The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

Much scholarship on The Picture of Dorian Gray has focused on its possible textual sources and its place in literary traditions. This article demonstrates that by contextualizing the novel in the history of art and the tradition of British portraiture, we are able to answer significant yet overlooked questions such as why Wilde chose “picture” rat…[Read more]

The recent surge of interest in Afrofuturism has resulted in some groundbreaking work looking at the ways technology and race intersect in film, fashion, music and literature, as is evidenced by the important collection of essays “Afrofuturism 2.0” (2016), edited by Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones. However there has not yet been an aca…[Read more]

A series of derivative verses from the late-third century has pride of place in one of the foundational collections of Chinese poetry. These verses, “Filling out the Missing Odes” by Shu Xi, can be found at the beginning of the lyric-poetry (shi 詩) section of the Wenxuan. This essay seeks to understand why such blatantly imitative pieces may have…[Read more]

This article examines the conversion to Christianity of the prince Tayco in the comedia de santos Los mártires del Japón by Lope de Vega and the creation of the Dominican missionary Alonso de Navarrete as a dramatic character. Lope portraits Tayco as a young prince who has to learn how to become a king, having Navarrete as a role model. Lope c…[Read more]

IMC paper for panel 374 Medieval Futura 1: Now, sponsored by the Medieval Studies Institute, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington and organised by Dr Andrea Whitacre.

India’s re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a victory speech that presented himself as a selfless and humble Hindu ascetic. This vision goes far to promote a Hindu nationalist ‘new India.’

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]

This essay uses the image-based work of Emirati cartoonist Khaled Al Jabri to address concerns of technological dependence to reconsider our use of screens. The production of electronic literature requires technologies responsible for undeniable hazards unique to today’s information and gadget age. As represented in Al Jabri’s graphic art, these…[Read more]

For at least the last twenty years, scholarly attention has been drawn to the numerous depictions of cancer in comic books as well as oncology’s use of the comics medium (Rhode and Connor, 2012). However, little in the way of comprehensive analysis has been attempted, especially in terms of the various genres addressed. In this presentation, a ca…[Read more]

A brief piece on what I call “diagnosis deafness.” In short, to depict the sudden disorientation and shock of being diagnosed with cancer, comics artists frequently employ a visual rhetoric usually reserved for instances of deafness. At least momentarily – during an immensely significant moment in the life of the character – words fail, dev…[Read more]

This is a syllabus for Renata Kobetts Miller’s capstone research course on Melodrama at the City College of New York in Spring 2019. It is built on the Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama, edited by Carolyn Williams (2018). The syllabus includes the final assignment sequence for scaffolded research.

What T. S. Eliot called the “mythic method,” even in its modern form, was not an invention of Modernism. A significant precursor is Thomas Hardy, whose Mayor of Casterbridge has long been appreciated for its mythological structure and wealth of allusion. Here I suggest a new addition to mythological interpretation of the novel: the Greco-Roman dei…[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.

The journal ‘English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts’, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send article proposals on the topic of
‘Fictions, Facts and “Effects of Reality”: Questioning the Mimetic in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’.
We shall be happy to consider essays that address and probl…[Read more]

This is the Introduction to my new book, _Victorian Skin: Surface, Self, History_.

Explores select works of Matthew Arnold, as well as Robert Browning’s “Caliban Upon Setebos” and Edward Fitzgerald’s “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,” for evidence that societal growth during the late 19th-century was done not entirely in hopes of leaving previous authorities behind, of accepting and dealing with felt feelings of being abandoned for…[Read more]