This essay explores how the early American stage functioned as an incubator for ideas about national identity, artistic expression, and masculinity. Reading four plays from the early years of the Republic – Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, William Dunlap’s Andre´, John Augustus Stone’s Metamora, and Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator, I demonstrat…[Read more]

This article analyzes the connections between Lorde’s representations of blindness in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and its connection to lesbian sexuality.

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Feminist resistance has been crucial for Argentina’s recovery from the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Alicia Partnoy was “disappeared” into one of hundreds of torture centers sardonically called “Little Schools.” After her release and exile to the United States, she published her poetic testimony, The Little School, with Cleis Press in 1986.…[Read more]

Feminist resistance has been crucial for Argentina’s recovery from the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Alicia Partnoy was “disappeared” into one of hundreds of torture centers sardonically called “Little Schools.” After her release and exile to the United States, she published her poetic testimony, The Little School, with Cleis Press in 1986.…[Read more]

Nordic Noir has, since the early-2000s, evolved into a globally-popular genre that now easily transcends media-specific boundaries. Television has always been at the forefront of that development: Scandinavian TV productions either turned literary successes into distinct and easily-recognizable television scripts, or developed independent shows…[Read more]

Can we entertain the idea that The Taming of the Shrew can be performed and received as comedy in the post-Women’s March US? If so, would the laughter be empathetic and solidary rather than callous? The answer lies in physical theater which is uniquely poised to activate elements of farce in the play. Shrew is one of the Shakespearean comedies t…[Read more]

Burial rites are social affairs, and in Africa, political actors are cultural agents whose existence, decisions and rites have been inscribed into the social fabric, history and life of the society. Their life rites, death rites and burial rites are factors of social change and factors for the renewal of life’s affirmative essences, which if…[Read more]

Early works of dramatic criticism seeking to draw parallels between ritual and drama in Africa concentrated on examining the dramatic characteristics of ritual to see how drama evolved from ritual. However, a closer application of the theories of Girard, Schechner, Smith, Hubert Mauss and Turner reveal new perspectives on the interaction between…[Read more]

Desde el período del Dadá se han ido borrando los límites entre las formas artísticas y sus soportes, entre las estéticas de uso y las estéticas formales, entre los espacios altos y bajos de producción cultural, y también, entre la percepción de centros y periferias que parecen haberse astillado y reproducido a la interioridad de espacios hasta ha…[Read more]

This paper addresses the performance of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna undertaken by TNT-El Vacie (Territorio de Nuevos Tiempos), a theater company from Seville, Spain. I Consider how Antonio Álamo’s adaptation, Pepa Gamboa’s direction, and the staging of El Vacie, a company comprised exclusively of non-professional Roma women, constitutes a site o…[Read more]

This article explores how librarians have responded to publishers’ control
over book prices in two different, yet related, historical periods. It historicizes the net price
system, a book-price control system in the early twentieth century, within debates by librarians
about library book buying and price negotiation practices. Turning to s…[Read more]

Presents an analysis of the emergence of new genres of international–especially expatriate–fiction in 21st-century US letters.

The silhouetted cutouts in Kara Walker’s Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart are fine with being seen but care little for the actual presence of the viewer. They’re kissing and sucking, fucking and birthing, playing and pillorying all without shame or service to the…[Read more]

Gregory Crewdson’s cinematic, tableaux photographs often depict an anonymous, banal, and tension-filled life in suburban and rural communities. Working as a self-described American realist and strongly influenced by a tradition of American vernacular artists, including work by Arbus, Eggleson, Friedlander, and Hopper, Crewdson actively seeks to c…[Read more]

Shakespeare is a local force to be reckoned with in the global marketplace and in digital and analog archives of collective memory. With the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth in 2014 and quatercentenary in 2016, there are several high-profile instances of global Shakespeare being tapped for its market value. The exchange value of…[Read more]