This essay explores how Pierre Nora’s sites of memory work a specific cultural function through what Melvin Dixon refers to as “a memory that ultimately rewrites history.” I look at two of the most well-known poems of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and Countee Cullen’s “Heritage,” one of which reveals a…[Read more]

Introduction to America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment

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

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]

The problem of the “yes,” of affirming an historical identity that is potentially harmful to oneself, troubles some of the imaginative leaps necessary to how readers desire to identify with texts. With that in mind, this article reads Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred as a story about memory, history, and embodiment as written both on and thr…[Read more]

From the mid-1960s onward, compilations of the speeches and trial addresses of South African opponents of apartheid focused attention on the apartheid regime despite intensified repression in the wake of the Rivonia Trial. Mary Benson’s novel, At the Still Point, transposes the political trial into fiction. Its “stenographic” codes of repre…[Read more]

From the mid-1960s onward, compilations of the speeches and trial addresses of South African opponents of apartheid focused attention on the apartheid regime despite intensified repression in the wake of the Rivonia Trial. Mary Benson’s novel, At the Still Point, transposes the political trial into fiction. Its “stenographic” codes of repre…[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]

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]

My essay interrogates the striking silences in Scott’s oeuvre in relation to Scotland’s involvement as a partner of the British Empire in the colonization of the Caribbean and in the exploitation of slavery in this region. By drawing from narratological theories (especially those articulated by Robyn R. Warhol and Ruth Rosaler), I treat Scott’s…[Read more]

Sepharadim participated in the Hispanic vernacular culture of the Iberian Peninsula. Even in the time of al-Andalus many spoke Hispano-Romance, and even their Hebrew literature belies a deep familiarity with and love of their native Hispano-Romance languages. However, since the early sixteenth century the vast majority of Sepharadim have never…[Read more]

We are inviting proposals for the forthcoming “Re-membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean” International Conference that will be held on March 26-27, 2020 in Toulouse, France (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès).
Abstracts (300 words) are due by September 15, 2019 to yasser elhariry (yasser.elhariry@dartmouth.edu), Isabelle Keller-Privat (isa.…[Read more]

We are inviting proposals for the forthcoming “Re-membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean” International Conference that will be held on March 26-27, 2020 in Toulouse, France (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès).
Abstracts (300 words) are due by September 15, 2019 to yasser elhariry (yasser.elhariry@dartmouth.edu), Isabelle Keller-Privat (isa.…[Read more]