Even though postcolonial theory has helped in the critique of non-western texts, it has for the most part failed to engage with the Arab region and its literatures in spite of Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism. Robert Young argues that postcolonial theory since its inception has been concerned with the politics of invisibility, striving to m…[Read more]

This presentation explores ethical dilemmas for graduate school educators in programs that prepare M.A. students to teach English in community colleges. Such graduate programs attract students and produce strong, enthusiastic teachers, and university administrators value the programs because they draw tuition; however, the job prospects for…[Read more]

This essay intervenes in current ecocritical debates about the relationship between fiction and environmental risk by analyzing the limits of risk theory in the deep time of the Anthropocene. Although contemporary ecocriticism argues that we must move from apocalyptic depictions of risk to realistic ones, this essay examines fictions of nuclear…[Read more]

This article analyzes the connections between Lorde’s representations of blindness in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and its connection to lesbian sexuality.

Feminist resistance has been crucial for Argentina’s recovery from the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Alicia Partnoy was “disappeared” into one of hundreds of torture centers sardonically called “Little Schools.” After her release and exile to the United States, she published her poetic testimony, The Little School, with Cleis Press in 1986.…[Read more]

Giorgio Agamben defines the sacred man or Homo Sacer as one who is not worthy of sacrifice. Having lost all rights, the person is reduced to the non-human. In modern times, banishment or banning by the law occurs when a state of exception is sanctioned by a totalitarian supremacy that suspends judicial power. The state of exception does not lie…[Read more]

Presents an analysis of the emergence of new genres of international–especially expatriate–fiction in 21st-century US letters.

In the article, we trace some aspects of development of eventivity and narrativity in Medieval and early Modern Era travel literature. Dissecting episodes of Sir Thomas Smithes Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia (1605), A Travel of Anonimous Citizen of Suzdal to The Council of Florence (15th century), Russian Primary Chronicle (12th century), and…[Read more]

My paper argues for a shift in our theoretical focus on time in narrative dialectics and a post-Barthesian semiotic model for critical interpretations of Latino/a/x border narratives. Currently, we know that border narratives reveal the underlying patterns of literary communicative acts of difference (i.e., oral and literary ambiguity, high…[Read more]

As part of my research, I argue that one important way the definition of a feminist borderland develops in these narratives is from a female character’s knowledge of and interpretation of her physical presence within the borderlands. By applying Linda Martín Alcoff’s theories of gender “positionality” and “self-embodiment” from her text Visible…[Read more]

From the original paper presentation: In this paper I discuss the figurative language used in Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks with a particular focus on the figures and symbols associated with food and food practices. This paper performs a textual analysis of figurative language and symbols and the themes of food and food practices to reveal the…[Read more]

From the original abstract file: This paper presentation examines the hermeneutic and epistemological impacts of developing a feminist praxis for researching borderland narratives in the northern Americas. Borderlands in the northern Americas will be discussed as lands that border two countries (one of which is the U.S.), islands that border…[Read more]

This paper discusses the relationships made between ghost figures and their living relatives within Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In this paper I argue that a specific female identity and agency is represented in these texts through figurative language and symbolization of…[Read more]