This is an analysis of Terayama Shūji’s 1981 film “Shanhai ijin shōkan,” a French co-production which was marketed in the Anglosphere as “China Doll” and in France as “Les Fruits de la passion,” invoking both Ōshima Nagisa’s 1978 “L’Empire de la passion” (the sequel to his notorious “Empire of the Senses” / “L’Empire des sens,” 1976) as well as Ro…[Read more]

English Alliterative Verse tells the story of the medieval poetic tradition that includes Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stretching from the eighth century, when English poetry first appeared in manuscripts, to the sixteenth century, when alliterative poetry ceased to be composed. Eric Weiskott draws on the study of…[Read more]

Analisi dell’unica opera teatrale di P. V. Tondelli come punto d’inflessione nel suo percorso ideologico e narrativo.

Abstract: This paper investigates the shifting definitions of the term gāthā (Ch. ji) over an 800-year period, from the earliest sūtratranslations into Chinese until the mid-tenth century. Although the term originally referred to the verse sections of scriptures, gāthās soon began to circulate separately, used in ritual, contemplative, and peda…[Read more]

In a book review of Story of O, part of which appeared on the cover of early paperback editions, Eliot Fremont-Smith wrote that its publication in 1965 marked “the end of any coherent restrictive application of the concept of pornography to books.” This essay explores the implications of that significant shift in censorship policy for lib…[Read more]

This chapter argues that the sexy librarian stereotype emerged at the end of the twentieth century from the confluence between sexual liberation, free speech movements and print pornography. It focuses on a series of librarian themed pornographic paperbacks published in the 1970s and 1980s by Greenleaf Classics. These stories, although flimsy…[Read more]

Syllabus for ENGL 758D, The Speculative Situation, graduate seminar in the University of Maryland English department, Fall 2017.

After presenting an overview of scholarship on post-9/11 American poetry, my article focuses on a group of largely neglected post-9/11 poems, which deal with spectral consciousness and hallucinatory experiences. In exploring this issue, I have tried to establish a relationship between trauma-related intrusive memories and hallucination on the…[Read more]