New Publications
Amelia Glaser has published
Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands: From the Shtetl Fair to the Petersburg Bookshop (Northwestern University Press, Studies in Russian Literature and Theory Series, 2012)
Marcel Hénaff has published
Marcel Hénaf, Le don des philosophes. Repenser la réciprocité, Paris, Le Seuil, 2012, 355 p. [Philosophers's Gift. Rethinking Reciprocity]
Marcel Hénaff has published
Ana Grinberg has published
Pasquale Verdicchio has published
"The Lady, the Giant, and the Land: The Monstrous in Fierabras", in eHumanista, 2011, vol. 18
Pasquale Verdicchio has published
"Documentary on the verge of progress" in Studies in Documentary Film, Intellect Ltd., UK, 2011.
Despite the alarm regarding the absence of an Italian ‘engaged’ cinema that might offer resistance to the manipulative conditioning of mass media, recent years have seen the production of an impressive array of documentaries that in their urgency remind us of the lesson of Neorealism. Utilizing Pier Paolo Pasolini’s critique of a capitalist society that masked the necessary distinctions between progress and development, and through the lens of Joris Ivens’ L’Italia non è un paese povero/Italy Is Not a Poor Country (1959), this article assesses the ways in which contemporary film-makers, Matteo Garrone, Vincenzo Marra, Stefano Missio and Daniele Vicari among others, enact a ‘creative treatment of actuality’ (Grierson) free of the rhetoric of ‘realism’.
"Baron von Gloeden's Sicilian Arcadia" in Descant 154: Sicily, Land of Forgotten Dreams (Toronto).
Pasquale Verdicchio has published
Looters, Photographers, and Thieves: Aspects of Italian Photographic Culture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Fairleigh Dickinson UP/Rowman Littlefield, 2011.
Working toward an analysis of the influence of photography on the construction of an Italian "type" to serve the mandates of the new nation in the 1860s, this book engages the work of writers and photographers who have addressed or participated in this venture. From Giovanni Verga and Italo Calvino writings to the conceptual visual philosophy of Tommaso Campanella and Luigi Ghirri's photography; from the Arcadic gaze of Baron von Gloeden to Tina Modotti's revolutionary vision, the works analyzed in this book have all contributed in shaping our contemporary visual vocabulary. And, while Italy is at the center of my considerations, the ideas that populate this work are in many ways globally applicable and relevant. Looters, Photographers, and Thieves seeks to contribute to the fascinating discourse on the photographic image and its specific uses in the representation of racial, ethnic and gender difference, and suggest how the isolation of images according to the dictates of power relations might influence and condition ways of seeing. Finally, this book is meant as a locus where the images produced in the shaping of notions of citizenship and cultural relevance in nineteenth and twentieth century Italy might reveal the processes of the imaginary. As such, the arguments and images in each chapter thread through each other to propose ways by which to approach disparate subjects and forms in order to envision photographers themselves as seers rather than gazers. About the Author(s) Pasquale Verdicchio teaches literature, film, and cultural studies in the Department of Literature, University of California at San Diego. He is a founding member of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers.
Marcel Henaff has published
- "Terror und Rache" [Terror and Vengeance] – Lettre Internationale #94 Sept. 2011 – Germany pp. 11-24.
- "Adieu à la structure?" Esprit, #377 Aug. 2011 pp. 114- 125.
Oumelbanine Zhiri has published
"Le Tiers Livre, le temps et le sens", in Rabelais et la question du sens (Etudes Rabelaisiennes XLIX), Geneva, Droz, 2011, pp. 161-174
Michael Davidson has published
On the Outskirts of Form: Practicing Cultural Poetics, Wesleyan University Press, 2011.
This new book by eminent scholar Michael Davidson gathers his essays concerning formally innovative poetry from modernists such as Mina Loy, George Oppen, and Wallace Stevens to current practitioners such as Cristina Rivera-Garza, Heriberto Yepez, Lisa Robertson, and Mark Nowak. The book considers poems that challenge traditional poetic forms and in doing so trouble normative boundaries of sexuality, subjectivity, gender, and citizenship. At the heart of each essay is a concern with the "politics of form," the ways that poetry has been enlisted in the constitution--and critique--of community. Davidson speculates on the importance of developing cultural poetics as an antidote to the personalist and expressivist treatment of postwar poetry. A comprehensive and versatile collection, On the Outskirts of Form places modern and contemporary poetics in a cultural context to reconsider the role of cultural studies and globalization in poetry.
Megan Wesling has published
Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U. S. Imperialism in the Phillipines, New York University Press, 2011.
“This is a ‘big idea’ book that is likely to become a major influence in the field of American Studies. Its superbly argued thesis is both counterintuitive and perspective-altering: that American Literature came into being as a field at the turn of the century through its function as a proxy for US imperialism in the Philippines.” -Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia
In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that centered on English language and American literature to advance the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which was held up as justification for the U.S.’s civilizing mission and offered as a promise of moral uplift and political advancement. Meanwhile, on American soil, the field of American literature was just being developed and fundamentally, though invisibly, defined by this new, extraterritorial expansion. Drawing on a wealth of material, including historical records, governmental documents from the War Department and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, curriculum guides, memoirs of American teachers in the Philippines, and 19th century literature, Meg Wesling not only links empire with education, but also demonstrates that the rearticulation of American literary studies through the imperial occupation in the Philippines served to actually define and strengthen the field. Empire’s Proxy boldly argues that the practical and ideological work of colonial dominance figured into the emergence of the field of American literature, and that the consolidation of a canon of American literature was intertwined with the administrative and intellectual tasks of colonial management.
Fatima El-Tayeb has published
European Others. Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Considers the complications of race, religion, sexuality, and gender in Europeanizing from below
European Others examines the position of racialized communities in the European Union, arguing that the tension between a growing nonwhite, non-Christian population and essentialist definitions of Europeanness produces new forms of identity and activism. Fatima El-Tayeb combines theoretical influences from both sides of the Atlantic to lay bare how Europeans of color are integral to the continent's past, present, and, future.
European Others is a ground-breaking study, a theoretical adventure, and a major contribution to the literature on European racisms, queer diaspora, immigration, queer subcultures, and queer of color critique. No other scholar, to put it plainly, has worked on these materials in this way; no other scholar has managed to launch the critique of European nationalisms from the vantage point of queer of color subcultural groups; and no other scholar has been able to weave together the strands of sexuality, gender, race, and resistance in such a daring and compelling way.
—
Judith Halberstam, author of The Queer Art of Failure
