Anthropomorphism, which combines two Greek words, anthropos and morphe, meaning “human” and “form’ respectively, is a term that reflects our attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals and objects, bestowing upon them agency (Taylor 2011: 266). In this respect, we elevate the status of the non-human animal, moving it from being a…[Read more]

Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, simulate human writing and complicate the inquiry-driven culture we live in. These tools use singular first-person pronouns in their textual outputs and are often associated with anthropomorphic qualities. Within the humanities, conversations tend to focus on detecting new forms of plagiarism. What is missing…[Read more]

Critique of orthodox American Studies in the last quarter of the twentieth=century.

Survey of the rise of sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology) in the context of decolonization and indigenization movements in the Philippines in the last decades of the 20th century.

Thomas à Kempis wrote that everyone desires peace but not the things that make for peace. Such a universal desire would be a hopeful sign, a foundation to build on as we contemplate (and, no doubt, debate) “the things that make for peace.” I offer as murder is to crow as a record of “perchings” in my contemplation of things that make for peace.…[Read more]

Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural is, as its title suggests, intensely interested in the socioeconomic valences of spatial relationships, literalized in Yokohama’s affluent hills and its low-lying slums. The central conflict between inhabitants of these two spaces articulates this local topography into a global framework, in which con…[Read more]

‘Modernism and Religion’ argues that modernism participated in broader processes of religious change in the twentieth century. The new prominence accorded to immanence and immediacy in religious discourse is carried over into the modernist epiphany. Modernism became mystical. The emergence of Catholic theological modernism, human rights, Christian…[Read more]

This is a revised 2023 version of a course was first taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in fall 2018. It addresses feminism, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, and critical race and ethnic studies in conjunction with translation studies.

This is a revised 2023 version of a course was first taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in fall 2018. It addresses feminism, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, and critical race and ethnic studies in conjunction with translation studies.

Cognitive science can help literary scholars formulate specific questions to be answered by archival research. This essay takes as its starting point embedded mental states (that is, mental states about mental states) and their role in generating literary subjectivity. It then follows the transformation of embedded mental states throughout several…[Read more]

This essay exemplifies a cognitive approach to literary and film studies, with particular emphasis on fictional reimagining of legal institutions. It draws on research of cognitive scientists who study metacognition—specifically, the difference between reflective and intuitive beliefs—to suggest that courtroom dramas, such as Billy Wilder’s Witne…[Read more]

Until now, critics have shown little interest in the bouquet of aromas and scents that permeate the linguistic fabric of À la recherche du temps perdu , to the point of forming an olfactory (and cognitive) underlay. The aesthetic impact of these odors warrants further investigation, starting with a reconstruction of the “problem of smell” in Prou…[Read more]

Makes use of the opportunity of the release of “Oppenheimer” to explore how Gene Wolfe uses his texts as factories into which guilt is inserted, but emerge ameliorated. Narrative serving the primary purpose of restructuring subconscious memory.

the epic opposite is the tenth of a series of ten collections that draw on material from notebooks I kept between 2004 and 2013. I returned to that material in 2021 with Basho and haibun in mind, as well as the prosimetrum tradition that flourished in medieval Europe. Both play off a tension between poetry and prose, and, looking back, that is…[Read more]

solitude is another matter is the ninth of a series of ten collections that draw on material from notebooks I kept between 2004 and 2013. I returned to that material in 2021 with Basho and haibun in mind, as well as the prosimetrum tradition that flourished in medieval Europe. Both play off a tension between poetry and prose, and, looking back,…[Read more]

a composition of fractions is the eighth of a series of ten collections that draw on material from notebooks I kept between 2004 and 2013. I returned to that material in 2021 with Basho and haibun in mind, as well as the prosimetrum tradition that flourished in medieval Europe. Both play off a tension between poetry and prose, and, looking back,…[Read more]