This article covers an entire generation of American popular novels published between the Civil War and World War I: campus fictions, focusing all but exclusively on homosocial scenes of undergraduate merriment. Centering on the camaraderie of fraternal sociality, campus novels model friendship as a democratic ideal for dispensing with conflict,…[Read more]

In this article I ask what happens if we consider Jewett, who spent most of her adult life at the epicenter of New England intellectual culture, as a pivotal figure in the Western history of theorizing sexuality, and her 1884 novel, A Country Doctor, as a significant document in the history of theorizing sexual and gender deviation, perfectly…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

This class asks what sex looked and felt like before the instantiation of modern identity categories such as homosexuality or heterosexuality—before, that is, our desires became an index to our souls. To this end, we’ll examine texts by nineteenth-century American writers that represent the experiences and expressions of what we now call sex…[Read more]

The plural, wars, of this course’s title signals two competing traditions in Civil War memory and periodization:

* the Civil War as a distinct and defining event, from 1861 to 1865, that splits American history (and most English departments’ surveys of American literature) into two distinct halves; and

* the Civil War as an ongoing fea…[Read more]

This essay begins with my attempt to close-read a text by a recently departed colleague, Jeffrey B. Ferguson, but turns into an exploration of writing across registers, in this case the delivery of a very different version of the same paper by Ferguson, one that is far more intimate, insightful, and moving.

Two-thirds of the way through Faulkner, Mississippi, his extended meditation on the prose oeuvre of the American writer William Faulkner, Édouard Glissant remarks on Faulkner’s famous ‘amused refusal to “correct the contradictions”’ introduced into his texts through his constant revisiting of characters across novels not necessarily set in proper…[Read more]

Two-thirds of the way through Faulkner, Mississippi, his extended meditation on the prose oeuvre of the American writer William Faulkner, Édouard Glissant remarks on Faulkner’s famous ‘amused refusal to “correct the contradictions”’ introduced into his texts through his constant revisiting of characters across novels not necessarily set in proper…[Read more]

When we think of the literature produced before, during, and after the two World Wars we rarely think of the Caribbean as a site of significant literary output. Typically, we privilege a white, male, European literary voice. If we do consider literature from elsewhere, it usually follows a pattern of normative privilege. Therefore, it is useful to…[Read more]

When we think of the literature produced before, during, and after the two World Wars we rarely think of the Caribbean as a site of significant literary output. Typically, we privilege a white, male, European literary voice. If we do consider literature from elsewhere, it usually follows a pattern of normative privilege. Therefore, it is useful to…[Read more]

This essay explore​s​ the use of *A Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Crisis of 1789* in the French literature classroom and how it helps address gaps in digital humanities and French language pedagogy while interrogating the colonial positionality of the French Revolution’s digital archive. In 2015, the Newberry Library received a Digit…[Read more]

This essay explore​s​ the use of *A Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Crisis of 1789* in the French literature classroom and how it helps address gaps in digital humanities and French language pedagogy while interrogating the colonial positionality of the French Revolution’s digital archive. In 2015, the Newberry Library received a Digit…[Read more]

L’étoile absinthe (The Absinthe Star) begins with an image of the Caribbean sun––this infra-rouge mass floats in the sky like a large bird, circling the potomitan. Readers of the novel will immediately notice a patch of text on the very first page is missing, as though time were slowly eating away at the final distinguishable traces of Alexis…[Read more]

L’étoile absinthe (The Absinthe Star) begins with an image of the Caribbean sun––this infra-rouge mass floats in the sky like a large bird, circling the potomitan. Readers of the novel will immediately notice a patch of text on the very first page is missing, as though time were slowly eating away at the final distinguishable traces of Alexis…[Read more]

This interview with Susan Pickford considers her translation of Jean Métellus’s 1986 play Anacaona. Susan contacted me via the University of Liverpool’s Francofil Listserv, where she first heard of the blog series. She informed me of her translation of Anacaona, and I leaped at the opportunity to interview her via e-mail about a Haitian auth…[Read more]

This interview with Susan Pickford considers her translation of Jean Métellus’s 1986 play Anacaona. Susan contacted me via the University of Liverpool’s Francofil Listserv, where she first heard of the blog series. She informed me of her translation of Anacaona, and I leaped at the opportunity to interview her via e-mail about a Haitian auth…[Read more]

This is a bilingual edition of Charles Moravia’s poem “La Vision de Président Wilson,” or “President Wilson’s Vision” first published in the Haitian daily, Le Matin on November 4, 1918 in response to Woodrow Wilson’s (in)action regarding post-war peace and reconciliation in Europe.

This is a bilingual edition of Charles Moravia’s poem “La Vision de Président Wilson,” or “President Wilson’s Vision” first published in the Haitian daily, Le Matin on November 4, 1918 in response to Woodrow Wilson’s (in)action regarding post-war peace and reconciliation in Europe.