Literature Compass最新文献

Based on the question of the representability of economy and economics in audiovisual media, developments on the financial markets have often been discussed as a depiction problem. The abstractness and complexity of economic interrelations seem to defy classical modes of storytelling and dramatization. Nevertheless, public opinion about economic changes and dependencies crucially relies on audiovisual media. But how can the public communicate in images, sounds, and words about forces that are out of sight and out of reach, and can supposedly only be adequately grasped by experts? In a case study on audiovisual images of the global financial crisis (2007–), this paper tracks and analyzes a recurring motif: the staging of expert knowledge as close-ups of expressive faces vis-à-vis computer screens in television news, documentaries, as well as feature films. It draws on the use of digital tools for corpus exploration (reverse image search) and the visualization of video annotations. By relating and comparing different staging strategies by which these “broker faces” become embodiments of turbulent market dynamics, the paper proposes to not regard them as repeated instantiations of the same metaphor, but as a developing web of cinematic metaphors. Different perspectives (news of market developments or historical accounts of crisis developments) and affective stances toward the global financial crisis are expressed in these variations of the face-screen constellation. The paper thus presents a selection of different appearances of “broker faces” as a medium for an audiovisual discourse of the global financial crisis. A concluding analysis of a scene from Margin Call focuses on its specific intertwining of expert and screen as an ambivalent movement figuration of staging insight. Between the feeling of discovery (of a potential future threat) and the sense of being haunted (by a menacing force), the film stages the emergence of a “broker face” in an atmospheric tension between suspense and melancholy. We argue that the film thereby reframes the motif and poses questions of agency, temporality, and expert knowledge.

A brief examination of the history of English as an academic subject in China is given, with focus on the paramount importance China attaches to the teaching and learning of foreign languages and literatures in general and of English language and literature in particular. It is argued that China presents a unique case in human history in which an immense sovereign state has put systematic and sustained efforts into learning a foreign language, formulating unified linguistic policies and enforcing them in a potent manner; and by so doing, has made the external world relatively transparent in a short time, integrating all kinds of new knowledge into its cognitive system and transforming the minds of its population, thus effecting an overall civilizational transformation.

This article examines David Lodge's novel Deaf Sentence (2008), which focuses on the life of Desmond, a retired professor of linguistics. I argue that this text offers a standpoint through which readers can visualise the global phenomenon of population ageing and address the question of global responsibility. I look at Deaf Sentence within the tradition of the Bakhtinian polyphonic novel and through the lens of the campus novel that Lodge discusses in his critical writing. The analysis of dialogism and self-reflexivity illuminates the reverberations of global ageing on the life of Desmond, situating questions of wellbeing and demography within a narrative perspective. Detailing their struggles with isolation, incontinence and erectile dysfunction, the narration of Desmond and his father growing older sheds light on the limitations of biomedical scripts for older men based on bodily control and sexual performativity. Considering the tension of biomedical discourses and gender expectations informing the cultural construction of ageing in the global North, I contend that Lodge's writing exposes the limits of the neoliberal ideals of self-sufficiency and individual responsibility at the heart of the notion of successful ageing. Echoing Desmond's self-reflection, Deaf Sentence offers its reader a standpoint through which to reflect on his problematic participation in the neoliberal, patriarchal regimes that marginalise him. Interpreting the novel as a space for deconstructing the ideal of an autonomous and independent subject postulated by neoliberal discourses, I read Deaf Sentence as an invitation to its readers to embrace their own vulnerability, fostering ethics of care towards themselves and the other.

This essay argues that English departments in India have had two advantages that their counterparts in the west lack. First, the ability to speak and write correctly in English is understood as a social and professional resource and this prompts large numbers of college students to opt for an English major. Second, English literature has unfolded, historically among several highly developed literatures in our regional languages and this, in conjuction with post-colonial theory, has opened up vast new fields of research for English professors in India. Improved salaries and research facilities after the mid-eighties began attracting excellent faculty to our best English departments and, by the end of the twentieth century, some of these were poised to compete with the best departments of the world. Despite this, Indian universities are perenially plagued by political interference and corruption and this has made it impossible for several excellent departments and indeed entire universities to sustain excellence.

This article mounts an initial exploratory engagement with the weird fiction of Henry S. Whitehead, framed by American imperial expansion into the Caribbean in the interwar years. It situates Whitehead and his work within the wider historical context and shows how Whitehead himself used and played with history as part of his fiction. The article considers the role of light in Whitehead's fiction and imperial projects, as well as the way that Whitehead's work, as horror fiction, both shapes and seeks to dispel notions of the Caribbean as a space of horror. As well as offering some initial conclusions, the article seeks to open further lines for future investigation.

This introductory essay offers a theoretical framework for discussing the relationship between contemporary literature and global responsibility. After surveying recent conceptualisations of collective responsibility, the introduction presents the definition of global responsibility that frames the Special Issue. ‘Global’ is understood here in the double sense of worldwide and comprehensive: it draws attention to our global relations of interdependence and to the complex networks of actions and inactions that create the conditions of possibility for structural violence and injustice. Literature is a powerful tool for thinking about the challenges and questions that characterise our interconnected world, as well as for developing a sense of responsibility that transcends national and cultural boundaries. Having reflected on the ethico-political role and potential of literature, this introduction summarises the articles that constitute this Special Issue. While the five essays that follow cannot possibly address all the problems that affect our globalised world, they offer a set of concepts, narrative explorations, and hermeneutical readings that help us to reassess critically our compromised positions, thus creating the pre-conditions for transformative interventions.

In the United States, student eagerness to pursue concentrated study in English literature as well as in other humanities fields has plummeted after the financial crisis of 2008. Envisioned strong career demand and high wages upon graduation are major drivers of program choices, and such demand is articulated through wealthy industries that can also offer funding to universities. That said, it becomes self-fulfilling to contribute to the cliché of the humanities perpetually being in crisis, which occurs when humanities specialists begin valuing their own fields by the measures celebrated by other programs. Is it possible to take the current situation and leverage our strengths toward constructive innovations in English studies that remain true to our own values? To address this question, we first summarize three key ways in which the situation in the United States is distinct from, yet connected to, that of most other countries: extensive decentralization of education policy and funding; high student debt; and opposition to education in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the humanities in general. After reflecting on the opportunities for greater global connection posed by the pandemic-driven shift to online learning, we discuss some of our own efforts to build a sense of local and international responsibility in our students. The skills, knowledge, and openness to other cultures and identities that we nurture through the literature we teach and the socially invested pedagogy we practice allow us to incorporate ethics and empathy into the design of international economics and to help ensure that a sense of local and global responsibility is part of its operation.

This paper considers the professionalization of literary studies in Australian universities. It traces ways in which its interdisciplinary formations have been shaped not only by the cultural contexts of colonialism and postcolonialism, but also by institutional factors and budgetary pressures. Nevertheless, it argues this framework has also created intellectual opportunities for positively reshaping the subject so as to bring it into discursive conversation with cognate fields. It suggests that the repositioning of Australian literature and literary studies in relation to World Literature may offer the prospect of opening up the field for the benefit of scholars the world over.

This article is about why Africa is overlooked in eighteenth-century literary studies. Africa’s neglect is not merely a problem of attention. Neither the parameters of the field nor the tools of the discipline appear particularly suited for engaging Africa as anything other than an invention of the European imagination. In what follows, I seek to bring more clarity to the origins of this paradox and to contextualize some of its governing assumptions not in order to solve it but to show that having already solved it can’t and doesn’t need to be a prerequisite for scholars of eighteenth-century literature to face it head-on. The first section offers a brief account of how this paradox arose from the political and intellectual matrix of the mid-twentieth century when African Studies was first institutionalized in the West. The subsequent sections highlight the way this history has shaped—both directly and indirectly—the way scholars and teachers of eighteenth-century literature have understood Africa and their obligations to it and suggests some ways we might begin to rethink Africa’s place in the field