henry Thornton” (1939) suggests that eighteenth…[Read more]

This essay explores the radical subjectivism of Oscar Wilde’s novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889/1921), which celebrates the creative potential of nonessentialist forms of identity and yet cautions against jettisoning humanist notions of selfhood entirely. I contend that Wilde turned to G. W. F. Hegel’s performative theory of lyric…[Read more]

This article provides an overview of the academic study of Victorian masculinity. It argues that the pioneering work of feminist and sexuality studies scholars in Victorian studies during the 1970s and 1980s made it possible to discuss manhood critically as a historical and cultural phenomenon. It then presents a reading of major works on…[Read more]

In this essay, I argue that Walter Pater’s description of “Euphuism” in Marius the Epicurean (1885) relies upon the insights of idealist philosophy in order to articulate a theory of what Rebecca Walkowitz calls “cosmopolitan style.” Specifically, Pater draws upon a disparate number of cultural discourses in his articulation of Euphuism while…[Read more]

Although Mary Wollstonecraft’s analysis of masculine sexuality and sensibility in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791) and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria (1797) mostly concerns the ways in which the oppression of women results in the unnatural encouragement and consequent perversion of male sexual desire, I believe that these two texts…[Read more]

Jesús Aguado’s recent book, Carta al padre (2016), deals openly with both physical and emotional trauma suffered at the hands of toxic masculinity. The poetic voice vindicates his younger self, abused by the father, through the written word that transfers power to the weak and disenfranchised. Lacanian naming and patriarchal structures (family,…[Read more]

Libertarias (1996) and Land and Freedom (1995) explore the complex situation
of women militia during the Spanish Civil War. A queer reading of the female
body in these films highlights wartime female masculinity (Halberstam) and
female solidarity. In renegotiating worn expectations of sexuality and gender,
the films question and ultimately…[Read more]

Libertarias (1996) and Land and Freedom (1995) explore the complex situation
of women militia during the Spanish Civil War. A queer reading of the female
body in these films highlights wartime female masculinity (Halberstam) and
female solidarity. In renegotiating worn expectations of sexuality and gender,
the films question and ultimately…[Read more]

This is the UNEDITED PRE-PRINT of my section of the multi-authored article “Journal of a Plague Year: Six Voices from American Universities,” ed. Christa Jansohn, which appeared in _Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen_. The other authors were Andrew James Hartley, Jean Howard, Christoph Irmscher, Anthony Lioi, and Lisa S.…[Read more]

The Spatiality of the Hispanic Avant-Garde: Ultraísmo & Estridentismo, 1918-1927 is a thorough exploration of the meanings and values Hispanic poets and artists assigned to four iconic locations of modernity: the city, the cafés, means of transportation, and the sea, during the first decades of the 20th century. Joining important studies on S…[Read more]

This presentation brings together and builds on previous studies of queer representation using the LGBTQ Video Game Archive and the Represent Me games database (Cole et al. 2017) in order to investigate unexplored trends and invisible queer intersections in video games. Specifically, we draw on Queer Intersections in Video Games (Mejeur 2018), a…[Read more]

This is the Call for Papers for Debates in Digital Humanities Pedagogy, which was originally published in January 2019 at http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/cfps/cfp_2019_pedagogy.html. The site no longer exists, so we are depositing it here for archival and citational purposes.

In this paper, in a panel co-sponsored by the MLA Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, I summarize some of the structural and practical problems that challenge contingent scholars when they try to publish their work in scholarly journals. I share the record of the online, multimedia,…[Read more]

This essay focuses on one example of a collective desire to articulate new ways of thinking about and inhabiting urban space: Elvira Navarro’s 2014 _La trabajadora_, a novel that directly confronts the human cost of austerity measures in Spain by addressing the indignation experienced by those whose life plans have been altered by economic i…[Read more]

This essay focuses on one example of a collective desire to articulate new ways of thinking about and inhabiting urban space: Elvira Navarro’s 2014 _La trabajadora_, a novel that directly confronts the human cost of austerity measures in Spain by addressing the indignation experienced by those whose life plans have been altered by economic i…[Read more]

Syllabus, course schedule, and major assignments for “Data and the Human” (HON 202-006), an interdisciplinary honors seminar offered in Fall 2020 at NC State University.