This essay explores the challenge to the chivalric myth of the aviator in Willa Cather’s One of Ours and William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay. Revived during the First World War, this romantic myth cloaked the aviator in idealism and hid the actual body of the flyer in rhetoric. In this war of increasing mechanization, the air war was the last basti…[Read more]

Walt Whitman, a world poet and the father of American free verse, has been received by diverse audiences from around the world. Literary and cultural scholars have studied Whitman’s interaction with social, political and literary movements of different countries. Despite his continuing presence in Iran, Whitman’s reception in this country has rem…[Read more]

This essay recovers, describes, and analyzes the theatrical tradition emerging from New Orleans’s free people of color during the antebellum period. I will start out by tracing the presence of free people of color in the francophone theatres of New Orleans, teasing out their impact on the early formations of a francophone theatrical culture in the…[Read more]

On January 1, 1824, the English-speaking population of New Orleans celebrated the grand opening of the American Theatre, lauding
the advent of “Bards our own” and the rise of “our Drama” in the Crescent City (qtd. in Smither 41). For the city’s francophone residents, this event marked a new stage in the ongoing battle for cultural survival.…[Read more]

Moving from France to the Caribbean to the American continent, Creole Drama follows the people that created, shaped, and sustained French theatre culture in New Orleans from its inception in 1792 until the beginning of the Civil War. In doing so, it draws upon the neglected archive of francophone drama native to Louisiana, as well as a range of…[Read more]

This essay brings together two texts, a letter to the editor written in experimental prose by the Black avant-garde Beat poet, Bob Kaufman, and “The Unlocking,” a spoken-word poem written and performed by Ursula Rucker that appears at the end of The Roots’ critically acclaimed rap album, Do You Want More??!?. By using the aural to disrupt expec…[Read more]

From the mid-1960s onward, compilations of the speeches and trial addresses of South African opponents of apartheid focused attention on the apartheid regime despite intensified repression in the wake of the Rivonia Trial. Mary Benson’s novel, At the Still Point, transposes the political trial into fiction. Its “stenographic” codes of repre…[Read more]

Cyberpoésies d’engagement est une collection de deux poèmes numériques: Ifrikiya lève-toi! et Lettre aux Nations Unies. Bien que le dernier poème ait été publié sur Core, celui-ci reste la version définitive.

Lettre à Union Africaine est un poème numérique qui exprime la philosophie de la supranégritude. Il dénonce le joue de blâmer les Colons au lieu de diriger bien les citoyens.

Letter to the African Union is a digital poem which expresses supranegritude philosophy that denounces the game of pushing blame on colonial masters instead of working for the compatriots.

Cyberpoetry for activism is a collection of two digital poems: Arise Africa! and Letter to the United Nations. The later was published in this Core repository before the official publication date . The poems communicate justice and encouragement.

Homosalus is a digital poem that suscitate the culture of saving humanity. It is written in French and English to foster a philosophy of people first before me.

Homosalus est un poème numérique qui suscite la culture de sauver notre humanité. Il est écrit en anglais et français afin de projecter une philosophie de considérer d’autrui d’abord.

Momenta is a digital poem for Africans. It is written in two languages-French and English. The poem aims at bringing hope in the continent.

Momenta est un poème numérique pour les Africains. Il est rédigé en deux langues-anglais et français. Le poème excite l’esproir.

Creative non-fiction/semi-academic reflective piece on seeing Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night for the first time in person at the Museum of Modern Arts.

This essay takes a long view of Wright’s work, arguing that his racial consciousness always extended beyond national boundaries and was forged from a globalist perspective. This outlook is not, as some critics have maintained, a late-stage development in Wright’s career, but rather the predominant theme that unites his oeuvre with a single con…[Read more]

This essay takes a long view of Wright’s work, arguing that his racial consciousness always extended beyond national boundaries and was forged from a globalist perspective. This outlook is not, as some critics have maintained, a late-stage development in Wright’s career, but rather the predominant theme that unites his oeuvre with a single con…[Read more]

Jorgenrique Adoum (translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez), ʿĀ’ishah al-Bāʿūnīyah (translated by Th. Emil Homerin), Rachel Tzvia Back, Dan Bellm, Luis Enrique Belmonte (translated by Guillermo Parra), Daniel Borzutzky, George Economou, Sa rah Tuss Efrik (translated by Johannes Göransson), Paul Éluard (translated by Carlos L…[Read more]

This essay examines the relationship between modernist formal experimentation and rehabilitative futurism, the modern cultural fantasy of a hygienic future in which all illness and disability have been eradicated. Through a reading of Kenneth Burke’s early essay collection Counter-Statement (1931) and his first and only novel, Towards a Better…[Read more]

This panel examines the paradoxical centrality of marginal elements in nineteenth-century aesthetics, to trace how they revitalize the conceptual and cultural impact of form. Abstracts forthcoming shortly.