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]

In this article, I examine how Sissieretta Jones (frequently described as America’s first Black superstar, among other superlatives) strategically leveraged her European performance reviews in order to increase her listenership and wages in the United States. Jones toured Europe for the first (and only) time from February until November in 1895. A…[Read more]

In this short essay I discuss two new translations of Helmuth Plessner’s work, “Political Anthropology,” translated by Nils F. Schott (Northwestern University Press, 2018), and “Levels of Organic Life and the Human: An Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology,” translated by Millay Hyatt (Fordham University Press, 2019).

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]

First presented as a paper at the 2018 SAMLA Convention in Atlanta, this article will become a chapter of my book in progress on the photobooks of the 1930s and 1940s illustrated with the photographs of the Farm Security Administration.

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]

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]

This course is a study of Latinx literatures and cultures produced in the last two decades. We will concentrate our attention on how contemporary art works represent and participate in the upheavals of the twenty-first century—9/11, global economic and ecological crisis, mass migration and mass deportation, political and social mobilization, s…[Read more]

The syllabus for science fiction course offered Spring 2021 in the English Department at Davidson College.

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]

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]

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 is the PowerPoint presentation to accompany my comments for the Theoretical Foundations of Victorian Studies roundtable on January 7, 2021.