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Before puzzling over some possible conjunction between literature and philosophy, one has to agree on what such concepts mean. However, as soon as one wonders about their definitions, concepts like “literature” or “the novel” on the one hand, or “philosophy” or even “concept” on the other, prove all too elusive. If one thinks they know what a novel is, it proves virtually impossible to freeze a suitable definition of the aesthetic concept. The reason for that impossibility might be that philosophy’s mission, to the extent that it reflects upon concepts, is somehow to blur them. Yet this article aims to show that it is precisely in that sense that literature, through the example of the novel, is in itself philosophical to the degree that what defines the novel is a self-reflexive interrogation of what makes it so. With the example of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the article concludes that there might be no intrinsic knowledge of our (aesthetic) concepts outside examples. Avant de s’interroger sur une éventuelle conjonction entre littérature et philosophie, encore faut-il s’entendre sur ce que recouvrent ces concepts. Or dès qu’on soulève la question de leur définition, les concepts de « littérature » ou de « roman » d’un côté, de « philosophie » voire de « concept » de l’autre, s’avèrent éminemment fuyants. Si on pense savoir ce qu’est un roman, en arrêter une définition acceptable s’avère quasiment impossible. La raison en est que la philosophie, en tant qu’elle s’interroge sur des concepts, a pour mission de les brouiller. Or, cet article vise à démontrer que c’est précisément en ce sens que l’écriture littéraire, à travers l’exemple du roman, est philosophique, puisque c’est aussi le propre du roman, à l’instar de To the Lighthouse de Virginia Woolf, de s’interroger sur ce qui le définit en tant que tel. De sorte qu’il n’y a de connaissance possible que dans l’exemple.

Comme son titre l’affichait clairement, la journée d’étude « Visual and verbal self-portraiture / Se donner à voir, se donner à lire », organisée à distance par Jean-Louis Claret, Richard Phelan et Sophie Vallas (LERMA) à Aix-Marseille Université le 9 octobre 2020, portait sur l’art de l’autoportrait lorsqu’il est tout à la fois visuel et textuel. L’appel à communications rappelait les parallèles qui ont toujours été tracés entre la capture d’une image dans le miroir en verre du peintre et ce...

The Water Cure and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell are two of Percival Everett’s novels that most overtly intertwine literature and the philosophical. They do so not so much by promoting philosophical theories as by putting to the fore that the literary text is a mode of becoming, a gesture of thought. By experimenting with language and form, these two novels participate in the advent of thought and meaning. The Water Cure et Percival Everett by Virgil Russell sont deux romans de Percival Everett dans lesquels littérature et philosophie ne forment qu’un corps écrit qui se dessine non tant dans l’exposition et l’exploitation de théories philosophiques que dans l’exhibition du texte littéraire comme mode de devenir et geste de pensée. En expérimentant avec le langage et les formes narratives, ces deux romans font advenir la pensée et le sens.

Michelle E. Moore, Chicago and the Making of American Modernism. Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald in Conflict London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Pp. 247. ISBN: 9781350018037 Andreas Hübner, Leuphana University Lüneburg American modernist writers are rarely associated with turn-of-the-century Chicago and its literary scene. In the decades after the Great Fire of 1871, the city built a profit-centered reputation modernist writers were typically trying to resist. In Chicago, patronage...

This article investigates how the relation between poetry and philosophy is developed in a sample of reflections on the philosophical qualities of the American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens’s work. It offers a critical presentation of a handful of twenty-first-century published responses to Stevens’s poetry emanating from two different quarters: fellow poets and philosophers. The five selected poets (David Baker, Linda Gregerson, Carl Phillips, Stanley Plumly, and Carol Frost) collectively pondered Stevens’s philosophical qualities in a recent issue of the New England Review, while the responses by philosophers Alain Badiou and Peter Hare were published in collections of their essays. The two different angles are investigated precisely because they fall outside mainstream literary criticism on Stevens and help to dramatize several of the difficulties confronted by poets and philosophers seeking to find common ground. By pitting the voices of poets against those of philosophers, the article allows the reader to observe empirically how poets are often wary of addressing Stevens’s philosophical weight except by noting the formal and stylistic enactment of mental activity in his verse, while philosophers sometimes fail to acknowledge the intrinsic nature of lyric thinking, and thus do not always manage to contribute to a deeper understanding of the poetry as such. Cet article s’interroge sur la manière dont la relation entre poésie et philosophie se développe dans certaines réflexions sur la portée philosophique de l’œuvre du poète moderniste américain Wallace Stevens. Il dresse le portrait critique de certaines réponses proposées au vingt-et-unième siècle à la poésie de Stevens, qui proviennent de champs différents : poésie d’un côté, philosophie de l’autre. Les cinq poètes choisis dans le cadre de cette étude (David Baker, Linda Gregerson, Carl Phillips, Stanley Plumly, et Carol Frost) se sont collectivement penchés sur les ressorts philosophiques de Stevens dans un numéro récent de la New England Review, tandis que les réponses apportées par les philosophes Alain Badiou et Peter Hare ont été publiées dans des ouvrages recueillant certains de leurs essais. Nous choisissons de nous intéresser à ces deux approches précisément dans la mesure où la critique littéraire dominante sur l’œuvre de Stevens tend à les ignorer, mais aussi parce qu’elles permettent de dramatiser plusieurs des difficultés auxquelles font face poètes et philosophes à la recherche d’un terrain d’entente. Or en confrontant la voix de poètes à celle de philosophes, cet article propose au lecteur d’observer de manière empirique comment les poètes tendent à se méfier du poids philosophique de Stevens en concentrant leurs efforts sur la façon dont l’activité mentale vient s’incarner formellement et stylistiquement dans les vers du poète, alors que les philosophes ont de leur côté tendance à ignorer la nature intrinsèquement lyrique de la pensée, ne parvenant pas, ce faisant, à proposer une compréhension fine de la poésie en tant que telle.

Larisa Dryansky’s Cartophotographies is an original and ambitious exploration of the intersections between cartography and photography in the period that extends from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s. Her analysis focuses on the work of five American artists: Ed Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Douglas Huebler, and Mel Bochner. What are the cartophotographies in the title? They refer to artistic practices that combine photographs and maps in a variety of ways: artists taking ...

The Fictions of American Capitalism est un ouvrage collectif, issu de plusieurs journees d’etudes, qui reunit les contributions d’historien-nes, d’economistes, de sociologues et de specialistes d’etudes litteraires etats-uniennes. Malgre la diversite d’horizons des contributeurs et contributrices de l’ouvrage, celui-ci presente une certaine unite dans l’ambition disciplinaire qu’il revendique. En effet, le projet general du livre est de depasser l’idee que « literature and economics make odd ...

The essay offers a critical overview of recent historiographies on the nineteenth-century United States that allows on the one hand to grasp the imperial and colonial character of U.S. nineteenth-century territorial expansion, on the other hand, it accounts for nineteenth-century U.S. industrial growth and market building both as a quest for independence on the world market and as an expansive imperial process. In this respect, an understanding of colonization and industry as the two driving forces of nineteenth-century U.S. history can prove crucial for a comprehensive interpretation of Friedrich List's and Henry Charles Carey's national project for capitalist development., USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol. 3 No. 1S (2020): Special Issue

This essay provides a historiographical contextualization to the research that the author will publish in his forthcoming monograph, provisionally titled The Origins of Colorblind Socialism: Race and Class in the American Left, 1876-1899. Through a research in the multilingual socialist press, party archives and personal papers of socialist leaders, the book offers the first investigation of ideas of race in the American socialist movement at the end of the nineteenth century., USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol. 3 No. 1S (2020): Special Issue

The essay focuses on the intermingling of pacifism, anti-nuclearism and political environmentalism and the interconnection between foreign and domestic policy. In particular it offers a nuanced understanding of the role played by the antinuclear movement in inducing Reagan to change his negotiating strategy on nuclear weapons reductions. Besides the article introduces a research agenda for a project that looks at the history of Greenpeace investigating it as a significant political and social phenomenon that produced a truly global conversation on environmental issues., USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol. 3 No. 1S (2020): Special Issue

Social Gospel is a product of the history of American Christianity and Methodist churches became part of it after the Civil War. Notwithstanding the predominant historiography of male historians writing about an apparently only-male movement, Social Gospel is tied to the path of female suffrage designed by American Methodist women between 1880 and 1920. The aim of this essay is to present a step in the research related to the role of Methodist women in the Social Gospel movement and to the fight for women's vote. The figure of Anna Howard Shaw is presented as a preliminary key study., USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol. 3 No. 1S (2020): Special Issue

USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol. 3 No. 1S (2020): Special Issue

espanolEl presente trabajo analiza el proceso de reorganizacion del movimiento estudiantil universitario uruguayo en los primeros anos de la decada de los ochenta y especialmente en periodo comprendido entre 1980 y 1983. El trabajo busca rastrear la genesis de la (re)constitucion de este actor social a traves de una mirada atenta a las revistas estudiantiles, proponiendo una mirada alternativa a la transicion democatica mas alla de lo politico partidario. El trabajo concluye que las revistas estudiantiles constituyeron canales alternativos de expresion, pero tambien espacios privilegiados para forjar y catalizar una identidad y sensibilidad generacional y estudiantil determinada durante un periodo en que no se encontraban disponibles canales tradicionales de participacion y militancia.*Este articulo fue publicado originalmente en 2018, en el volumen 22(2) de la Revista de Historia Social y de las Mentalidades, editada por elDepartamento de Historia de la Facultad de Humanidades de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile (ISSN: 0717-5248 ISSN en linea: 0719-4749). Enlace al articulo original: http://www.revistas.usach.cl/ojs/index.php/historiasocial/article/view/3643/26002939 EnglishThis paper analyzes the process of reorganization of the Uruguayan university student movement in the early years of the eighties and specifically during the period between 1980 and 1983. The work seeks to trace the genesis of the reconstitution of this social and political actor to through a careful analysis of the student agazines that emerged during this period, proposing an alternative look at democratic transitions beyond the political partisan spheres. The work concludes that the student magazines constituted alternative channels of expression, but also privileged spaces to forge and catalyze a generational and student identity and sensitivity during a period in which traditional channels of participation and activism were unavailable. *This article was originally published in 2018, in volume 22(2) of the Revista de Historia Social y de las Mentalidades, edited by theDepartment of History of the Faculty of Humanities of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (ISSN: 0717-5248 ISSN online: 0719-4749) Link to the original article: http://www.revistas.usach.cl/ojs/index.php/historiasocial/article/view/3643/26002939

Cet article se penche sur les récits inspirés à Louisa May Alcott par ses visites des institutions caritatives pour garçons sans abris à New York au milieu des années 1870. Soucieuse de divertir autant que d’instruire son jeune public et convaincue de la réussite par le travail, Alcott minimise la part d’exploitation et d’oppression pourtant manifeste dans les refuges pour garçons qu’elle décrit. Exempts de tout moralisme, ses récits présentent de forts échos biographiques avec la vie de l’autrice : son expérience de la pauvreté, son chemin vers l’abstinence et surtout un humanisme directement hérité de ses parents et de leurs actions caritatives. This article examines Louisa May Alcott’s tales based on her mid-1870s tour of philanthropic institutions for New York’s homeless boys. In an effort to make her lessons more palatable to her young readership and reflecting her own beliefs in the themes of self-improvement, Alcott often euphemizes the shelters’ evidently oppressive and exploitative dimensions. Devoid of moralism, Alcott’s tales also carry strong biographical accents, from her own experience of poverty to her own temperance journey and, most importantly, the humanistic spirit which she inherited from her parents’ own charity efforts.

The paper addresses the issue of education in art museums. It examines the first attempt to establish an art education project at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Firstly, the paper explains why MoMA based its original art education program on the fundamental ideas of John Dewey’s theories of progressive education. Secondly, it analyzes the grassroots of five progressive art education initiatives launched by MoMA’s founding Director of the Department of Education Victor D’Amico in 1937-1969. The paper concludes that D’Amico’s experiential philosophy of art education, although no longer practiced at MoMA, advanced the value of art education as social experience in art pedagogy both in the United States and abroad.; Cet article traite de l’éducation dans les musées d’art. Il revient sur la première tentative de création d’un projet d’éducation artistique au Musée d’art moderne (MoMA) de New York. L’article explique en premier lieu pourquoi le MoMA s’est appuyé, pour son premier programme d’éducation artistique, sur les théories de John Dewey en matière d’éducation nouvelle. Il se consacre ensuite à cinq programmes d’éducation artistique progressiste lancés entre 1937 et 1969 à l’initiative de Victor D’Amico, directeur du département de l’Éducation. L’article en conclut que le projet éducatif expérimental de D’Amico, bien qu’il ne soit plus aujourd’hui pratiqué au MoMA, aura mis en avant la valeur de l’éducation artistique en tant qu’expérience sociale dans la pédagogie artistique contemporaine aux États-Unis et à l’étranger.

The aim of this paper is to explore the experience of exile in two folk ballads by Bruce Springsteen, “American Land” (2006) and “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (1995). The paper examines the aesthetic and poetic aspects of the two ballads. “American Land” tells the story of a new immigrant who settles in America and portrays it as a Promised Land. In “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” Springsteen suggests that ordinary people undergo a metaphorical exile that has led John Steinbeck’s protagonist Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) to express his anger against the injustice of the Great Depression. L’objet de cet article est d’explorer l’expérience de l’exil dans deux ballades de Bruce Springsteen, « American Land » (2006) et « The Ghost of Tom Joad » (1995). Il sera question d’examiner les aspects esthétiques et poétiques de ces deux ballades. « American Land » aborde le thème de l’immigration aux États-Unis et propose le récit d’un nouvel immigrant qui dépeint son nouveau pays d’accueil comme une terre promise. Dans « The Ghost of Tom Joad », Springsteen suggère que les gens ordinaires en Amérique contemporaine subissent un exil métaphorique qui a conduit Tom Joad, personnage principal du roman de John Steinbeck Les Raisins de la colère (1939) à exprimer sa colère contre les injustices de la Grande Dépression.

La franchise My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic est célèbre pour son public « inattendu », un fandom composé en grande partie d’hommes adultes, et qui semble contraster fortement avec son public « cible » (les petites filles). Cette vision clivée invite à s’interroger sur les attentes et intentions des différents agents impliqués dans la production des récits, sur la façon dont ces attentes se manifestent et sur le type de comportements encouragés. En effet, MLP: FiM se situe à la convergence de nombreuses injonctions (commerciales, morales, idéologiques etc.) visant à construire un public spécifique. Les comics et dessins animés MLP: FiM sont une commande d’Hasbro visant à stimuler ses ventes de jouets pour filles, mais ils sont également tributaires de contraintes juridiques et idéologiques liées à leur statut de divertissement enfantin, destiné à préserver et éduquer leur jeune public. Par ailleurs, les équipes impliquées dans le développement des récits de MLP: FiM possèdent leurs propres attentes ; en particulier, il s’agit de remettre en question les stéréotypes de genre véhiculés par l’industrie du divertissement pour filles en inculquant à ces dernières des valeurs d’indépendance, de solidarité et de développement personnel. Cette prise de position est en fait au cœur de l’attraction transgénérationnelle de MLP: FiM et constitue le terreau dans lequel une communauté de fans plus âgés s’est enracinée, développant de nouveaux modes de consommation. Popular and academic discussions of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic often tend to contrast the “expected audience” of very young girls with an adult, mostly male “unexpected audience.” This polarizing view begs the question of what the various agents involved in the production of the series actually expect of their audience, and how such expectations are expressed through the material they produce and the type of behaviors they encourage. I argue that MLP: FiM is in fact the site of a complex combination of expectations (moral, commercial, and otherwise) that create a specific type of audience. Beyond their obvious commercial nature, the MLP: FiM show and comics are tied with ideological and legal concerns regarding the status of children’s entertainment, which is expected to protect and educate its audience. Moreover, the creators had their own set of expectations: they set out to question gender stereotypes by creating quality entertainment for girls that presented independence, solidarity, and individual development as positive values. The desire to reappraise girls’ entertainment helped create a franchise that was in fact transgenerational and encouraged different modes of participation, thus creating the conditions for the emergence of an older, more media-savvy fan audience.

Dans le cadre du projet « Faire le point sur les fictions historiques » (https://mhma.hypotheses.org/133) était présentée, le 21 juin dernier, la journée d’études intitulée « Fiction historique : enjeux théoriques et idéologiques / Theoretical and Ideological Issues in Historical Fiction », à l’Université de Paris, sur son campus Paris Rive Gauche. Réunissant une trentaine de chercheurs, les quatre sessions ont permis d’entendre huit présentations couvrant des champs aussi divers que la litté...

The editor’s integral role in the production of a literary piece has traditionally been overlooked in favor of solitary authorship. Tim Groenland’s meticulously researched book seeks to turn the spotlight on the hidden figure behind the author and evaluate the role of the self-effacing editor in the literary process. A thorough examination of archival material has enabled Groenland to study two significant author-editor collaborations of the twentieth century. First, Groenland focuses on the ...

Cette introduction au dossier thématique replace la question de l’émergence de médias à destination des enfants dans le temps plus long de l’histoire des médias aux États-Unis. L’introduction interroge la place et le rôle des enfants, des adolescents et des jeunes adultes dans l’écosystème médiatique destiné à l’enfance et à la jeunesse, avant de présenter les contributions qui composent le dossier. An introduction to the thematic dossier, this contribution situates the emergence of child-media in the larger history of the media in the United States. After raising the question of the place assumed by children, teenagers, and young adults in the media system that targets them, as well as the roles they get to play in it, this introduction presents the contributions in the dossier.

Since The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006), the political drama series has been a proliferating format for fictional engagements with American politics. Georgi-Findlay focuses on how The West Wing and 24 (Fox, 2001-2010) engage public narratives about Islam and Islamophobia, arguing that the shows go beyond what Evelyn Alsultany has termed “simplified complex representations” by creating contradictory, multivocal texts that display dynamics of internal disaccord. Representations of Arabs, Muslims and Muslim countries are embedded within storylines that challenge each other. Especially The West Wing stages discussions that can lead to informed debates, reflecting and exposing the contradictions within the American national identity discourse between an inclusionist civic and an exclusionist racialized nationalism. In both series, polyvocal narratives are brought across not only by intertwining multiple discourses, but also by way of aesthetic strategies and intermedial references that supply additional textual layers, complicating viewers’ processes of meaning-making and contributing to in-text dissensus and ideological ambivalences. Both series thus can be read against the grain, as contradictory, multivocal texts that both reflect and expose Islamophobia.

Sarah Churchwell, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. Pp. 356. ISBN 978-1-4088-9477-4 Wayne E. Arnold If there is one overarching point to be learned in Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream it is that American political history tends to repeat itself. Sarah Churchwell aptly demonstrates this propensity through a systematic chronology of the politically charged terms “America First” and the “American Drea...

Mitchell A. Orenstein, The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 232. ISBN 978-190936143 Marcus Walsh-Führing On July 16, 2009, a group of twenty-two Central and Eastern European leaders and liberal intellectuals wrote “An Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe,” addressing their grievances of Russia’s agenda to maintain its political influence in the region. As the Obama administration did...

Gerald Farca, Playing Dystopia: Nightmarish Worlds in Video Games and the Player’s Aesthetic Response (Studies of Digital Media Culture) transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2019. Pp. 434. ISBN-13: 978-3837645972 Andrew Tzouras, School of Engineering, University of Patras This is an excellent study for anyone looking to delve into the genre of dystopia in videogames. This book consists of an introduction and eight chapters. Gerald Farca, author and digital culture and game studies scholar, begins by...

Kirsten MacLeod, American Little Magazines of the Fin de Siècle: Art, Protest, and Cultural Transformation Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-4426-4316-1. Pp 474 Stamatina Dimakopoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens In American Little Magazines of the Fin de Siècle: Art, Protest, and Cultural Transformation, Kirsten Macleod offers a compelling cultural history and posits these publications as an important force-field in a context where sho...

The post-9/11 era is marked by an unusual rise of Islamophobic rhetoric that permeates the U.S. cultural imaginary and connects a wide range of medial discourses from literature and cinema to television and the World Wide Web. Orientalist stereotypes have informed Hollywood blockbusters and television series as well as acclaimed novels such as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003), John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), not to mention Donald Trump’s speeches and writings on “radical Islamic terrorism.” My essay argues that contemporary public discourse in the U.S. addresses an array of viral images, portraying Muslims as essentially “alien” to mainstream American values. The fears of a potential—or already ongoing—“Islamization of America” are kept alive through continual interaction between texts and images from hegemonic visual discourse, involving what I call “intermedial exchange” between literary texts, films, television shows, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet.

This paper investigates the geopolitical context of the emergence of “suicide terrorism” to propose that terrorism in its various forms has less to do with religious ideologies in general and with Islamic faith in particular, and more to do with the colonial and neocolonial politics of Empire in the colonies, postcolonies and occupied territories by the U.S. army and its allies in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era. Two representations of the figure of the suicide terrorist will be analyzed as they are presented in the narratives suggested in the Showtime series Homeland (2011-) and the film Syriana (2005). I argue that even though the Islamicate world and Muslims in the post-9/11 era have generally been portrayed in a differentiated fashion, these media productions have had almost the same effects on the public as earlier Orientalist productions. Although they appear to endorse antiracism and multiculturalism on the surface, these current narratives simultaneously produce what Evelyn Alsultany calls “the logics and affects necessary to legitimize racist policies and practices” (Alsultany 162). A “dialectical Islamophobia” (Beydoun 40) that is at play in the West and Western media productions legitimizes and values imperialist necropolitics while delegitimizing its opponent, namely the religious necropolitics of suicide terrorism.

Contains fulltext : 225665pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) This special issue will concentrate on Islamophobia as a public narrative that became ubiquitous in American mainstream media since the early 2000s and penetrated all channels of modern communication in the Western world. We understand Islamophobia as a cultural phenomenon, crafted and circulated through medial practices such as television shows, films, literary texts, performances, videos, and Internet blogs. The term has been associated with at least two implications: it can function as a) a signifier for fear of Islam and its followers (see Lee et al., Abbas, Zúquete); b) a cultural marker for Muslimness related to dress, rituals, language etc. (Iqbal, Love). Islamophobia leads to a perception and reaction that identifies Muslims with the potential danger of terrorist attacks. Zafar Iqbal underscores that the notion of Islamophobia is by no means a passive response to a threat, but an irrational fear generative of aggressive behaviors and offensive actions (91). Since Islamophobia nowadays is for the most part triggered by mediation and remediation (Bolter and Grusin), studying the function, construction, and circulation of Islamophobic markers in and through media is imperative (82). In the early months of 2020, episodes of racial violence in the U.S. against African Americans like Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor caused worldwide upheavals and even mainstream voices appeared ready to denounce the American media landscape as overwhelmingly racist. The focus on racially motivated violence has also encouraged reflections on racism as a problem that exceeds blatant macro-aggression, seeping into everyday-life interactions and automatic reflexes. In the realm of cultural criticism, while openly racist cultural products are met by many with uncompromising rejection, the ambivalence of other texts that parade progressive politics and proverbial “good intentions” also calls for urgent scrutiny. As we write, Donald Trump, who has made hatred against Islam a propeller of his campaign, still holds the presidency. 63This special issue will concentrate on Islamophobia as a public narrative that became ubiquitous in American mainstream media since the early 2000s and penetrated all channels of modern communication in the Western world. We understand Islamophobia as a cultural phenomenon, crafted and circulated through medial practices such as television shows, films, literary texts, performances, videos, and Internet blogs. The term has been associated with at least two implications: it can function as a) a signifier for fear of Islam and its followers (see Lee et al., Abbas, Zúquete); b) a cultural marker for Muslimness related to dress, rituals, language etc. (Iqbal, Love). Islamophobia leads to a perception and reaction that identifies Muslims with the potential danger of terrorist attacks. Zafar Iqbal underscores that the notion of Islamophobia is by no means a passive response to a threat, but an irrational fear generative of aggressive behaviors and offensive actions (91). Since Islamophobia nowadays is for the most part triggered by mediation and remediation (Bolter and Grusin), studying the function, construction, and circulation of Islamophobic markers in and through media is imperative (82). In the early months of 2020, episodes of racial violence in the U.S. against African Americans like Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor caused worldwide upheavals and even mainstream voices appeared ready to denounce the American media landscape as overwhelmingly racist. The focus on racially motivated violence has also encouraged reflections on racism as a problem that exceeds blatant macro-aggression, seeping into everyday-life interactions and automatic reflexes. In the realm of cultural criticism, while openly racist cultural products are met by many with uncompromising rejection, the ambivalence of other texts that parade progressive politics and proverbial “good intentions” also calls for urgent scrutiny. As we write, Donald Trump, who has made hatred against Islam a propeller of his campaign, still holds the presidency. This special issue will concentrate on Islamophobia as a public narrative that became ubiquitous in American mainstream media since the early 2000s and penetrated all channels of modern communication in the Western world. We understand Islamophobia as a cultural phenomenon, crafted and circulated through medial practices such as television shows, films, literary texts, performances, videos, and Internet blogs. The term has been associated with at least two implications: it can function as a) a signifier for fear of Islam and its followers (see Lee et al., Abbas, Zúquete); b) a cultural marker for Muslimness related to dress, rituals, language etc. (Iqbal, Love). Islamophobia leads to a perception and reaction that identifies Muslims with the potential danger of terrorist attacks. Zafar Iqbal underscores that the notion of Islamophobia is by no means a passive response to a threat, but an irrational fear generative of aggressive behaviors and offensive actions (91). Since Islamophobia nowadays is for the most part triggered by mediation and remediation (Bolter and Grusin), studying the function, construction, and circulation of Islamophobic markers in and through media is imperative (82). In the early months of 2020, episodes of racial violence in the U.S. against African Americans like Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor caused worldwide upheavals and even mainstream voices appeared ready to denounce the American media landscape as overwhelmingly racist. The focus on racially motivated violence has also encouraged reflections on racism as a problem that exceeds blatant macro-aggression, seeping into everyday-life interactions and automatic reflexes. In the realm of cultural criticism, while openly racist cultural products are met by many with uncompromising rejection, the ambivalence of other texts that parade progressive politics and proverbial “good intentions” also calls for urgent scrutiny. As we write, Donald Trump, who has made hatred against Islam a propeller of his campaign, still holds the presidency. 02 oktober 2020 9 p.

Quatrieme entree dans la collection Contrechamp de chez Vendemiaire, le livre de Christophe Damour, maitre de conferences a l’Universite de Strasbourg et auteur d’Al Pacino (Scope Editions, 2009), porte sur Le Plongeon, un magnifique film hollywoodien de 1968, realise par Frank Perry (et Sidney Pollack, non credite), que la sortie DVD en 2003 a sauve de l’oubli. Le livre, qui contient une introduction et une conclusion, six chapitres, des notes, une bibliographie et un splendide cahier centra...

En 1974, Robert P. Swierenga constatait la difficile émergence du champ de l'histoire rurale aux États-Unis, par opposition à l'unité dont elle faisait l'objet en France depuis les travaux pionniers de Marc Bloch. Dans la vingtaine d'années qui suivirent, une génération de chercheurs, enrichie par les apports de l'histoire sociale, s'intéressa au thème de la ruralité dans une logique pluridisciplinaire. Ces recherches innovantes débouchèrent sur la parution de l'ouvrage synthèse de David Danb...

This article focuses on a little-explored case of modernist collaboration situated at the crossroads between different arts: the performance of Alfred Kreymborg’s play Lima Beans, produced by the Provincetown Players in December 1916, in which poets Mina Loy and William Carlos Williams played the two leading parts, together with poet and artist William Zorach, who also designed the sets. The play’s novel aesthetics breaks with the principles of the realist dramas typical of the time and favored even by more experimental groups like the Provincetown Players. First, the article examines how the play creates a distancing effect towards the deliberately mundane story of a married couple, using incongruous elements like the proto-absurdist nonsense of the dialogues, the abstract, Futurist sets, and the groundbreaking acting techniques inspired by puppet theater. Second, it specifically focuses on the blurring of the boundaries between the different arts—drama, poetry, and dance among others—in this play, whose dialogues were conceived as free verse. Finally, it delves into the intertextual and intermedial dialogues between the play and Loy’s and Williams’s poems published in the little magazine Others, edited by Kreymborg. Cet article se penche sur un cas peu exploré de collaboration moderniste qui se situe au carrefour de plusieurs arts : la pièce Lima Beans, écrite et mise en scène par Alfred Kreymborg et produite par les Provincetown Players en décembre 1916. Dans cette mise en scène, les poètes modernistes Mina Loy et William Carlos Williams jouent les rôles principaux, accompagnés du poète et artiste peintre William Zorach, également responsable des décors. L’esthétique novatrice de cette mise en scène rompt avec les principes du théâtre réaliste typique de l’époque et prôné même par des groupes plus expérimentaux comme les Provincetown Players. Dans un premier temps, cet essai étudie l’effet de distanciation produit par la pièce envers l’histoire délibérément banale du quotidien d’un couple marié, à travers des éléments incongrus comme les dialogues proto-absurdistes, les décors abstraits aux touches futuristes, et les techniques de jeu inspirées du théâtre de marionnettes. Dans un deuxième temps, l’essai revient sur la synthèse entre les différents arts—théâtre, poésie et danse entre autres—qui affleure dans cette pièce, dont les répliques ont été conçues comme des vers libres. Sont étudiés enfin les dialogues intertextuels et intermédiaux entre la pièce et certains des poèmes de Loy et Williams publiés dans la revue Others, dont Kreymborg était le rédacteur en chef.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue? (Stockholm lecture, 1993, D 203, italics mine) Toni Morrison, c...

Jenn Brandt and Callie Clare, An Introduction to Popular Culture in the US: People, Politics and Power N.Y and London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp.288. ISBN-13: 978-15013-2057-6 Chrysavgi Papagianni, Zayed University Popular culture acquired a new currency in the 1970s with Ray Browne founding the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green University. Seeing popular culture as an expression of various cultures and identities whose voices needed to be heard, Browne fought against the hegemony of ...

In The Quiet Contemporary American Novel, Rachel Sykes boldly attempts to define and problematize what she identifies as a neglected area in the study of twenty-first-century American fiction and that she names “quiet novels.” Set within a large framework of two centuries of American culture, her well-researched monograph brings into focus nine contemporary novels by Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, Paul Harding, Richard Powers, Lynne Tillman and Marilynne Robinson as well as discussing the works of ma...

Ronja Bodola, Guido Isekenmeier, eds. Literary Visualities: Visual Descriptions, Readerly Visualisations, Textual Visibilities De Gruyter, 2017. Pp. 283. ISBN: 9783110377941 Thomas Mantzaris This volume brings together a range of scholars in order to explore “literature’s productive engagement with and involvement in visual culture” (11) from the early-seventeenth to the twenty-first century. The aim of the editors Ronja Bodola and Guido Isekenmeier to cover a wide scope of literary practices...

Mazen Naous’ Poetics of Visibility in the Contemporary Arab American Novel is a brilliant literary investigation into a selected corpus of today’s Arab American fiction writers. What sets Naous’ analyses apart from many other attempts at reading the writings of contemporary Arab American literary authors is his effort to avoid focusing solely on the political agendas of the novels carried out through the content of the works in question. Instead, he attempts to unravel the poetics of the work...

L’article est consacré à la culture de jeunesse et aux productions littéraires et audiovisuelles destinées à la jeunesse. Il traite de la distinction entre les publics enfantins et adolescents dans la culture populaire contemporaine, envisagée à la fois du point de vue de la production et de la réception. L’article s’interroge sur les raisons de la confusion entre les catégories d’enfant et d’adolescent, et s’emploie à définir les critères possibles permettant de distinguer ces deux publics, en croisant psychologie, études culturelles et analyses internes des œuvres. L’enjeu est de délimiter le champ des productions culturelles ciblant spécifiquement un public adolescent, bien distinct, en dépit d’apparentes analogies, du public familial. This paper deals with youth culture, focusing on literary, film, and television works. It examines the distinction between two types of audiences, namely children and teenagers, in contemporary popular culture, addressing both the production and reception of the works. It brings out the defining features which characterize these two audiences, through a multidisciplinary approach that pertains to psychology, cultural studies, and narratology. The purpose of this study is to delineate the field of youth culture by contrasting it with productions targeting family audiences.

Cette journée internationale portant sur « la migration des personnes de couleur libres dans les Amériques et dans l’espace atlantique avant les abolitions de l’esclavage », organisée par Claire Bourhis-Mariotti et Lawrence Aje, s’est déroulée à l’université de Chicago à Paris le 4 octobre 2019. Son objectif était d’établir un état des lieux de la recherche sur ces migrations dans un espace géographique très large, les Amériques et l’espace atlantique, et dans une période chronologique bien d...

Cet article propose une lecture de Motherless Brooklyn, publié par Jonathan Lethem en 1999, à la lumière de la théorie bakhtinienne du grotesque et du rire. L’originalité du roman tient à sa mise en fiction du syndrome de Gilles de la Tourette dont souffre le personnage principal, également narrateur à la première personne, qui s’approprie délibérément le surnom « phénomène de cirque » dont il a été affublé dans son enfance. Ainsi ce héros-narrateur joue un double rôle tout le long du récit : il est à la fois le phénomène grotesque qu’on exhibe sur le stand de foire, et celui qui exhibe et construit le phénomène en baratinant le public / lecteur. Lethem, de cette façon, remet en cause tant la représentation traditionnelle du handicap (et le stéréotype du handicapé) que les principaux genres dont s’inspire le roman : fiction policière et récit de formation. Le texte se fait parodie, au sens bakhtinien du terme, à la fois hommage à ces genres traditionnels et réécriture de ceux-ci. Lethem, enfin, utilise à la fois les tics et autres vocalisations symptomatiques du héros et son penchant pour les images grotesques et le rire, afin d’opérer un changement paradigmatique et transformer le stigmate en atout. Le romancier contribue ainsi à renouveler significativement la fiction consacrée à la maladie. This article analyzes Jonathan Lethem’s neuronovel, Motherless Brooklyn (1999) in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque and laughter. The specificity of the novel lies the first-person narrator and leading character suffering from Tourette’s syndrome and appropriating the nickname “freak of nature” he was given as a child. Thereby, he plays a double role: he is both “the grotesque freak” exhibited on the platform / page, and the freakshow talker constructing the freak from his condition. The novel turns into a freakshow, not in the sense of the sordid spectacle of the past, but as a construction questioning both the social and the literary order. Through the grotesque and laughter, Lethem challenges the traditional representation of disability—and the stereotype of the disabled person—and also the major genres his novel borrows from: detective fiction and the coming-of-age narrative. The book turns into parody, in the Bakhtinian sense, i.e., both a homage to and a rewriting of traditional genres. Lethem also takes advantage of his narrator’s symptomatic verbal outbursts and penchant for grotesque images and word play to shift disability paradigm—turning stigma into asset—and revitalize illness literature.

By examining the ways in which Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind (and the character of Scarlett O’Hara specifically) contests heteronormative, patriarchal, masculine constructions of Southern (ideal) femininity, this essay argues that Scarlett’s “ugliness” forces us to widen our perspective on Southern feminine beauty and purity and contributes to challenging the tropes of white Southern masculinity and femininity. The presentation of Scarlett is worthy of note because of the way it demonstrates the terrains of feminine difference and ugliness as complex (and enduring) fields for discussion. En examinant les façons dont le roman de Margaret Mitchell Autant en emporte le vent (et le personnage de Scarlett O’Hara en particulier) conteste les constructions hétéronormatives, dominantes et patriarcales de la féminité (idéale) du Sud, cet article propose que la « laideur » de Scarlett (mentionnée et décrite en détail dès les premières lignes du texte) contribue à remettre en question les tropes de la masculinité et de la féminité blanches du Sud. La présentation de Scarlett nous intéresse car elle démontre que les terrains de la différence et de la laideur féminines sont des champs de discussion complexes (et durables).

The article deals with Veblen’s vision of social conflict to critically reexamine his political thought. Retracing his intellectual biography, it focuses on three connected aspects: a twofold vision of social conflict that emerges from his reinvention of evolutionism; his reading of socialism in an industrial society; the relevance of an evolutionary concept of technology in order to understand new forms of conflict within the transition to a cooperative working process that is associated with scientific organization and planning. These elements are used to highlight Veblen’s stance towards Progressive Era social sciences and towards institutional and intellectual attempts to control the vagaries and conflicts of industrial capitalism., USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, Vol 3 (2020)

L’« après Gone With the Wind » semble appartenir à Gone With the Wind lui-même du fait du nombre de rééditions et de restaurations qui encouragent au revisionnage, et d’une structure narrative qui pousse elle-même sans cesse à revenir en arrière, revoir et réévaluer. À partir des études sur la relecture, des réflexions de Stanley Cavell sur la comédie du remariage, mais en m’appuyant aussi sur l’analyse de mes propres souvenirs de spectatrice assidue du film, j’essaierai de comprendre les raisons de ce visionnement presque toujours réitéré de Gone With the Wind. Gone With the Wind’s filmic afterlife seems to belong to Gone With the Wind itself—one reason being the number of reeditions and restorations of the film, as well as its own narrative structure that invite viewers to watch the film again and possibly reevaluate it. Based on studies about re-reading and Stanley Cavell’s reflections on the comedy of remarriage, but also on my own memories of seeing the film repeatedly, this essay will attempt to understand the reasons for this general re-viewing of Gone With the Wind.

Deconstructing Stonewall in France What is “Stonewall”? A small bar in Manhattan. An historical event marked by rioting and police violence. A metonym for the radical turn in queer liberation. A romanticized, white-washed discourse riding the channels of US imperialism, erasing and reconfiguring local mobilization histories in its path. A mythical rereading of the past that reflects the social and political power of the people who created it. It is, undoubtedly, all of these things and much ...

Artist Sarah Combs (https://sarahelizabethcombs.com/) claims that art and laughter have the power to give us some respite from our fears and worries. Laughter can be just the right medicine to forget our troubles. As a family Covid-19 quarantine project, Combs recently created a short film, Gone With the Covid, a spoof of the classic film, Gone With the Wind. Beyond laughter and comic relief, is parody also a conduit of critique, or are certain topics—racism, the legacy of slavery, racial inequalities in epidemics like Covid-19—too serious issues to be parodied? In this interview, Sarah Combs explains her motivations and the challenges she had to face in the process. L’artiste Sarah Combs (https://sarahelizabethcombs.com/) affirme que l’art et le rire ont le pouvoir de nous offrir un répit loin de nos peurs et contrariétés. Le rire peut être le bon remède pour nous faire oublier nos soucis. La quarantaine familiale due à l’épidémie de Covid-19 lui a inspiré un court-métrage, Gone With the Covid, une parodie du film classique du cinéma hollywoodien Gone With the Wind. Par-delà la détente que procure le rire, la parodie est-elle aussi un outil critique ou faut-il parfois s’en abstenir, certains sujets – le racisme, la mémoire de l’esclavage, les inégalités raciales face aux épidémies comme le Covid-19 – étant trop graves pour être parodiés ? Dans cet entretien, Sarah Combs nous explique ses motivations et les défis qu’elle a dû relever dans le cadre de ce projet.

Le genre mélodramatique s’efforce de rendre intelligible l’expression des principes moraux et des émotions. En cela, The Gladiator (1831) de Robert Montgomery Bird et Jack Cade (1841) de Robert Conrad – deux mélodrames étatsuniens récompensés par le Edwin Forrest Prize – ne font pas exception. Toutefois, bien que les deux pièces entendent incarner un ethos démocratique et patriarcal qui entre en résonance avec l’idéal politique défendu par Andrew Jackson, les temporalités contradictoires à l’œuvre troublent l’élan téléologique qui anime la relecture de l’histoire proposée par les deux dramaturges et sapent toute interprétation typologique cohérente de ces mélodrames. The melodramatic genre gestures towards the expression of a morally and emotionally legible world (Peter Brooks). Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator (1831) and Robert Conrad’s Jack Cade (1841)—two plays that were awarded the Edwin Forrest Prize—are no exception and champion a democratic and patriarchal ethos that echoes the political ideal fostered by Andrew Jackson. Yet the conflicting temporalities at work in both plays problematize the teleological impulse that informs their revisiting of European history and undermine the possibility to venture a coherent typological interpretation of them.

In an interview with Gaumont’s artistic director Denis Peyrat, a journalist came to the conclusion that “film posters do not obey any miracle recipe.” However, when we consider the many posters of Gone With the Wind or when we talk about the film itself—a film that has survived the years and has never been the object of any remake—we can legitimately wonder if there are not any secret ingredients that would actually account for its longevity. These are some of the questions addressed in this interview with film scholar Pierre Berthomieu (Université de Paris), author of Hollywood, le temps des géants (Pertuis, Rouge profond, coll. “Raccords,” 2009). Dans son entretien avec Denis Peyrat, directeur artistique de Gaumont, un journaliste en vint à la conclusion que « l’affiche de film n’obéit à aucune recette miracle ». Pourtant, à considérer les nombreuses affiches du film Autant en emporte le vent ou le film lui-même – qui a traversé les années sans jamais faire l’objet d’un remake –, on peut légitimement se demander s’il n’y a pas des ingrédients secrets qui en expliqueraient la longévité. Ce sont là certaines des questions abordées dans cet entretien avec Pierre Berthomieu, chercheur en études cinématographiques à l’Université de Paris, auteur notamment de Hollywood, le temps des géants (Pertuis, Rouge profond, coll. « Raccords », 2009).

Gone With the Wind’s supporting actress Olivia de Havilland (1916-) once explained that she had “wanted to be part of Gone With The Wind as [she] sensed that the film would have a much longer life than others—perhaps as long as five years!” (“New Centenarian”). On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the film adaptation, the actress confirmed that if she had sensed that Gone With the Wind “would live much longer than any other film to date,” she had “never dared to imagine that it woul...

By drawing on current definitions of testimonial witnessing, this study returns to the attacks of September 11th to explore how two 9/11 poems, “First Writing Since (Poem on Crisis of Terror)” by Suheir Hammad and “Alabanza: In Praise of the Local 100” by Martin Espada, challenge the pervasive patriotism of mainstream journalism through acts of transcultural counterwitnessing. I explore how these 9/11 poems oppose, and engage with, pervasive patriotism, and emphasize the value of transcultural poetry in the face of extreme violence. The notion of the transcultural counterwitness has the potential to redefine how third-party witnesses, like poets, provide new understandings of historical responsibility and national identity in the American imagination.

Traditionally, U.S. history textbooks announce a civic function when aimed at U.S. readers: they exist to read America into the future, to imply a futurity for the American “experiment.” But present-day political breakdown has presented deep challenges for the familiar national narrative. Jill Lepore’s recent synthesis—These Truths: A History of the United States (2018)—is the most prominent such text to emerge in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. It represents the pinnacle of liberal nationalist historiography and will likely take its place on college syllabi inside and outside the United States. It is also the most substantial attempt in recent years to revive the national history as a serious intellectual genre. This essay takes the form of a narratological interpretation of These Truths. The book is an occasion to consider what national history is and what it is for.

Mack Hagood, Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control. Duke University Press, 2019. Pp. 288. ISBN: 9781478003809 Katherine Marazi In an age of overwhelming information, consider the impact of noise-cancelling headphones, or white noise machines that, similarly to the case of Orpheus, drown out the “sirens” around us allowing us to “remain unaffected in changeable, stressful, and distracting environments,” creating a “hear no evil, fear no evil” effect (Hagood 3). In his book, Hush: Media and Sonic ...