This essay explores the radical subjectivism of Oscar Wilde’s novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889/1921), which celebrates the creative potential of nonessentialist forms of identity and yet cautions against jettisoning humanist notions of selfhood entirely. I contend that Wilde turned to G. W. F. Hegel’s performative theory of lyric…[Read more]

In this essay, I argue that Walter Pater’s description of “Euphuism” in Marius the Epicurean (1885) relies upon the insights of idealist philosophy in order to articulate a theory of what Rebecca Walkowitz calls “cosmopolitan style.” Specifically, Pater draws upon a disparate number of cultural discourses in his articulation of Euphuism while…[Read more]

The connection between philosophy and real or everyday language belongs to Wordsworth’s early poetic vision. My interest in Wordsworth’s dialogue with philosophical thinking leads me to turn neither to studies tracing the varied philosophic influences on his poetics nor to those examining the influence of his collaborator Coleridge on his ear…[Read more]

The connection between philosophy and real or everyday language belongs to Wordsworth’s early poetic vision. My interest in Wordsworth’s dialogue with philosophical thinking leads me to turn neither to studies tracing the varied philosophic influences on his poetics nor to those examining the influence of his collaborator Coleridge on his ear…[Read more]

The argument in this essay is that Dickinson’s poetics of inner life makes us see anew the long-standing philosophical problem of expression. Dickinson’s poetry invests itself in an understanding of subjectivity that rearranges the anchors we often turn to in thinking about how lives and identities take on shape in expressive forms. Poetry for…[Read more]

The argument in this essay is that Dickinson’s poetics of inner life makes us see anew the long-standing philosophical problem of expression. Dickinson’s poetry invests itself in an understanding of subjectivity that rearranges the anchors we often turn to in thinking about how lives and identities take on shape in expressive forms. Poetry for…[Read more]

Michael Fried has returned to the distinction between “absorption” and “theatricality” in all of his art-historical criticism since he first introduced the dyad in 1980. This essay argues that the term “absorption” is rich with a philosophical significance that echoes central concerns long at play in philosophy’s thinking about the status of art…[Read more]

This essay traces the development of the right-hand inscription (zuoyouming 座右銘) from its birth in the second century CE through its culmination as a complex literary subgenre in the tenth. Over the course of these eight centuries, right-hand inscriptions were used by some of the most prominent poets of their respective eras, including Cui Yuan…[Read more]

This essay suggests that with the increasing prominence of “historical poetics” as a set of social collectives, methodologies, and debates (especially about literary analysis), now seems to be an ideal time to assess its history and consider its future. The first part of the essay offers a genealogy of historical poetics, accounting for some of…[Read more]

Israeli officials have long denied that rape was used as an instrument of war against Palestinians. Most of the files relating to the expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 and its aftermath remain sealed in Israeli archives and have been reclassified as top secret. Palestinian oral narratives have long been considered a poor…[Read more]

Special issue of Humanities exploring expressions and registrations of environmental culture and the eco-critical imagination in 21st century Scottish literature and culture. Open access.

This article examines socio-historical dimensions and cultural and dramaturgic implications of the Greek playwright Euripides’ treatment of the myth of Medea. Euripides gives voice to victims of adventurism, aggression and betrayal in the name of ‘reason’ and the ‘state’ or ‘polity.’ Medea constitutes one of the most powerful mythic forces to…[Read more]

Comparative analyses of poetry by the German Sarah Kirsch, the Emirati Ahmed Rashid Thani, and the St Lucian Derek Walcott identify three distinct ecopoetic elements their work has in common. The three poets, born before the origin of ecocriticism, favour metaphors that represent natural landscapes. These metaphors express a certain…[Read more]

First presented as a paper at the 2018 SAMLA Convention in Atlanta, this article will become a chapter of my book in progress on the photobooks of the 1930s and 1940s illustrated with the photographs of the Farm Security Administration.

A brief talk for a roundtable on the centenary of Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”