Beginning with the renowned “Words to Intellectuals” (1961) delivered by Fidel Castro in the José Martí National Library and the creation of a state network of libraries, the library in Cuba was transformed into a cultural sphere saturated with ideological ambiguity. On the one hand, the library embodied the symbolic axis of the literacy campa…[Read more]

Beginning with the renowned “Words to Intellectuals” (1961) delivered by Fidel Castro in the José Martí National Library and the creation of a state network of libraries, the library in Cuba was transformed into a cultural sphere saturated with ideological ambiguity. On the one hand, the library embodied the symbolic axis of the literacy campa…[Read more]

Beginning with the renowned “Words to Intellectuals” (1961) delivered by Fidel Castro in the José Martí National Library and the creation of a state network of libraries, the library in Cuba was transformed into a cultural sphere saturated with ideological ambiguity. On the one hand, the library embodied the symbolic axis of the literacy campa…[Read more]

This is a short introductory essay for _The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies_, published in 2015. The areas covered by _The Handbook_ include cognitive historicism, cognitive narratology, cognitive queer theory, neuroaesthetics, cognitive postcolonial studies, studies in emotions and empathy, decision theory, cognitive disability…[Read more]

This essay compares two mid-twentieth century poets of the Americas, Allen Ginsberg and Haroldo de Campos, in view of how their work circa 1960 intersects despite the differences in their poetics. It introduces the notion of the obversal, or the identity among poems through a common history.

This article considers the performances of “animal drag” that appear across the affiliated US media projects of Jackass (the television program and film franchise) and Wildboyz (the television program). Drawing on transgender studies scholarship, as well as recent work in affect theory, animal studies, and environmental studies, Nicole Seymour arg…[Read more]

This article considers the performances of “animal drag” that appear across the affiliated US media projects of Jackass (the television program and film franchise) and Wildboyz (the television program). Drawing on transgender studies scholarship, as well as recent work in affect theory, animal studies, and environmental studies, Nicole Seymour arg…[Read more]

Johannesburg, Chicago of South Africa
Chicago, Johannesburg by the Lake

A light-skinned mulata passes for white and begins a romantic relationship that ends tragically, revealing the intransigence of racial barriers; a mother raises her biological daughter as her step-daughter, so that she might adopt a white identity; a multiethnic society is shaken by dreams and anxieties of social mobility: These are some of the…[Read more]

Through an analysis of two post-crisis films (Estrellas, Federico León
and Marcos Martínez, 2007; El nexo, Sebastián Antico, 2005) shot in
the largest slum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this essay sketches the
terms for conceptualizing a cultural dimension of the Global South
marked by the aesthetic reappropriation of poverty. Working ag…[Read more]

Although the question of the role of empathy in our experience of fiction is currently an active one in psychology, most of the relevant research has been conducted on popular literature and film. This dissertation seeks to change that by using cognitive approaches to literature to examine how and why postmodern texts disrupt the reader or…[Read more]