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]

This article argues that King Learn can help re-shape ecocriticism. The play’s focus on human dis-harmony with the nonhuman environment resonates with the “post-equilibrium shift” in ecological thinking. The play’s emphasis on the way natural systems such as the weather disrupt human meaning-making generates an alternative to dualistic notions of…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

The first international journal of comparative literary studies, entitled Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877-1888), was published in Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg (in former Hungary, today in Romania). The research on the pioneering multilingual journal usually foregrounds only one of the editors, Hugo von Meltzl, the young university…[Read more]

This Theory Palette revision layers in 12 theoretical approaches; it also problematizes the perceiving-subject through a stylized human palette. The thought and speech bubbles gesture toward the problems of apperception and expression after René Magritte’s “Le fils de l’homme” (The Son of Man 1928-29) and “La Trahison des Images” (The Treachery…[Read more]

A clean copy of the Theory Palette http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6581T, this (almost) blank canvas is open to artistic and textual interventions, variations, and compositions with the intersecting concerns of author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception as blendable paint colors.

This Theory Palette revision layers in 12 theoretical approaches; it also problematizes the perceiving-subject through a stylized human palette. The thought and speech bubbles gesture toward the problems of apperception and expression after René Magritte’s “Le fils de l’homme” (The Son of Man 1928-29) and “La Trahison des Images” (The Treachery…[Read more]

Evoking the creative messiness of an artist’s palette, this Theory Palette depicts nine theoretical concerns as intersecting, blendable paint colors: author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception. Just as painters in the same school, theorists blend colors to create their own compositions, s…[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]

An essay on gender and music in the Star Wars films: http://www.theavidlistener.com/2015/01/hearing-gender-in-george-lucass-galaxy.html

Essay on music inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. http://www.theavidlistener.com/2015/10/heavy-metal-elves.html

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]

Very short essay on the way Deleuze uses images in his book on Bacon. In the original French edition, the images are in a separate volume; he does that in order to mime, or enact, the theory of sensation in his text. It seems to me this is an unusual and promising strategy for art history (disposing images so their sequence and arrangement…[Read more]

An examination of spatial themes in the emerging genre of environmental fiction. Originally presented as a talk at the Futures of American Literature event at Uppsala University (Sweden).

An introductory survey of climate fiction (a.k.a. “cli-fi”) in English. Written with an international readership in mind.