Current Research
Publications & AwardsFACULTY
Peter Beicken, Germanic Studies
“The Metamorphosis and A Report to an Academy”
My recent Kafka research has focused on the visual in this writer’s works, the cinematic aspects of his narratives. However, the two narratives I will be focusing on here are significant examples of his animal stories, namely The Metamorphosis and A Report to an Academy. Both are remarkable depictions of transformations. Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis finds himself changed into a being that for all purposes of identity evolves beyond gender in human terms. Rotpeter, the ape in A Report to an Academy, undergoes a transformation as well, joining humankind if not in bodily shape but in gendered behavior as he becomes a variety show artist conforming to the show business side of society.
Both stories are remarkable for their profound reflection of human conflicts in a troubled state of social affairs. Kafka, as Walter Benjamin observed, portrays a world that is ‘distorted’ [“entstellt”]. Both stories depict transformations that reverse or mock existing gender constructions which are, according to Judith Butler, essential to human society. Butler’s noted study Gender Trouble (1990; 1999), which invigorated the debate about gender as a performance, makes a persuasive case that gender is socially constructed and part of human performativity in society. While The Metamorphosis and Report to an Academy have been interpreted from a great variety of critical approaches, the issue of gender in its complexity has not been examined as closely within an appropriate theoretical framework. Using Butler’s gender as performance concept, I intend to investigate the performativity in both animal stories by Kafka as to the gender performing and transgendering aspects.
Sarah Benharrech, French
“Mme Thiroux d’Arconville or the Anti- Tournefort”
On the basis of my reading of an unpublished collection of texts entitled Pensées, Réflexions et anecdotes by Madame Thiroux d’Arconville (1720-1805), I compare her naturalist ethos with Fontenelle’s description of what this function entailed according to the criteria he set out in his eulogy of Tournefort. In contrast with Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1658-1706), a botanist who traveled as far as Armenia in order to search for new plants to add to his botanical collections, Mme Thiroux d’Arconville deplored the “laziness” that prevented her from exerting herself in faraway and perilous places. She stayed at home, content to observe the exotic plants she kept in her winter garden. This text demonstrates how obsessed she was with the theatricality she thought to be inherent to female status and being, and how she attempted to reveal her taste for botany without making a show of herself. At some level she denied her own gender and yet, she defended her own way of studying botany, different from the masculine practice described by Fontenelle, and more in tune with her sense of an ungendered self.
The current growth in interest in the life and works of Mme Thiroux d’Arconville was sparked by the recent discovery in a private library on Mauritius of several volumes of manuscripts written by this eighteenth century physicist, anatomist, naturalist, and novelist. Her collection of short texts provides an unmediated perspective on her last years, her thoughts, regrets, and unadulterated thirst for learning. She wrote a total of more than thirty books, all published anonymously. She translated Monroe’s Anatomy and Peter Shaw’s Chemical Lectures. She also carried out a large number of experiments in order to observe the process of putrefaction in meat that she later recorded in her Essay on Putrefaction. She was well known by her contemporaries for having drawn a female skeleton for the first time ever in the history of anatomy. Mme Thiroux d’Arconville also penned a number of novels and moralistic thoughts on human nature.
My research should shed new light on Mme Thiroux d’Arconville’s work, focusing on her authorial posture as a female scientist at a time when women were publicly blamed for publishing and studying hard sciences.
Hervé-Thomas Campangne, French
“Early Modern Writer Claims that He Is Writing a Book“
“Voué à la commodité particuli?re de mes parents et amis” reflects a more general propensity among Renaissance writers to move away from traditional forms of captatio benevolentiae. Beyond simple rhetorical objectives of pleasure and instruction, they tend to devote lengthy prefaces and epistles to the circumstances, reasons, and adventures surrounding the birth of their work. These forewords are extremely diverse: Guillaume de Chevallier tells readers how a “mysterious man,” rather than himself, is the author of the Discours des querelles et de l’honneur which he presents to the king; Trithemius states that he wrote his Polygraphie as a substitute for his much more mysterious and magical books of Steganographie; Barthélemy Aneau explains how the discovery of supposedly unused woodcuts in Macé Bonhomme’s shop brought him to conceive his 1552 Imagination Poétique. Although some of these stories are simple informative statements, others are complex narratives that constitute a form of mythos of the text’s origins. I propose to study the functions, forms, and objectives of a representative sample of these narratives, showing how in many instances their authors take us from the realm of truth into the domains of vraisemblance and myth.
Caroline Eades, French
“The Life-Long Careers of Seven « Belles Vertes »: Balasko, Breillat, Denis, Garcia, Kurys, Marshall, Serreau”
For the first time in the history of French cinema –and perhaps world cinema- the works of a significant number of women filmmakers have spanned several decades and achieved commercial and critical success. Some have been the subject of extended critical analysis. My work is a comparative exploration of the filmmaking careers of seven French women who belong to the same generation (all born around 1950) and started directing films between the mid-70s and the late 80s. I assess the impact of over twenty years of continuous work in terms of influence, recognition, and visibility, especially during the last decade (2000-2010), which can be considered a coda for some and, for others, as the turning point in their creative career. The concept of a “generation” of filmmakers could function as a key element in understanding the personal itinerary of each individual as well as her ability to interact, compete, and evolve within a symbolic and aesthetic environment known for its emphasis on the notion of age.
Kira Gor, Second Language Acquisition
“Perceptual Correlates of L1 Phonological Representations in Russian-English heritage speakers”
It has been claimed that even balanced bilinguals may exhibit a different phonological competence from monolingual native speakers and that it is a trade-off to maintaining linguistic competence in two languages. My current work aims to explore the perceptual correlates of L1 phonological representations in Russian-English heritage speakers with the goal of seeing whether they are capable of retaining a truly native-like perceptual competence in their L1. Heritage speakers in this study were defined as highly proficient bilinguals whose early exposure to L1 Russian was later interrupted with the subsequent greater exposure to their L2 English, which became their dominant language.
Various types of nonce minimal pairs with Russian hard and soft consonants in different syllable positions and in different phonetic environments were constructed to address the above question. The hard/soft distinctive feature permeates the entire consonantal system in Russian, although softness does not have one single articulatory or acoustic correlate for all consonants. Information about the hardness/softness of the consonant is distributed over the syllable and is mostly contained in the formant transitions of the following vowel. Therefore, categorization of consonants as hard or soft involves attending to different phonetic cues, and presents a varying perceptual difficulty fo Russian L2 learners depending on the consonant and its allophone. However, it is unclear how heritage speakers deal with the perceptual correlates of the phonological feature under consideration.
Two discrimination experiments, AX and AXB with talker variability, were carried out, and the performance of heritage speakers was compared to that of native speakers of Russian, late L2 learners of Russian, as well as English monolinguals (total n=110). The results from the AXB task demonstrated that heritage speakers did not differ significantly from native speaker controls in the three conditions (/t/ final, /p/ final, and CjV), and that the pattern of their responses was different from that of L2 learners of Russian with high and low proficiency. The second experiment that employed a speeded AX paradigm showed, however, that while heritage speakers were able to discriminate most of the contrasts with great accuracy similarly to native speaker controls, they performed at chance on the /p/-/p’/ contrast in the word final position in the context of the preceding vowel /i/.
The /p/-/p’/ contrast is especially difficult because it lacks salient acoustic cues such as fricativization in the /t/-/t’/ contrast. Thus, we argue that in heritage speakers, the initially acquired perceptual correlates of L1 phonological representations undergo reorganization due to subsequent exposure to the L2 sound system which results in a less stable L1 perceptual base. Moreover, the data suggest that phonological L1 attrition of one single phonological feature proceeds from perceptually most difficult contrasts and results in an incomplete set of perceptual correlates for the feature representation. Finally, investigation of heritage speech perception has implications for understanding L1 and L2 phonological acquisition, including the interaction between such factors as language exposure and language dominance.
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Persian
“Making Love by Making War: War Imagery in the Classical Persian Ghazal Tradition”
In the tradition of the Persian ghazal we often come across the motif of a constant battle between a supplicant lover – often expressed through the first person singular pronoun man (I), thus implicating the poet himself – and a crucial and unyielding beloved, needless of the lover. In the unequal battle between lover and beloved, the latter uses the bows of her eyebrows to cast arrows of her eyelashes or her glances in the direction of the lover, captures the lover’s heart or soul with the long lasso of her tresses and enchains him or his heart in the deep pitch-black dungeon of her disheveled hair. With his heart captive, the beloved is not free, while the beloved is elevated to the God-like position of absolute power without any need. While there is no dearth of comment on the prevalence of war imagery in the Persian lyric poetry, the trope has never been traced along a diachronic dimension and its connections with the concurrently evolving epic and romantic poetry have remained entirely unexplored.
My current work takes initial steps in that direction. In a work in progress I argue that given the historical fact of the simultaneous emergence and evolution of the two genres of romantic epic and lyric during the same time span – i.e., 11th through 13th centuries, often in the hands of a single poet – it might be fruitful to explore the process by which war imagery is transposed from the vast spaces of the former into the much denser and more layered confines of the latter. Through a study of selected ghazals of Sa’di and Hafez, traditionally believed to have elevated the discourse of the Persian ghazal to its zenith, the paper attempts to analyze those specific usages that may provide important clues to the ways in which the field of battling warriors may have been entwined with the bed where the visions of the impossibly beautiful beloved appears to the sleepless lover struck by love. Besides clarifying the use of an important set of images within the Persian poetic tradition, such a study may provide further evidence of the ways in which aesthetic traditions may develop internally by recasting earlier expressive devices in new molds, as well as in relation to their social environments.
Julie Koser, Germanic Studies
“Gender Ambivalence and the Armed Woman Warrior in Benedikte Naubert’s Thekla von Thurn and Therese Huber’s Die Familie Seldorf”
My work in progress addresses the ambivalent attitude of German society toward the radical social and political changes unleashed by the French Revolution and the subsequent Wars of Coalition. The images of the woman warrior depicted in the literary works of two prolific female authors in particular, Benedikte Naubert and Therese Huber, exemplify the conflicting feelings of anxiety and unease as well as hope and possibility that were created by the destabilization of social hierarchies, most specifically the established gender order, and political structures at the end of the eighteenth century. Naubert’s protagonist Thekla is forced into the military upheaval of the Thirty Years’ War, dresses as a man, and takes up arms only in order to ensure her safety, after which she happily resumes her role as caretaker and nurturer. Huber’s heroine Sara Seldorf, however, chooses to participate in the military conflicts of the French Revolution, including the Vendée uprising. Although Huber returns her heroine to the domestic sphere and a maternal role, her novel transcends the gendered public-private divide by suggesting that women can be simultaneously mothers and warriors and by presenting a new model of the male soldier that unified eighteenth-century conceptions of masculinity and femininity.
Manel Lacorte
“Toward an Emergent Global Community: From Communicative Goals to Dialogue”
A talk in progress presents L2 classroom activities to help learners work toward a global community. They begin with communicative goals that determine vocabulary and structures, and move from single units to elaborated discourse. Cultural and pragmatic perspectives and realistic scenarios are included through textual and technological enhancements that can be used in class or individually in hybrid environments, with the aim of conversing with native speakers. The presentation provides instructors with ideas for their own language classroom and hands-on practice. After a presentation of the basic ideas through illustration in text and technological format, participants will engage in activities and then create their own activities that accomplish the same goal, with discussion to follow.
In order to build competence in a FL, many instructors believe in the benefit of working progressively from structured activities to more open communication. It is common practice in beginning language textbooks to prompt for language production that progresses, within each chapter section, from shorter to longer blocks of language. We propose to do such progression across the entire chapter, which gives the learner more time to work at each stage. Learners move from single words in the context of activities and, by the time they finish the chapter, they are able to produce shorter to longer dialogues in the context of given situations. What we propose is informed by research that has been done in SLA, largely from the point of view of interactional sociolinguistics as applied to SLA. Our method is based on the primacy of interaction and discourse, with the goal of communication within communities of the classroom and beyond, in the native-speaking world. We believe that discourse structures are emergent if learners can begin with words and basic phrases to move into longer stretches of discourse that reflect more innovation.
Marianna Landa, Russian
“Female Geopolitics: Russia and France in the Anti-War Poetry of Maksimilian Voloshin”
Maksimilian Voloshin’s anti-war poetry (1914-1916) occupies a unique place in Russian modernist poetry. Among the overwhelming patriotic responses in the first years of the war, Voloshin appealed to both sides to stop the war through powerful female and religious imagery, characterizing France as the Virgin Mary and Russia as the Female Holy Fool. A talk in progress examines how Voloshin’s political and philosophical views are expressed through the feminine sacral discourse, and reveals the controversial geopolitics of his humanistic stance.
My book project examines reader response to Voloshin’s poetry during the revolution and civil war in Russia (1917-1924) when Voloshin enjoyed an unprecedented popularity among readers of all political and social venues. During these years, Voloshin rose from one of the eloquent, but typical spokesmen of Russian modernism to the position of leading national poet of Russia on a par with Alexander Blok. After 1924, political repression silenced the poet, and his work became unpublishable, his legacy as national poet completely forgotten. However, the contemporary rise in Voloshin’s readership and studies indicates that his legacy is still important today.
To understand why Voloshin now, I examine the phenomenon of Voloshin’s poetic fame in 1917-1924 as a result of the radical transformation of his poetics from early Symbolist aesthetics to a new language, which he called “Biblical Naturalism,” and which he based on the violent sexual discourse and theme of female sexual antibehavior found in the Book of Ezekiel and other Biblical prophets. My project explores how Voloshin’s new poetic language embodied the narratives of Russian messianism and terror to produce a poetry that responded to the most urgent needs of his contemporaries. I examine these narratives through an interdisciplinary framework, combining close readings of Voloshin’s poems and his readers’ commentaries with historical studies of Russian messianism. Why were Voloshin’s poems on Russia’s history and terror so important to the Russian reader at large during the massacres of the civil war and Soviet terror? How can a poet successfully speak on behalf of all warring sides and ideological enemies?
Roberta Lavine, Spanish
“Improving Classroom Learning with Classroom Assessment Techniques”
Accountability in the classroom and measuring student learning has become increasingly important in education. While it is common to employ summative assessments, such as final exams or periodic oral or tests, these measures provide only partial assessment of student performance on a single occasion, often when it is too late to implement changes. In contrast, formative evaluations provide useful and insightful information on a consistent and frequent basis. One type of formative assessment is classroom assessment techniques (CATs), alternative assessments that help teachers and students quickly assess how much and what kind of learning is taking place as well as their attitudes and motivation. CATs are not designed to evaluate or criticize teachers, but rather to provide information leading to improvement in student learning. CATs are based on familiar activities, can be easily implemented and adapted, and provide systematic and reliable feedback. Implementation of CATs has been shown to lead to improved student involvement, deeper learning and enhanced learner motivation. Although some CATs, like EXIT Cards, are very well known, there are many other excellent but less familiar techniques. A presentation in progress for ACTFL will introduce participants to various CATs, such as the One Minute Paper, Memory Matrix, One Sentence Summary, Focus Listing and Concept Maps.
Jianmei Lui, Chinese
“Bai Wei and Her Literary World”
My current work examines the modern Chinese female writer Bai Wei’s hysterical mode of writing during the period of revolutionary literature in the 1930s. Neither Chinese nor Western scholars have paid much attention to Bai Wei, even though her plays and fiction are closely connected to the belief in progress and revolution that marked her times. Unlike female revolutionaries depicted by male leftist writers, who are merely tropes of Chinese modernity, allegories of revolution, Bai Wei clearly affirms Communist ideology; however, her feminist writing both consciously and unconsciously blurs affirmation and negation, questioning the “authenticity” of the female represented by male writers. I suggest in a paper in progress that it is the hysterical mode that makes her subversion of revolutionary ideology possible.
José María Naharro Calderón, Spanish
My long-term work focuses on displacement literature of the Spanish Exile of 1939. During the Spanish Republicans' retirada from the Catalán front into France, they were placed in concentration camps by the French Third Republic. A number of written accounts of experiences of the exodus and emprisonment remain. Only rarely, however, did accounts by women find their way into the barbed wires enclaves. My current work looks at women’s witnessing together with a series of visual representations, particularly the memories of Otilia Castellvi's De las checas de Barcelona a la Alemania nazi, Silvia Mistral's Exodo, and the photographs of Manuel Moros, a Colombian painter who shot a number of clandestine pictures (reminiscent of the aesthetics of the Collioure group), all of which unflinchingly depict the plight of Spanish republican women in the French camps.
Valérie Orlando, French
“Literary Manifestos for a Civil Society: the Legacy of Abdellatif Laâbi’s Souffles on Sociopolitically Engaged Writing in Contemporary Morocco”
In the 1960s, at the beginning of Morocco’s Les Anneés de plomb (The Lead Years, 1963-1999), Moroccan authors and poets Abdellatif Laâbi, Abraham Serfaty, Driss Chraïbi, and Abdelkébir Khatibi sought to establish the voice of resistance to what they considered a corrupt and repressive political regime. Laâbi’s politically passionate writing in Souffles ranged from questioning King Hassan II’s commitment to human rights to describing the solitude and pain of his imprisonment and later, exile. It was inevitable that the poetry and prose published in journals and reviews such as Souffles (inspired by leftist, primarily French communist intellectuals: Sartre, Benda, and Camus), would ultimately provoke repercussions from a monarchy feeling vulnerable in the wake of colonial domination. The “literary manifesto” written in French would, from the 1960s forward, provide a venue through which some of the most civil minded engagés poets, playwrights, authors and journalists of Morocco’s francophone enclaves would challenge the status quo and question the abuse of thousands during the Lead Years. The literary manifesto, in the Moroccan context, historically has been a humanist work, whether in the form of poetry, prose or journalistic media, that defies the political will of the country in order to promote the well-being of those who cannot speak for themselves.
A current paper studies the legacy of 1960s social engagement as expressed in certain seminal works of prose as well as poetry and essays published in journals and reviews such as Souffles and Lamalif and their continuing influence on the contemporary francophone literati of the country. Abdellatif Laâbi, Zakia Douad and Abraham Serfaty still endure, regularly contributing to the socio-politically engaged cultural production of the country. Until their recent deaths, Abdelkébir Khatibi (1939-2009) and Driss Chraïbi (1926-2007) continued to write for and promote civil justice in their society. These authors and poets’ struggle for sociocultural equality and human rights is echoed in contemporary works such as Rida Lamrini’s Le Maroc de nos enfants (1998) and Y-a-t-il un avenir au Maroc, me demanda Yasmina (2006); Noufissa Sbaï’s L’Amante du rif (2007) and Touria Oulehri’s Les Conspirateurs sont parmi nous (2006). However, it remains to be seen to what extent Morocco’s new generation of sociocultural and political activists will influence a society that often seems caught between the legacy of the past and the socioeconomic and political challenges of our contemporary globalized era.
Elizabeth A. Papazian, Russian
“The Ethnography and Subjectivity in Soviet Poetic Cinema”
The issue of “Soviet subjectivity” has recently been a topic of major debate, particularly among historians. Choi Chatterjee and Karen Petrone have phrased the question as follows: “To what extent did coercive Soviet state institutions and discourses limit the agency of individuals in constructing their identities, and how, precisely, did Soviet citizens exercise agency in creating their identities from and against prescriptive state discourses? A current paper argues that the issue of subjectivity was a central concern of the Soviet “poetic” cinema.
Poetic cinema is a term that refers first of all to a film form in which elements of narrative recede in importance while formal elements may dominate in structuring shots and their arrangement. At the same time, it refers both to a Soviet “school” of the 1960s and 70s and to the related style of international art cinema of approximately the same period. The poetic cinema coincided with the birth or rebirth of “ethnic” or national cinemas in the non-Russian Soviet republics. Both the Russian and the non-Russian “ethnic” examples of the political action so typical of Stalin-era cinema – that is, with “private life,” or more generally, everyday life. The paper considers how both Russian and non-Russian Soviet “national cinemas” use everyday life as a way of exploring questions of subjectivity – including national identity, self-fashioning, and the possibility or impossibility of individual agency. The position or plight of the individual in the collective is embodied not only on the level of narrative, but through a form that gestures toward ethnography, using natural lighting, synchronized sound, non-actors. Analysis will focus on the following films: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (dir. Paradjanov, 1964); The Bride (dir. Narliev, 1972); The Story of Asya Klyachina, who Loved, but did not Marry (dir. Konchalovsky, 1967); and Brief Encounters (dir. Muratova, 1967).
The current project represents a continuation of a larger project on “Ethnography in Soviet Film,” which is beginning to evolve into an exploration not only of “ethnography,” but of subjectivity and/or interiority as expressed through an “ethnographic” form. What I am beginning to realize is that the preoccupation with ethnography is not confined to the non-Russian “ethnic” cinemas of the Soviet Union, but that it also appears in Russian cinema. This is particularly exciting because it has allowed me to expand the purview of the project from what was starting to feel like a kind of “hunt for national subversion” by the dominated non-Russian cultures into an exploration of how individual subjectivity, agency, interiority – call it what you will – is expressed in Soviet cinema in general, not only by the dominated ethnic groups. This means my project fits into current debates in Russian of totalitarian subjectivity.
Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, Spanish
“Extranjeria y escucha: narrativas del desalopjo en el Puerto Rico contemporáneo »
What are the challenges posed by public discourse facing contemporary literary writing in Puerto Rico? What promotional templates should an author follow in order to make visible his or her text in the cultural milieu of the island? A current paper will read the works of Puerto Rican writers, Eudardo Lalo, José Liboy and Yara Liceaga as examples of a different kind of literary experience in contemporary Puerto Rico. These texts purposely situate their stories far away from the banality and mediocrity of the journalistic approach that controls the cultural media on the island. My analysis will read the specific ways these texts, by listening to other bodies and spaces, produce a different sense of community and cultural dialogue. In particular, I will underscore how Lalo, Liboy and Liceaga’s texts represent an alternative critical discourse on the literary ethics within a colonial society such as Puerto Rico.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Silvia Baage, French
“Exoticism and the Aesthetics of Diversity: The Concept of the Island in the Works of LeClézio, Glissant, and Segalen”
A current presentation entitled “Exoticism and the aesthetics of diversity: The Concept of the Island in the works of LeClézio, Glissant, and Segalen” will explore intertextual relationships in the works of these authors through an analysis of models of exoticism that are prevalent in their works. My project will compare LeClézio’s concept of the island (origin and root) to Glissant’s representation in the Caribbean Discourse (lentils), question their compatibility, and extrapolate on Segalen’s foundational essay on exoticism as a possible foundation for French and Francophone insular literature. My research will also take into consideration theories on post-colonial literature from both the Francophone perspective (Bernabé, Confiant, and Chamoiseau) as well as the Anglo-Saxon approach (Bhabha) to analyze LeClézio’s Le Chercheur d’or.
My approach to LeClézio’s writings through the concept of the island and the notion of the sacred is original in that it puts a new spin on the infamous antithesis civilization vs. savages: I intend to show how the island has a sacred character which is not the case anymore for the French metropolis; this phenomena not only manifests itself in LeClézio’s writings but also in the works of other authors who tend to be deprived of attention because they come from far away islands.
As for Segalen and Glissant, their works form the foundation of post-colonial studies in the Francophone world: my work focuses on intertextual relationships in contemporary literature that do NOT originate from the Caribbean islands or Africa. Rather, my goal is to show how French authors on the one hand, and Francophone authors of formerly colonized insular territory (such as Corsica, Tahiti, or Reunion Island to name just a few) on the other hand, write about real and fictional islands. They voluntarily enter into a complex system of intertextual relationships by rewriting foundational essays and discourses such as Glissant’s Caribbean Discourse or Segalen’s concept of exoticism (Essay on Exoticism). Again, LeClézio’s insular novels are representative of this process in that he uses the concept of the island to talk about identity and the search of the other.
Claudia Biester, Germanic Studies
“More than Meets the Eye: The Geography of the Face in Anna Seghers’ Novel The Seventh Cross”
A current paper explores facial communication under the Nazi regime as represented in Anna Seghers’ novel The Seventh Cross (1942). Using Foucault’s theory of the panoptical society (Discipline and Punish) and Barbara Korte’s interdisciplinary study Body Language in Literature, I will examine Anna Seghers’ use of ‘face’ language as a sign repertoire under the Fascist regime. The creation of facial language employs the ‘geography of the face’ for the purpose of resistance and defiance. Taking advantage of such a secret language, the ordinary people form an almost mythical bond with respect to their notion of the German fatherland, undermining the usurpation by the Nazi state. In her novel, the characters that are linked in struggle against the Nazi regime form a community by navigating through the geography of facial expressions. Seghers’ use of facial expressions adds considerably to the narrative’s significance. As Helen Fehervary points out, Seghers’ visuality is indebted to Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro in his portraiture. In focusing on the communicative dimension of the face, Seghers employs a form of literary chiaroscuro to accentuate signification in an underground network that tries to preserve humanity.
Victoria I. Finney, Germanic Studies
"We are no more in Colchis but in Greece, /No more among monstrosities but men! - Colonial Thinking and Anti-Colonial Tendencies in Franz Grillparzer's Medea”
A current paper explores the relationship between the dominant and subjugated groups in Franz Grillparzer’s play Medea (1821) from the point of view of colonial/post-colonial perspectives. I am utilizing Edward Said’s idea of the biased “Third World” discourse, Homi Bhabha’s notion of the inherent tension in the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, and Susanne Zantop’s concept of ‘triangular thinking.’ My analysis indicates that the rhetoric of Western self-fashioning penetrates the worldview of both the dominant Greeks and the subjugated Medea and Gora. The relationship of the two groups towards each other is ambivalent. In spite of her ban, the Greeks are not able to view Medea as an unworthy human being, while the Colcher act in a manner reminiscent of the Greeks’ actions that they previously condemned. As its final question, the paper analyzes the author’s stance towards colonial thinking/fantasies. Austria’s inability to compete with major colonial powers could have resulted in a more deeply ingrained ideology of colonialism. My reading of the text reveals a strong statement against colonialism: while all colonizer-figures, including the passive supporter of the system Creusa, fail at achieving their goals and justifying their actions, Grillparzer uses Medea to communicate the hope of the survival of humanistic ideals. Colonial thinking is revealed as a danger to the colonizer’s society since the actions of Jason and Creon lead to their own demise.
Carolina Gómez-Montoya, Spanish
"Travel and Writing in Victoria Ocampo”
Throughout her life, the Argentinean writer Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) traveled extensively and wrote numerous letters and essays about her experiences in Europe and the United States. Traditionally marginalized by critics and generally tagged as a privileged and frivolous woman of letters, her writing has not received adequate attention, and she has not been analyzed as the writer and strong literary critic and philosopher that she was. A current paper opens a new perspective on her ideas about travel, writing, and identity. One of the most enigmatic testimonies of her travels is Cartas de posguerra [Post-war Letters], published posthumously in 2009, where one can see for the first time the free and spontaneous quality of her writing. In each letter, Ocampo engages in a form of writing in displacement: outside the page and in the margins, both literally and symbolically. Cartas de posguerra unveils a type of writing that becomes possible only abroad, as a nomadic practice, and within the margins of language. Indeed, in her Autobiography, Ocampo refers to herself as having “a soul without a passport.”
Dolores Lima, Spanish
My dissertation, entitled “Disturbing representation: affective becoming in Macedonio Fernández, César Aira and Antonio Di Benedetto” explores three different moments in the history of literature of the twentieth century through narratives that disturb literary representation: Museo de la novela de la Eterna byMacedonio Fernández, written in the first decades of the century, Mundo animal (1953) by Antonio Di Benedetto, and the contemporary short novels by César Aira. Closely related to avant-garde principles, they disassemble traditional narrative devices and search for new ways to produce meaning. I argue that they not only disturb literary representation as a strategy to question the way we think and conceive of reality, but they also search for new modes of writing that allow for a different kind of experience. I propose the concept of affective writing and displaced subjects as axes of literary practices in which the meaning of the text emerges in the dimension of sensibility. Based on Spinoza’s concept of affect, I explore the experience of threshold as a common denominator in these three writers. I am interested in noting the different modes of becoming of affect: as passion in Macedonio, idiocy in Di Benedetto and frivolity in Aira. Taking into account the development and transformation of the avant-garde practice throughout the XX century, I ultimately seek to understand the relationship between the different modes of conceiving and practicing literature and the historical and philosophical context from which these narratives emerge. A presentation in progress will cover material from the second chapter.
Andrea Mickus, Spanish
“The Animals We Imagine: the Poetry of Luis Chaves in Translation”
Luis Chaves, a forerunner in contemporary Costa Rican poetry, entered the spotlight in 1997 with the publication of his second book, Los animales que imaginamos. Since then, Chaves, himself a translator of English-language poetry, has published books in Costa Rica, Spain and Argentina. Both his poetry and their subsequent translations into Italian have been received with awards. The translations to be presented include poems from the above book, as well as from the 2005 Chan Marshall. While Chaves’ poetry is clearly rooted in San José, the play between caustic irreverence and naïveté in his voice carries over into English in a way that easily dialogues with contemporary U.S. poetry.
Ina Sammler, Germanic Studies
“The Uncovered Cover-up - Displacement and Memory in Uwe Timm's My Brother's Shadow / Das aufgedeckte Totschweigen: Verdrängung und Erinnerung in Uwe Timms Am Beispiel meines Bruders”
In My Brother's Shadow, Uwe Timm slowly reveals his family’s experiences during the Nazi regime and foregoes the use of chronological order usually used in an account of the past. This memory process is a guided conjecture and can be characterized as a polyphonic narrative style, a process that represents a narrative space between rapprochement and distance to his family history. Timm's story goes beyond self-reflection and appeals to the reader. He reclaims the past for the present and moreover for the future, so that minimizing or retouching the events of life will no longer be necessary. He also shows a struggle against gender-specific roles and the worldview of his family. As part of a new generation, Timm confronted the pitying victim's role of his father’s generation and to the possible complicity and ethical and moral responsibility of his family. In Timm’s writing, his father and brother are exposed as active Nazis who not only supported the system, but also maintained it. Uwe Timm's narrative leads to a search for identity, family, and history, releasing a past bound to repressed silence.
Òscar Oliver Santos Sopena, Spanish
“Arte y literatura en el siglo de Oro: Una visión de la novela picaresca a través de las obras pictóricas de Diego Velázquez”
La novela picaresca hace una descripción minuciosa de la "decadente" sociedad española. La anónima Lazarillo de Tormes, El Guzmán de Alfarache de Mateo Alemán, y El Buscón de Francisco de Quevedo establecen las bases y la culminación del género picaresco. Su lectura y análisis nos dan a conocer detalles de la situación social española en el siglo XVII.
La intención de mi ensayo es establecer conexiones entre estas novelas y las obras pictóricas de Diego de Velázquez (1599-1660). Sus pinturas reflejan la sociedad decadente, religiosa, pícara y pesimista de la España del siglo XVII. Mi trabajo profundiza sobre estas descripciones literarias de los espacios; ofreciendo una representación visual de los escenarios e itinerarios de los protagonistas de estas novelas picarescas; añadiendo las imágenes pictóricas. Estos cuadros representan las escenas literarias de estas novelas modernas; mostrando las características principales de la literatura del Barroco. Imágenes que podrían ser perfectamente recortes de la realidad de los personajes y escenarios de estas obras. Viendo el diálogo entre espacio, el arte y sus representaciones visuales. Usando como marco teórico los trabajos de Antonio Regalado, José Antonio Maravall y Fernando de la Flor entre otros.
Kathryn Taylor, Spanish
“Carmen Martín Gaite, María Luisa Elío and Francisca Aguirre: Three Versions of a Lost Childhood”
In her text La loca de la casa (The Crazy House), Rosa Montero proposes that writing is a result of decadence, ruin, or some type of upheaval. According to Montero, “An elevated number of novelists have had a very early experience with decadence. That’s to say that at the age of six, or ten, or twelve, they have witnessed the violent destruction and disappearance of their childhood world. This violence can be objective and exterior: the death of a parent, a war, a catastrophe (13).” In other words, it is through the process of writing that writers confront the ghosts of a past that continues to haunt them. In a current paper, I will analyze how Carmen Martín Gaite, Francisca Aguirre, and María Luisa Elío have used their texts to revisit moments in their past that represents the definitive separation between childhood and adulthood. Of the three writers that I will discuss, Martín Gaite has achieved the most literary recognition. However, the texts written by Aguirre and Elío are very similar to hers in their autobiographical elements, fragmentation and return to a past marked by profound loss. In El cuarto de atrás (The Back Room), Martín Gaite mixes the fantastic with the real as the protagonist begins to remember guided by the questions of a mysterious visitor in the middle of the night. In Tiempo de llorar, María Luisa Elío returns to Spain after thirty years, and her memories are both provoked and erased, making her experience doubly painful. Finally, in Espejito, espejito (Mirror, Mirror), Francisca Aguirre mixes poetry and prose, retrieving pieces of a painful past that she hopes that future generations will not have to endure.
Petra Volkhausen, Germanic Studies
“Expressions and Manifestations of “Madness” in Gabriele Reuter’s Aus guter Familie (1895)”
A presentation in progress deals with madness as a form of miscommunication, failed “translation,” and overstepping the boundaries of fixed societal borders. In Gabriele Reuter’s novel Aus guter Familie (1895), Agathe Heidling, the female protagonist, is driven into madness because she is denied self-expression, caused primarily by the expectations of a dutiful daughter set up by her family and Prussian society. Utilizing gender as well as poststructuralist perspectives (Foucault, Derrida, Felman), my paper investigates “madness” and its relation to Reuter’s characters which has never been done before.
