{"title":"Trauma, Romance, and the Diasporic Memory Keepers of the Holodomor in Erin Litteken’s The Memory Keeper of Kyiv","authors":"Mateusz Świetlicki","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139245098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Justin Edwards, Rune Graulund, and Johan Höglund, editors. Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene","authors":"Jacob DeBrock","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21233","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"170 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139285499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lauren Berlant, On the Inconvenience of Other People","authors":"Jake Sanders","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21266","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"215 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139284982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marlon Ross, Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness","authors":"Marietta Kosma","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21256","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139285648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kelli Moore, Legal Spectatorship: Slavery and the Visual Culture of Domestic Violence","authors":"Mary E. Booth","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21198","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"210 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139286545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Grant Wiedenfeld, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream","authors":"Rachel L. Carazo","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21211","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139285406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laurence W. Mazzeno and Sue Norton, editors. Contemporary American Fiction in the European Classroom. Teaching and Texts","authors":"Cristina Chevereșan","doi":"10.4000/ejas.21218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.21218","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139287306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines Herman Melville’s poetry collection Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) using theories and concepts from the sphere of disability studies. Mobilizing evidence from Melville’s letters as well as close readings of the poems, I argue that Melville presented a complicated relationship to questions of bodily wholeness and autonomy in his written work, particularly in response to the political and existential stresses of the U.S. Civil War. Melville conceptualized Battle-Pieces as a chronological archive intended to redeem a narrative of wholeness and overcome a perceived weakness or deficiency in the body politic. However, the book’s fractured arc serves rather to highlight a lack of healing, both political and corporeal. Melville’s obsession with the “whole” body is apparent both in his unpublished, private writing and through close readings of the poems “Donelson,” “The College Colonel,” and others. Reading Battle-Pieces through the lens of disability studies makes visible the author’s conflicted responses to wounded bodies. Melville’s obsession with wholeness and healing was part of a larger national obsession—that of mending the rift between North and South by tending to the physical wounds of individual veterans—a historico-medical context that Melville scholars have largely ignored. Placing Melville’s poems within a larger conversation about medical intervention and the limits of the ‘disabled’ body as a symbol for national regeneration, in this article I show how Melville overtly engaged in ongoing debates about healing and nation-building in the aftermath of the Civil War.
{"title":"“In Honor, as in Limb, Unmarred”: Obsession with the “Whole” Body in Herman Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War","authors":"Vanessa Meikle Schulman","doi":"10.4000/ejas.20824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20824","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Herman Melville’s poetry collection Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) using theories and concepts from the sphere of disability studies. Mobilizing evidence from Melville’s letters as well as close readings of the poems, I argue that Melville presented a complicated relationship to questions of bodily wholeness and autonomy in his written work, particularly in response to the political and existential stresses of the U.S. Civil War. Melville conceptualized Battle-Pieces as a chronological archive intended to redeem a narrative of wholeness and overcome a perceived weakness or deficiency in the body politic. However, the book’s fractured arc serves rather to highlight a lack of healing, both political and corporeal. Melville’s obsession with the “whole” body is apparent both in his unpublished, private writing and through close readings of the poems “Donelson,” “The College Colonel,” and others. Reading Battle-Pieces through the lens of disability studies makes visible the author’s conflicted responses to wounded bodies. Melville’s obsession with wholeness and healing was part of a larger national obsession—that of mending the rift between North and South by tending to the physical wounds of individual veterans—a historico-medical context that Melville scholars have largely ignored. Placing Melville’s poems within a larger conversation about medical intervention and the limits of the ‘disabled’ body as a symbol for national regeneration, in this article I show how Melville overtly engaged in ongoing debates about healing and nation-building in the aftermath of the Civil War.","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135886495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The brief reference to the Cartesian vortex in Moby-Dick has already been discussed in numerous specialized articles, usually in terms of the history of ideas, e.g. in two articles by D. C. Leonard (1979; 1980). By itself, a vortex is an appropriate image for being immersed, obsessed, absorbed, and blended into objectivity, but the paper will focus on another, non-Cartesian vortex, which was emerging in the 1850s as the so-called vortex theory of matter. The point of this “hydrokinetic theory of matter” was that it was a “unitary continuum theory” of a “Universal Plenum,” conceived initially on the basis of Herman von Helmholtz’s work on hydrodynamics. In 1859, the German physicist demonstrated mathematically that stable vortex rings could exist indefinitely in a (theoretical) continuous elastic fluid, rather like the remarkably stable smoke rings blown by guns or as a smoking trick. For a time, the vortex atom was recognized as a very promising idea on the cutting edge of science. In literary fiction, the vortex atom translated into curious imagery of a claustrophobic universal plenum, matter and soul combined, organized by intermeshing vortices, and leaving no possible room for a hovering freedom in empty space. In a universe based on the vortex theory of matter, a subject is not in a vortex, but is itself a vortex, continuously meshing with other vortices, in a basket-like, tightly knit lattice that comprises everything. Melville’s imagery related to matter and vortices seems to be one of the early instances of the simultaneous fascination and dismay provoked by the vortex theory of matter in the second half of the nineteenth century, not among scientists, but among the non-scientific general audience. The article focuses on Clarel, comparing three different images of the vortex with imagery from contemporary popular scientific articles. Additional examples from Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Billy Budd are discussed as contexts illustrating the variety of meaning attached by Melville to the vortex.
在《白鲸》中对笛卡尔涡旋的简要引用已经在许多专门的文章中进行了讨论,通常是在思想史方面,例如在D. C. Leonard (1979;1980)。就漩涡本身而言,它是一种被沉浸、沉迷、吸收和融入客观事物的恰当形象,但本文将重点关注另一种非笛卡尔漩涡,它出现在19世纪50年代,即所谓的物质漩涡理论。这个“物质的流体动力学理论”的要点在于,它是一个“普遍全会”的“统一连续统理论”,最初是在赫尔曼·冯·亥姆霍兹关于流体动力学的工作的基础上构想出来的。1859年,这位德国物理学家用数学方法证明了稳定的旋涡环可以在(理论上)连续的弹性流体中无限期地存在,就像用枪吹出的非常稳定的烟圈或吸烟戏法一样。有一段时间,涡旋原子被认为是科学前沿的一个非常有前途的想法。在文学小说中,漩涡原子被翻译成一个幽闭恐怖的宇宙全体会议的奇特意象,物质和灵魂结合在一起,由相互交织的漩涡组织起来,在空旷的空间里不给盘旋的自由留下任何可能的空间。在一个基于物质涡旋理论的宇宙中,一个主体并不在涡旋中,但它本身就是一个涡旋,不断地与其他涡旋啮合,形成一个篮状的、紧密编织的晶格,包含了一切。梅尔维尔关于物质和漩涡的意象似乎是19世纪下半叶物质漩涡理论同时引起的迷恋和沮丧的早期例子之一,不是在科学家中,而是在非科学的普通观众中。本文以Clarel为中心,将三种不同的漩涡图像与当代科普文章中的图像进行比较。《白鲸记》、《皮埃尔》和《比利·巴德》中的其他例子被讨论为梅尔维尔赋予漩涡的各种意义的上下文。
{"title":"Melville and the Vortex Theory of Matter","authors":"Paweł Stachura","doi":"10.4000/ejas.20759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20759","url":null,"abstract":"The brief reference to the Cartesian vortex in Moby-Dick has already been discussed in numerous specialized articles, usually in terms of the history of ideas, e.g. in two articles by D. C. Leonard (1979; 1980). By itself, a vortex is an appropriate image for being immersed, obsessed, absorbed, and blended into objectivity, but the paper will focus on another, non-Cartesian vortex, which was emerging in the 1850s as the so-called vortex theory of matter. The point of this “hydrokinetic theory of matter” was that it was a “unitary continuum theory” of a “Universal Plenum,” conceived initially on the basis of Herman von Helmholtz’s work on hydrodynamics. In 1859, the German physicist demonstrated mathematically that stable vortex rings could exist indefinitely in a (theoretical) continuous elastic fluid, rather like the remarkably stable smoke rings blown by guns or as a smoking trick. For a time, the vortex atom was recognized as a very promising idea on the cutting edge of science. In literary fiction, the vortex atom translated into curious imagery of a claustrophobic universal plenum, matter and soul combined, organized by intermeshing vortices, and leaving no possible room for a hovering freedom in empty space. In a universe based on the vortex theory of matter, a subject is not in a vortex, but is itself a vortex, continuously meshing with other vortices, in a basket-like, tightly knit lattice that comprises everything. Melville’s imagery related to matter and vortices seems to be one of the early instances of the simultaneous fascination and dismay provoked by the vortex theory of matter in the second half of the nineteenth century, not among scientists, but among the non-scientific general audience. The article focuses on Clarel, comparing three different images of the vortex with imagery from contemporary popular scientific articles. Additional examples from Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Billy Budd are discussed as contexts illustrating the variety of meaning attached by Melville to the vortex.","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135886497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his influential essay “The Translator as the Creator of the Canon,” Jerzy Jarniewicz outlines the characteristics of what he identifies as “but two of the most interesting species” of translator, the ambassador and the legislator. Building off of Jarniewicz’s framework (while also being indebted to Sasha Colby’s concept of a “poetics of excavation”), in this essay I propose a hybrid offspring of the ambassador and legislator—the excavator—through the example of American poet Susan Howe’s work “Melville’s Marginalia,” from her 1993 book The Nonconformist’s Memorial. Megan Williams asks, “How does Susan Howe’s use of Melville… reveal literary history and history itself to be a series of choices that must be rethought and rewritten? What are these choices, and where do they leave Howe’s work for posterity?” (106). It is Howe’s relationship to posterity that is of particular interest here. Whereas Williams and others take extraordinary care to analyze “Melville’s Marginalia” as a discrete text and to avoid making broader remarks about that text’s potential relationship to Howe’s oeuvre more generally, in my essay I consider how “Melville’s Marginalia” is consistent with a sustained effort by Howe to situate herself and her work within the frame of canonical literary figures. Moreover, by offering the contrast of poets such as Don Mee Choi, Sarah Mangold, and C. D. Wright, I suggest that Howe’s efforts, in fact, reveal and solidify the expansive versatility of canonical figures—such as Melville, Dickinson, and others—even if there is a clear critical dimension.
{"title":"“A Cormorant of Libraries”: The Future-Past of Susan Howe’s “Melville’s Marginalia”","authors":"Mark Tardi","doi":"10.4000/ejas.20878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20878","url":null,"abstract":"In his influential essay “The Translator as the Creator of the Canon,” Jerzy Jarniewicz outlines the characteristics of what he identifies as “but two of the most interesting species” of translator, the ambassador and the legislator. Building off of Jarniewicz’s framework (while also being indebted to Sasha Colby’s concept of a “poetics of excavation”), in this essay I propose a hybrid offspring of the ambassador and legislator—the excavator—through the example of American poet Susan Howe’s work “Melville’s Marginalia,” from her 1993 book The Nonconformist’s Memorial. Megan Williams asks, “How does Susan Howe’s use of Melville… reveal literary history and history itself to be a series of choices that must be rethought and rewritten? What are these choices, and where do they leave Howe’s work for posterity?” (106). It is Howe’s relationship to posterity that is of particular interest here. Whereas Williams and others take extraordinary care to analyze “Melville’s Marginalia” as a discrete text and to avoid making broader remarks about that text’s potential relationship to Howe’s oeuvre more generally, in my essay I consider how “Melville’s Marginalia” is consistent with a sustained effort by Howe to situate herself and her work within the frame of canonical literary figures. Moreover, by offering the contrast of poets such as Don Mee Choi, Sarah Mangold, and C. D. Wright, I suggest that Howe’s efforts, in fact, reveal and solidify the expansive versatility of canonical figures—such as Melville, Dickinson, and others—even if there is a clear critical dimension.","PeriodicalId":54031,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Studies","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135886659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}