Copyright (c) 2010 Purdue University All rights reserved. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Recent documents in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture en-us Thu, 20 May 2010 01:30:27 PDT 3600 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/taiwanculturebibliography http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/taiwanculturebibliography Tue, 18 May 2010 15:00:56 PDT Yu-Chun Chang http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/migrationbibliography http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/migrationbibliography Tue, 18 May 2010 13:29:01 PDT Li-wei Cheng http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativemediastudiesbibliography http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativemediastudiesbibliography Fri, 07 May 2010 12:54:56 PDT Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/9 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/9 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:37 PDT Agata Anna Lisiak comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/7 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/7 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:36 PDT In her article "The Motif of the Patient Wife in Muslim and Western Literature and Folklore" Munira Hejaiej examines the tale of modern Tunisian tale of "Sabra" told by women to an all female audience. Hejaiej's analysis includes some of the tale's analogues from various linguistic and cultural contexts, including readings of the medieval variant written in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She argues that the comparative analysis provides us with a broader scope of interpretive paths in order to deconstruct essentialized readings of the tale, on the one hand, and to challenge previously accepted conventional boundaries between cultures on the other. Hejaiej offers a criticism of literary scholarship that has ignored the relevance of folk variants of similar themes in various languages and cultures and of feminist scholars who have read reductively the motif of the patient wife as misogynistic. Mounira Monia Hejaiej comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/8 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/8 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:36 PDT Gregory Byala comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/6 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/6 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:35 PDT In his article "Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of 'Poor Theater'" Yao-kun Liu presents a comparative study of Peking opera and Western theater with special attention to Grotowski's concept. Explaining Peking opera's dramatic elements (such as gesture and body-movement) and theatrical devices (such as stage-setting, costume, and conventions) Liu elaborates on the universality and distinctions between Eastern and Western aesthetics of drama. As an attempt to reveal the speciality and uniqueness of Peking opera, Liu employs Jerzy Grotowski's notion of "poor theatre" in a context of Constantin Stanislavski's concept of empathy, Antonin Artaud's dramatic prophecy, and Peter Brook's notion of "deadly theatre." Liu comes to the conclusion that opposite to the spiritual and individual approaches of poor theatre, Peking opera in its long history and contemporary practice satisfies a social need for contact with culture and thus Peking opera is both educational and functional. Besides the purpose of entertainment, it is an instrument to transmit the attitudes, concepts, and knowledge of Chinese society and to instruct the audience about values and morals derived from Chinese ethics and philosophy. Yao-Kun Liu comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/5 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/5 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:34 PDT In her article "Anti-Nationalism in Scott's Old Mortality," Montserrat Martínez García examines national identity through war in Walter Scott's Old Mortality in order to illustrate that war was one of the main catalysts of nationhood and show, simultaneously, the disparity between the institutional and the popular attitude toward war. Martínez García pays attention to the way Scott portrayed war and identity and to what extent this literary representation coincided with or faced the uniform ideology of nationalism. Based on the historical background of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Martínez García analyses Scott's novel to uncover focus his narrative of cracks and fissures to throw light on the parameters of war and identity construction and on the demystification of Scott as a blinkered nationalist. The results of her analysis suggest that Scott's narrative of war and its accompanying ideologies reveal that in the novel historical, political, and religious identities do not constitute the text as a description of a homogeneous nation and that Scott's text can stand as a narrative against nineteenth-century nationalism in England. Montserrat Martínez García comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/4 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/4 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:33 PDT In his article "Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Italian 'Queers'" John Champagne argues for a reading of the novel as not gay, but queer. Champagne argues that such a reading strategy emphasizes the ways in which the novel deconstructs normative gender, sexual, and even religious identities in an attempt both to resist the tyranny of the normal and to cope with the trauma of the Italian Shoah. A psycho-analytically inflected queer theory in this instance gives us access to the complexity of the novel's portrayal of Italian Jewish identity in fascist Italy and opens up onto a reflection upon Jewish history and memory. In Bassani's novel, Jewish and "queer" identities are linked in an effort to deconstruct (in the rigorous sense of the word) a version of the Italian Shoah that would hold Jews like the Finzi-Continis responsible for their own fate. It is thus misleading to suggest, as some other scholars have, that the novel is simply critical of the family. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is read appropriately as Jewish not only in its content but in its form and queer in its invitation to understand an abnormal, anti-social world where "useless" pursuits like love (and art) justify and sanctify everything. John Champagne gender studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/3 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/3 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:32 PDT In her article "The Making of (Post)colonial Cities in Central Europe" Agata Anna Lisiak discusses some of the transformations taking place in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw after 1989. Lisiak proposes that Central European capitals are (post)colonial cities because their politics, cultures, societies, and economies have been shaped by two centers of power: the Soviet Union as the former colonizer, whose influence remains visible predominantly in architecture, infrastructure, social relations, and mentalities and Western culture and Western and/or global capital as the current colonizer, whose impact extends over virtually all spheres of urban life. Furthermore, the cities under scrutiny are "in-between" not only because they exist between the West and the East, but also because they are torn between the Soviet colonial past and the Western/global colonial present. The (post)colonial and "in-between peripheral" identities and locations of the Central European capitals complement each other and their analysis provides a relevant perspective on the transformation processes that have shaped and continue to shape the region after 1989. Agata Anna Lisiak http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/2 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/2 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:31 PDT In his article "Sartre, Marcuse, and the Utopian Project Today," Robert T. Tally Jr. discusses the philosophical legacy of the May 1968 revolution in Paris with respect to the power of the imagination and the possibilities for utopian thought in our own time. Although the rhetoric of the 1968 militants may seem dated, the underlying theoretical and political concepts are surprisingly timely in the twenty-first century. Among these, existential angst or anxiety has perhaps a heightened salience in the era of globalization and of global economic crisis, and the utopian desire for a life without anxiety has become more pressing. Tally revisits the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Herbert Marcuse, philosophers who inspired a generation of militants in the 1960s, and examines their critical theory in the context of today's concerns. These thinkers asserted the power of the imagination to create alternatives to the seemingly immutable realities of life under advanced industrial capitalism, a life characterized by anxiety. Drawing on Fredric Jameson's notion of cognitive mapping, Tally argues that the utopian impulse behind Sartre's existentialism and Marcuse's critique of one-dimensional society is still a powerful force for exploring our own postmodern condition. Robert T. Tally Jr. comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/1 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss1/1 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:11:30 PDT In his article "Literary Studies from Hermeneutics to Media Culture Studies" Siegfried J. Schmidt discusses aspects of hermeneutics, the systemic and empirical (contextual) approach to literature and culture, radical constructivism, and his postulates for the field of media culture studies. Schmidt describes his understanding of the transformation of literary studies towards media culture studies in the context of overall developments of society. His argumentation with regard to move from hermeneutics to media culture studies offers the postulate that research ought to be empirical and contextual in order to foster intuition, invention, innovation, and socially relevant scholarship. He concludes that the study of culture, literature, and media would further scholarship open to intuition, invention, innovation as input of and inspiration for creativity. Siegfried J. Schmidt comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/travelstudiesbibliography http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/travelstudiesbibliography Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:39:05 PDT Carlo Salzani http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/14 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/14 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:59 PDT Gerald Gillespie http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/13 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/13 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:58 PDT Xiana Sotelo comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/12 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/12 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:57 PDT Maya Zalbidea Paniagua comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/11 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/11 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:56 PDT In their article "Speech Act Disagreement among Young Women in Iran" Vahid Parvaresh and Abbas Eslami Rasekh investigate the effects of solidarity and deference proposed by Ronald Scollon and Suzanne Scollon on the ways in which young women in Iran perform the speech act of disagreement in their own language and culture. Their data has been analyzed using Geoffrey Leech's classification of illocutionary functions which is based on the social goal of establishing and maintaining comity. Special care has also been exercised to take the respondents' points of view into consideration. Parvaresh and Rasekh suggest that in a non-Western Islamic culture such as Iran, the considerations of deference might override those of solidarity when young women want to disagree with their close male friends. In this way, they argue that young women in Iran employ conflictives, which have the most impolite intention, mostly when and where their addressee is of the same sex. Vahid Parvaresh communication studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/10 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/10 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:55 PDT In his article "Indirect Discourse in German, Russian, and English" Henry Whittlesey Schroeder analyzes the different tenses of indirect discourse in these three languages. Indirect discourse in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century adopts a different time in English, German and Russian. English indirect discourse reports in the preterit; German indirect discourse hovers in the subjunctive; Russian indirect discourse speaks in the present. The transposition of English indirect discourse allows the character's discourse to surface in a tense identical to the narration. Consequently, the character can corrupt the narration, undermining the narrator's narration and commentary on that narration. German indirect discourse in the subjunctive and the absence of transposition in Russian mean that charactorial consciousness is kept separate from narration because of the difference in tense. Not only does the separation result in narration that originates solely with the narrator, but the time of the narrator's commentary coincides with the character's discourse. Whittlesey Schroeder illustrates selected texts with authorial narrators as to the idiosyncrasies and consequences of indirect discourse adopting divergent tenses in English, German, and Russian. Henry Whittlesey Schroeder comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/9 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/9 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:53 PDT In his article "A Talk Show in Hungary and the Question of 'proper distance'" Lajos Császi discusses the phenomenon of the talk show in its specific post-communist Hungarian context. During the past few years, Hungarian commercial television programs have been the target of frequent ideological attacks. At the same time, they have become increasingly popular among audiences. In my study I focus on the "Mónika" talk show, one of the most popular programs. Analyzing this new media phenomenon, I attempt to combine the political-economic and the socio-cultural perspectives of tabloid media, which are often opposed to each other. I ask how viewers in a post-communist society acquire new skills to manage the multiple challenges of commercial media and to learn to create what Silverstone calls "the proper distance." Lajos Császi media studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/8 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss4/8 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:35:52 PDT In his article "Necropolitics and Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema" Ryan Michael discusses aspects of the concept of necropower (Mbembe) applied to contemporary Hungarian literature and cinema. Kehoe argues that his analysis provides models of postcolonial "aesthetic acts" that disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately subvert the global regimes to which Achille Mbembe refers. Accordingly, Hungary's status as a postcolony is discussed within the context of Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek's and David Chioni Moore's contention that the parameters of postcolonial cultural analysis need to be expanded to account for Central and East Europe's transition out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Further, Kehoe incorporates models of "transitology" from the discipline of comparative politics to the study of culture and literature of the region. Through an analysis of two contemporary Hungarian texts -- László Krasznahorkai's novel War and War and Nimród Antal's film Kontroll -- Kehoe analyses narrative strategies at work in not only the interrogation of necropower but also the construction of a politics of resistance. Ryan Michael Kehoe film and literature studies