Showing papers in "American, British and Canadian Studies Journal in 2016"
43 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative analysis of the works of two contemporary South Asian American and Romanian American authors, Jhumpa Lahiri and Aura Imbăruș, is presented.
Abstract: Abstract The paper offers a comparative perspective on transmigrant cultural identities as illustrated in the works of two contemporary South Asian American and Romanian American authors, Jhumpa Lahiri and Aura Imbăruș. The comparison involves Gogol, a South Asian American character, and Aura, the author of the memoir Out of the Transylvania Night. Although Gogol is a fictional character and Aura is an actual transmigrant, their comparative assessment relies on the assumption that both narratives are inspired by the authors’ background of relocation. Despite their different cultural origins, both authors share thematic aspects related to the dynamics of cultural identity in the context of migration. This paper aims to provide a starting point for an enlarged framework of comparative analysis, in order to foreground intersections between different experiences of cultural negotiation in the context of displacement. Born and raised in America, Gogol is challenged by his cultural multiplicity and strives to suppress elements of his Indian identity. After years of rebelling against his parents’ norms, Gogol shifts to the Bengali model, when his father dies. Once he accepts the relevance of his cultural roots, Gogol is able to plunge into a dimension situated beyond his Bengali and American selves. His transcendent strategy is illustrated by his decision to plunge into a third space of redefinition, suggested by the Russian literature which is appreciated by Gogol’s father. Aura Imbăruș offers the example of a first generation Romanian transmigrant who undergoes voluntary relocation to the United States. Fascinated by the American world, Aura is eager to take over norms of material success and consumerism, overlooking the relevance of her cultural roots. When she undergoes a personal family crisis, Aura eventually reassesses the value of her Romanian background, aiming to reconcile her source culture with her Americanised self. In a manner similar to Gogol’s, Aura manages to integrate American norms of success, while forging enduring bonds with the Romanian American community in California.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article, two intermedial installations that address the experiences of people on the run from war or poverty, yet overtly hinder and problematize the viewer's identification with the depicted refugees are examined.
Abstract: Abstract This essay is an inquiry into two intermedial installations that address the experiences of people on the run from war or poverty, yet overtly hinder and problematize the viewer’s identification with the depicted refugees. By doing so, Friday Table (2013) by art collective Foundland, and Isaac Julien’s video installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) differ from the many contemporary discourses dealing with the so-called refugee crisis that suggest a blind assumption of empathy’s benevolence. Taking theoretical texts concerning the relation between empathy, politics and the (lens-based) representation of refugees by, for instance, Slavoj Zizek (2016) and Jill Bennett (2005) as a starting point, I read Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves as reflections on the pitfalls as well as the critical political possibilities of empathy in contemporary debates on refugees. Moreover, I argue that the two lens-based installations in question are able to examine the limits of empathy and identification with refugees through their common denominator: intermediality. Both Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves combine lens-based media (photography, video and film) with non-lens-based medial forms such as drawings, graphs and calligraphy. As I will demonstrate, the interplay between different media is decisive when it comes to the way in which the three works of art produce, manage and reflect on the relation between spectators and depicted refugees.
6 citations
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses four Neo-Victorian novels, Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip (2006), Justine Picardie's Daphne (2008), A.N. Wilson's A Jealous Ghost (2005) and Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr Y (2006) in which female postgraduate students take the centre stage.
Abstract: Abstract Neo-Victorian novelists sometimes use postgraduate students – trainee academics – who research nineteenth-century writers as protagonists. This article discusses four neo-Victorian novels, Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006), Justine Picardie’s Daphne (2008), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005) and Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr Y (2006), in which female postgraduate students take the centre stage. In Victorian literature, which mirrors the gender bias in the academic world and in society at large at that time, most scholars are male. The contemporary writers’ choice of female trainee academics is worth investigating as it speaks to the visibly changed gender make-up of contemporary academia. However, this utopian situation is complicated by the fact that the writers have chosen to frustrate the characters’ entry into the world of scholarship by having them leave the university environment altogether before the end of the novel. The fact that these females all choose to depart the university forms a contrast with notions of the university found in Victorian novels, in which leaving or not attending university might have detrimental effects on the characters.
2 citations
TL;DR: The Lecturer's Tale (2001) can be read as a satire of what Bill Readings identified in his influential The University in Ruins (1996) as the post-historical university as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Abstract This article analyzes the manner in which James Hynes’s novel The Lecturer’s Tale (2001) can be read as a satire of what Bill Readings identified in his influential The University in Ruins (1996) as the “posthistorical university.” I argue that, in the contemporary context in which higher education establishments are becoming more like corporations and the idea of culture is replaced by the “discourse of excellence,” Hynes’s novel offers an insightful discussion of universities’ negotiation of the Scylla of the pursuit of profit and the Charybdis of self-absorbed literary theorizing and its association with political correctness, the exploitation of junior and non-tenured faculty, and the quest for academic stardom. At the same time, I discuss the way in which the Gothic elements that permeate the novel fittingly double and deepen the critique of contemporary educational establishments and professors.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider two metafictional academic novels from the reader's point of view and argue that this critical vantage point is suggested (if not imposed) by the fictional texts themselves.
Abstract: Abstract This article considers two metafictional academic novels from the reader’s point of view. It argues that this critical vantage point is suggested (if not imposed) by the fictional texts themselves. The theoretical texts informing this reading pertain either to reader response or to theories of metafiction, in an attempt to uncover conceptual commonalities between the two. Apart from a thematic focus on academic conferences as pilgrimages and the advocacy of reading as an ethically valuable activity, the two novels also share a propensity for intertextuality, a blurring of the boundaries between fictional and critical discourse, as well as a questioning of the borderline between fiction and reality. The reading of fiction is paralleled to the reading of (one’s own) life and self-reflexivity emerges as crucial to both types of literacy.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the interplay of the "creative" and the "critical" in five American metafictions from the late 1960s, whose authors were both fictional writers and scholars: Donald Barthelme's Snow White, John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, William H. Gass' Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, Robert Coover's Pricksongs and Descants and Ronald Sukenick's The Death of the Novel and Other Stories.
Abstract: Abstract In her seminal book on metafiction, Patricia Waugh describes this practice as an obliteration of the distinction between “creation” and “criticism.” This article examines the interplay of the “creative” and the “critical” in five American metafictions from the late 1960s, whose authors were both fictional writers and scholars: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, William H. Gass’s Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants and Ronald Sukenick’s The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. The article considers the ways in which the voice of the literary critic is incorporated into each work in the form of a self-reflexive commentary. Although the ostensible principle of metafiction is to merge fiction and criticism, most of the self-conscious texts under discussion are shown to adopt a predominantly negative attitude towards the critical voices they embody – by making them sound pompous, pretentious or banal. The article concludes with a claim that the five works do not advocate a rejection of academic criticism but rather insist on its reform. Their dissatisfaction with the prescriptivism of most contemporary literary criticism is compared to Susan Sontag’s arguments in her essay “Against Interpretation.”
1 citations
1 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the author compares her academic experiences to those of characters in the campus novels she enjoys reading and concludes that professional fulfillment and academic status are not sufficient in order to achieve that state.
Abstract: Abstract In this personal essay, the author compares her academic experiences to those of characters in the campus novels she enjoys reading. The novels she discusses here share a thematic concern with happiness and all seem to indicate that professional fulfillment and academic status are not sufficient in order to achieve that state.
TL;DR: McGahern's writing is a blend of memories and imagination, the writer highlighting dilemmas, success and failure as ongoing human threads as discussed by the authors. But it does not address the impact of guilt.
Abstract: Abstract Current explorations of migration in fiction focus on innovative perspectives, linking memory and trauma with the concepts of exile and conflict. Personal memories ask for an understanding of what belonging and identity represent for the Irish; immigration has hybrid and fertile links to memory studies, psychology and psychoanalysis (Akhtar), making the immigrant both love and hate his new territory, while returning to the past or homeland to reflect and regain emotional balance. From the focus on ‘the sexy foreigner’ (Beltsiou), we rely on the idea of crisis discussed by León Grinberg and Rebeca Grinberg, Frank Summers’ examination of identity, the place of the modern polis and the variations of the narrative (Phillips), the trans-generational factor (Fitzgerald and Lambkin), the departure seen as an exile (Murray and Said) and the impact of guilt (Wills). Such views support an analysis of McGahern’s writing which works as a blend of memories and imagination, the writer highlighting dilemmas, success and failure as ongoing human threads. They are as diverse as the people met by the novelist in his youth, many of them being workers, nurses, entrepreneurs, teachers and writers, both young immigrants in search of a better life and migrants returning to spend their retirement or holidays home.
TL;DR: In this paper, a number of web-based articles have been taken under consideration for this study and they demonstrate the problem arising from the refugee flow in Europe and create a special "image" of the complicated European situation.
Abstract: Abstract The following paper is devoted to the study of speech manipulation technologies in US political media discourse. A number of web-based articles have been taken under consideration for this study. They demonstrate the problem arising from the refugee flow in Europe and create a special “image” of the complicated European situation. It is helpful to see how the situation appears in the Internet media since this type of mass communication is most influential these days. While considering a large amount of media texts, a special speech manipulation technology has been revealed. This phenomenon demonstrates a distinct structure and close interrelations of purposefully selected elements. Going through a number of stages we can find out the technology of speech manipulation – a system of using the aggregate of speech manipulation instruments in order to purposefully guide the reality perception of the mass audience. The external level of the texts enables us to take a penetrating look at the internal intentions. This knowledge will help us not to confuse the migration crisis as it is and the migration crisis as it seems.
TL;DR: In 2010, Kudera published a novel called "Fight for Your Long Day" as mentioned in this paper, which depicts a miserable day in the life of one Adjunct Cyrus Duffleman, who works his "long day, teaching classes at four different colleges or universities scattered around the city of Philadelphia and ends his day working as a security officer at one of the colleges."
Abstract: Published in 2010, Fight for Your Long Day is a new kind of academic novel: one with an adjunct instructor at its center. Jeffrey J. Williams has described a “new wave” of academic novels, set in “a world from which professors have largely disappeared,” a variety of “anxiety narrative” consisting of “trying to hold onto one’s perch, whether at work or at home, despite obstacles lining one’s precarious path.” Fight for Your Long Day depicts a miserable day in the life of one Adjunct Cyrus Duffleman – his fortieth birthday, though only he knows this – in which he works his “long day,” teaching classes at four different colleges or universities scattered around the city of Philadelphia and ends his day working as a security officer at one of the colleges. Marginal, anonymous, anxious indeed, Duffleman can be seen as standing for all the faceless teaching fodder increasingly staffing the neoliberal institutions of American higher learning, where contingent faculty paid as part-timers but in fact – like Duffleman – working a full load constitute a large and increasing percentage of the teaching staff. Kudera places his book in the tradition of the academic novel but points out that all the academic novels he has read feature a main character who teaches at only one school, while his main character has five jobs at different sites. Alex Kudera knows this life at first hand. He was a middle-aged adjunct himself when he wrote the book (his situation has stabilized since then), though his presentation of his anti-hero as a classic schlemiel – “worn down and defeated fat guy, adjunct instructor and repeat loser of his flock . . . inconsequential man . . . extra man . . . the man who knows too much about nothing anyone is interested in” – ranges “Adjunct Duffleman” along with hapless cogs in impersonal machines like Joseph K. or Good Soldier Švejk.
TL;DR: The lack of explicit teaching in the university novel since World War II suggests that this lack of focus on the classroom stems from the fact that university novels tend to be fairly conservative aesthetically and the demands of traditional narrative make extended classroom scenes difficult if not impossible to manage as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Abstract Scenes of explicit teaching make only limited appearances in the university novel since World War II. While it would be easy – if cynical – to attribute this minimization to the devaluation of teaching in the modern university, the importance of teaching and learning to sympathetic characters (and their lack of importance to corrupted figures) suggests that this lack of focus on the classroom stems from something else. Indeed, university novels tend to be fairly conservative aesthetically, and the demands of traditional narrative make extended classroom scenes difficult if not impossible to manage. Because of these narrative demands, learning and teaching take on different forms in the university novel, creating stories in which education corresponds to the struggle of teachers and students with and against administrators and buildings – stories that, therefore, resemble Leo van Lier’s observation about how remembering our own educations as stories contradicts more bureaucratic visions of learning. This observation holds true whether one considers better-known works of university fiction such as David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy, Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe, and Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members or lesser-known works produced by micro-presses and writers who are enabled by current technologies to publish electronically.
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TL;DR: This article argued that the main character's actions reflect and embody the cultural logic of the global politico-economy in late nineteenth century London and illustrated the Derridean notion of hospitality by revealing that identity and difference are mutually constitutive.
Abstract: Abstract After the Syrian civil war, deaths of those fleeing crisis areas have tragically become a regular news item. Not new to the world, however, such crises emerge from tensions between identity and difference as codified in international politics, whereby refugees and migrants become the Other and subject to unyielding universals, such as the law or narrow concepts of what is right. Indeed, the cultural logic of “global identities” informing the current refugee and migrant crisis seems recurrent, as exemplified in the recent cases of the Tamils from Sri Lanka and the Somalis. The cultural logic of global identity is also reflected in the popular nineteenth-century novella by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Twisted Lip, in which the main character disguises himself as a professional beggar to appeal to middle class values in order to incite their guilty consciences. Drawing on Ian Baucom, Marc Shell, and Jean-Joseph Goux, this article argues that the main character’s actions reflect and embody the cultural logic of the global politico-economy in late nineteenth century London. As such, Doyle’s novella illustrates the Derridean notion of hospitality by revealing that “identity and difference are mutually constitutive” (Baker 109) and offers insightful commentary on the current refugee and migrant crisis.