This course is a study of Latinx literatures and cultures produced in the last two decades. We will concentrate our attention on how contemporary art works represent and participate in the upheavals of the twenty-first century—9/11, global economic and ecological crisis, mass migration and mass deportation, political and social mobilization, s…[Read more]

In an early version of his article “Harlem Literati in the Twenties,” first published in the Saturday Evening Review in 1940, Langston Hughes offers the curious suggestion that Wallace Thurman was the ghostwriter of Men, Marriage and Me (erroneously written as Men, Women and Checks in Hughes’ article), the tell-all memoir ostensibly by the origi…[Read more]

This essay draws on formalist cultural studies and material feminism to argue for a new approach in modernist studies, which I call formalist materialism, an approach that reads ecological forms alongside aesthetic forms. Such an approach may have distinct advantages. Formalist materialism illuminates a new direction for formalists by connecting…[Read more]

This autoethnographic exploration, describes and reflects upon my attempt to crowdsource a modern myth on the origins of racism in America. It draws on my work in narrative studies with a special focus on stories and their role in human development. Part one is analysis of the ‘functions’ of story as both plot variables and sociological act…[Read more]

This is the published introduction to the born-digital, open-access, peer-reviewed *Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities*. More a rationale and scholarly study of both Digital Pedagogy and DPiH in general, this introduces articulates the uses, theory, rationale about digital pedagogy as it has been shaped in U.S. institutions since the explosion of…[Read more]

ABSTRACT

In his introduction to Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh remarks that in spite of the great number of travelers to Palestine, travel literature, for the most part, willfully ignored the living experience and existence of the land’s inhabitants. Often, Palestine was the imaginary place that was continuously invented to confirm r…[Read more]

ABSTRACT

In his introduction to Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh remarks that in spite of the great number of travelers to Palestine, travel literature, for the most part, willfully ignored the living experience and existence of the land’s inhabitants. Often, Palestine was the imaginary place that was continuously invented to confirm r…[Read more]

Often described as an open-air prison, the citizens of the Gaza Strip have long resisted a subaltern existence. Conditions in Gaza, and specifically since the Second Intifada of 2000, have increasingly worsened. With the advent of Hamas in 2006-2007, a complete blockade was imposed on the Strip. A deafening silence by the world has resulted in…[Read more]

In the opening of Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen (1904), the protagonist, Elizabeth, comes across Marianne North’s autobiography, Recollections of a Happy Life (1894) and her description of the bathing near Putbus, “a sandy cove where the water was always calm, and of how you floated about on its crystal surface, and be…[Read more]

The influential Tamil writer Pudumaippittan turned to the short story to theorize the relationship between literature and society in the late-colonial era. He used the genre’s brevity to compress his portrayals of well-known female types—such as widows, prostitutes, and goodwives—into singular emotional events. This enabled Pudumaippittan to evoke…[Read more]

Article My reply to Jacob Sanders’ (Communication Associate of WalletHub 818 18th Street NW Suite 1020 Washington ,DC 20005) “Media Inquiry on “Most & Least Diverse States in America”

Shakespeare scholarship has long been interested in the temporal dynamics of The Winter’s Tale, and has often turned to melancholic or traumatic time frames to explain the thematic persistence of lost time in Shakespeare’s romance. In this chapter, I argue that dance provides a key interpretive framework for understanding the play’s interest in bo…[Read more]

In his essay “The Poet,” Emerson called for the poet who would sing the burgeoning nation of the United States of America. The answer to his request far exceeded all his expectations in the form of a ground-breaking volume of poems where Walt Whitman sang not only a nation, but the people who inhabited it as the people incarnated the values, str…[Read more]

Previous studies suggest that narrative fiction promotes social justice by increasing empathy, but critics have argued that the partiality of empathy severely limits its effectiveness as an engine of social justice, and that what needs to be developed is universal compassion rather than empathy. We created Compassion-Cultivating Pedagogy (CCP) to…[Read more]

Previous studies suggest that narrative fiction promotes social justice by increasing empathy, but critics have argued that the partiality of empathy severely limits its effectiveness as an engine of social justice, and that what needs to be developed is universal compassion rather than empathy. We created Compassion-Cultivating Pedagogy (CCP) to…[Read more]

The theme of waiting permeates two poems by the late Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī. The verse in both poems ‘Waiting for Godot’, and ‘A television interview with an Arab Godot’, describes an arduous wait, at once distressing and unpredictable. In the first poem, the poet urges Godot to arrive, as the savior who will appear in the form of the Messia…[Read more]