This essay reexamines the figure of Franz Kafka (1883–1924) in light of his largely ignored, recursive links to circum-Caribbean and Black Atlantic processes of racialized exploitation and corporal punishment. When we centre Kafka’s extensive biographical and literary engagements with these processes, the persistent debate over Kafka’s statu…[Read more]

Cultural memory is actively constructed through embodied and political performances. Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, two “national poets” of unequal global stature, have recently become vehicles for British and Chinese cultural diplomacy and exchange during their quatercentenary in 2016. The culture of commemoration is a key factor in Tang’s…[Read more]

This special issue of the Journal of Creative Writing Studies centers on how creative writing changes when writers actively engage computers as nonhuman collaborators in “creative making.” Using examples from McGurl’s The Program Era, Emily Dickinson, and the crowdsourced “translation” of Melville’s classic into Emoji Dick, Berens suggests th…[Read more]

As a work that survives and appears in more than one form, King Lear has a vexing problem of interpretation and a rich opportunity for the study of textual and cultural variants. The play begins with an aging monarch staging a fantastical, paradoxical final act as a king. It lures us toward a final act of interpretation to nail down the nature of…[Read more]

This essay examines the Hindi Nayī Kahānī, or New Story, Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which was influential for the short stories, criticism, and literary history that its writers produced. Incorporating a view toward the larger “metaliterary” corpus in relation to which properly “literary” nayī kahānī texts were written, the essay shows h…[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]

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]

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 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 article analyzes Raoul Peck’s use of epistolary narration and montage in his 2012 documentary “Assistance mortelle” (Fatal Assistance), which delves into the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake and the geopolitics of the recovery process.

Après le passage des ouragans, des incendies et des séismes, les médias reviennent toujours à l’apocalyptique, un discours qui vise à répertorier les dommages d’un désastre jusqu’à perdre toute trace d’intimité humaine. Depuis le 12 janvier 2010, des auteurs, artistes, académiciens et acteurs sociaux – activistes et militants – haïtiens se batte…[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]

Asian directors leverage Shakespeare’s own propensity to undermine dominant ideologies of gender—notably through the Ophelia figure—in their effort to renew Asian performance traditions. How do Shakespeare and modern directors talk to each other across cultural and historical divides? How does Ophelia become “unbound” through supraling…[Read more]

Asian directors leverage Shakespeare’s own propensity to undermine dominant ideologies of gender—notably through the Ophelia figure—in their effort to renew Asian performance traditions. How do Shakespeare and modern directors talk to each other across cultural and historical divides? How does Ophelia become “unbound” through supraling…[Read more]

A syllabus for an undergraduate course, taught in English, on the visual culture (primarily film, photography, and aesthetic theory) of the Weimar Republic. The course is housed in German Studies and crosslisted with Art History, Cinema, and other departments.