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Humanities
Volume 12
Issue 4
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Humanities, Volume 12, Issue 4 (August 2023) – 34 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Calligraphy captures the spirit of traditional Chinese regulated verse (律詩). Its elegant strokes express the balance between conscious intent and spontaneous thought, mirroring the journey of mind-wandering. Regulated verse often begins with an evocative scene, using parallelism in subsequent couplets to craft contrasting mental spaces. As readers delve into these lines, they traverse a realm of introspection and vivid imagery. The concluding couplet offers a reflection, anchoring the self's place in the cosmos. This artwork and our study together illuminate the intricate dance of cognition within poetic structures. View this paper
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15 pages, 1169 KiB  
Article
The Structure and Function of Mind-Wandering in Chinese Regulated Verse
by Chen-Gia Tsai
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040087 - 18 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1447
Abstract
The aesthetics of poetry is intricately intertwined with the cognitive process of mind-wandering, where attention shifts from the current task and spontaneous thoughts emerge. While mind-wandering has been extensively studied in psychology and neuroscience, its potential relationship to poetry remains underexplored. This study [...] Read more.
The aesthetics of poetry is intricately intertwined with the cognitive process of mind-wandering, where attention shifts from the current task and spontaneous thoughts emerge. While mind-wandering has been extensively studied in psychology and neuroscience, its potential relationship to poetry remains underexplored. This study investigates the experience of mind-wandering associated with traditional Chinese regulated verse (律詩), which effectively enables the exploration of inner emotions and perceptions within its concise form. Typically, the first couplet of a regulated verse poem describes how mind-wandering is triggered by a place or event rich in semantic information. The second and third couplets use parallelism to create two distinct mental spaces, with the primary goal of encouraging the mind to wander between them. By meditating on parallel words in these two couplets, readers can reflect upon their essence through creative thinking and sensory imagery. Finally, the fourth couplet serves as a metacognitive endpoint, revealing the self’s position in the universe by evaluating the content of mind-wandering. This study demonstrates how the structure of regulated verse artfully represents the poet’s experience of mind-wandering, providing readers with the opportunity to re-experience this process with spontaneous and controlled cognitive activity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)
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12 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
Digging Up the Past, Complicating the Present, and Damaging the Future: Post-Postmodernism and the Postracial in Percival Everett’s The Trees
by George Kowalik
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040086 - 18 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1158
Abstract
Percival Everett has published almost thirty books of fiction in forty years, and The Trees is his 22nd novel. It revisits ideas from Everett’s earlier works while asking questions that, in some ways, tie his oeuvre together—these questions can be linked to temporality [...] Read more.
Percival Everett has published almost thirty books of fiction in forty years, and The Trees is his 22nd novel. It revisits ideas from Everett’s earlier works while asking questions that, in some ways, tie his oeuvre together—these questions can be linked to temporality and history, problematic literary ideas such as post-postmodernism, and both racialised trauma and the flawed cultural concept of the postracial. In this article, I argue that The Trees specifically problematises claims of the postmodern end of history by suggesting that African American literary narrative can productively reckon with a history of mistreatment by literally digging up the past and actively (impossibly) changing it. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Continuing Challenges of Percival Everett)
27 pages, 381 KiB  
Article
The Humanities: What Future?
by Deborah Pike
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 85; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040085 - 17 Aug 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1715
Abstract
Higher education in Australia is in a period of crisis and transition. While COVID-related events and their impacts have made it difficult for all areas of university academic endeavour, among the hardest hit have been humanities. Drawing on live interviews with professors in [...] Read more.
Higher education in Australia is in a period of crisis and transition. While COVID-related events and their impacts have made it difficult for all areas of university academic endeavour, among the hardest hit have been humanities. Drawing on live interviews with professors in a range of humanities disciplines, the paper elucidates various elements of the crisis, which includes a summary of the impacts of the last three decades’ rise in neoliberalist imperatives within the university sector. The paper then argues that a robust defence of the humanities needs to be made and uses literary studies as its focus. Today, we are more in need of the humanities than ever. But this is a complex undertaking as research in higher education and live interviews reveal; the dictates of measurement, accountability, and questions of value within the humanities remain vexed; and while the aims and requirements of humanities studies may be at odds with neoliberalist demands and corporatisation, the humanities themselves may also be contributing to their own demise. Therefore, I offer future directions: I argue for the urgent need for the humanities to reinvigorate their ethical and critical functions, the need to demonstrate the connections between the humanities and wellbeing, the imperative to slow down and to eradicate the over-casualisation of academia, and the necessity for the humanities to articulate more clearly their connections with employment outcomes for a dynamic and evolving future. Full article
14 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
Network Temporality in Percival Everett’s Poetry
by Zach Linge
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040084 - 16 Aug 2023
Viewed by 962
Abstract
Drawing on new media scholarship, the article suggests that Percival Everett’s poetry can be understood through the lens of hypergraphical knowledge. In this context, Everett’s poetry operates as a synchronic and diachronic exploration of poetic movements, genres, forms, and inheritances, embodying network-temporal relations [...] Read more.
Drawing on new media scholarship, the article suggests that Percival Everett’s poetry can be understood through the lens of hypergraphical knowledge. In this context, Everett’s poetry operates as a synchronic and diachronic exploration of poetic movements, genres, forms, and inheritances, embodying network-temporal relations similar to the hypernarrator(s) of his fiction. Ultimately, this analysis observes the expansive and cohesive nature of Everett’s work, inviting readers to refocus their attention on the indeterminate surface of, and the intricate web of meaning in his poetry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Continuing Challenges of Percival Everett)
16 pages, 280 KiB  
Article
Divide and the Rules: A Study on the Colonial Inheritance of Digital Games
by Prabhash Ranjan Tripathy
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040083 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 834
Abstract
The current article is an exploration into the colonial inheritance of digital games. It argues that the pervasiveness and persistence of discursive practices, like imagining the play world as the otherworld and valuing the play world for its pedagogical potential, are tied to [...] Read more.
The current article is an exploration into the colonial inheritance of digital games. It argues that the pervasiveness and persistence of discursive practices, like imagining the play world as the otherworld and valuing the play world for its pedagogical potential, are tied to the colonial logic of exclusion, extraction and exploitation. Perpetuation of these colonial conceptualizations in the discourse surrounding digital games makes attempts at decolonization ineffective. The essay seeks to explicate the colonial in these discursive formulations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Media and Colonialism: New Colonial Media?)
10 pages, 237 KiB  
Article
Power and Subjectification at the Edge of Social Media Interfaces in the Aftermath of the Jallikattu Protest
by Deepak Prince
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 82; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040082 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1089
Abstract
In January 2017, millions of people occupied various public places across the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, protesting the Supreme Court’s ban on Jallikattu, a bull-wrangling contest considered central to Tamil identity. Social media was thought to have triggered this ‘leaderless’ [...] Read more.
In January 2017, millions of people occupied various public places across the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, protesting the Supreme Court’s ban on Jallikattu, a bull-wrangling contest considered central to Tamil identity. Social media was thought to have triggered this ‘leaderless’ protest. Seven days in, a police crackdown splintered the protest’s seemingly unified front. Academic commentators have argued that social media present radical possibilities, ‘short-circuiting’ older forms of broadcast media, which had already been colonized by the state. Taking as discursive sites two videos, one of them posted by a popular Facebook group and another by a YouTube channel centred around Dalit issues, I argue that an a priori claim of new media having a lesser or greater potential to resist colonization is largely untenable. The possibility of such resistance is contingent on the micropolitics of contestation within concrete, localized sites. I analyse narratives of loss and rage on two different social media spaces, elicited from a fishing community near one of the protest sites, after their homes were attacked and their local market had been burnt down by the police. By focusing on tactics of interviewing, I demonstrate that, in the span of a week, the same technological platform credited with sparking the protests that brought the Tamils together as one, now constitutes the limits of the formation of radical subjectivity, as Tamil society finds itself fractured once again. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Media and Colonialism: New Colonial Media?)
19 pages, 304 KiB  
Editorial
On Displacement and the Humanities—An Introduction
by Elena Isayev, Evan Jewell, Gerawork Teferra Gizaw and Marcia C. Schenck
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040081 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1447
Abstract
When we conceived of the volume, Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, six years ago, important and urgent studies on the subject of migration had increased substantially over the past decade in response to what has been [...] Read more.
When we conceived of the volume, Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, six years ago, important and urgent studies on the subject of migration had increased substantially over the past decade in response to what has been termed the ‘migration crisis’ [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present)
5 pages, 244 KiB  
Comment
Comment on Moralee (2018). It’s in the Water: Byzantine Borderlands and the Village War. Humanities 7: 86
by Christine Robins, Zêdan Xelef, Emad Bashar and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040080 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 629
Abstract
This response to Jason Moralees’ article comes from members and associates of the Êzidi (Yazidi) team working on Sinjar Lives/Shingal Lives, a community-driven oral history project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. They are all survivors of the Êzidi [...] Read more.
This response to Jason Moralees’ article comes from members and associates of the Êzidi (Yazidi) team working on Sinjar Lives/Shingal Lives, a community-driven oral history project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. They are all survivors of the Êzidi genocide committed by ISIS in 2014. They explore Moralee’s themes of securitisation, imperialism and violence—especially the ‘village war’, its roots in imperialist thought and its consequences—from the perspective of those who call the village home. Beyond securitisation, they discuss borders both geographical and socio-cultural and the contemporary political significance of the elusive victim voice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present)
12 pages, 262 KiB  
Article
Jazzthetic Technique: Oralizing Fiction and Jazz Strategies in Toni Morrison’s Jazz
by Trivius Gerard Caldwell
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 79; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040079 - 08 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2352
Abstract
Toni Morrison represents the improvisations of life in the 1920s and posits her novel Jazz as a work that negotiates sound as a distinguishing characteristic of her writing genre. Many critics have described Morrison’s approach as a Jazzthetic strategy and as such, her [...] Read more.
Toni Morrison represents the improvisations of life in the 1920s and posits her novel Jazz as a work that negotiates sound as a distinguishing characteristic of her writing genre. Many critics have described Morrison’s approach as a Jazzthetic strategy and as such, her rhetorical move enables a renovation of traditional aspects of the novel to render life as complex as a jazz composition itself. This article analyzes Morison’s methods and posits the use of jazz strategies to mimic the displacement, fragmentation, and strife experienced by African Americans during the Great Migration. This essay also intervenes in the debate between the relationship of language and music to examine the ways that Morrison oralizes fiction and engages in a form of cultural circularity, thereby asserting the authenticity of jazz alongside the tension of the Great Migration. Additionally, this essay explains the ways that Morrison makes clear the implications of migrant cultural expression in service of identity formation, suggesting that the micro-novels in the novel Jazz are contributors to a larger ensemble that functions epistemologically to render the African American experience as central to American identity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sound Studies in African American Literature and Culture)
21 pages, 380 KiB  
Article
Bawds, Midwifery, and the Evil Eye in Golden Age Spanish Literature and Medicine
by Emily Kuffner
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040078 - 07 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1314
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between the alcahueta or bawd, the evil eye, and midwifery in the early modern Spanish cultural imaginary. The evil eye, though an ancient belief, received renewed attention in theological and medical texts, including midwifery manuals, from the late [...] Read more.
This article explores the relationship between the alcahueta or bawd, the evil eye, and midwifery in the early modern Spanish cultural imaginary. The evil eye, though an ancient belief, received renewed attention in theological and medical texts, including midwifery manuals, from the late fifteenth until the mid-sixteenth century, coinciding with the popularity of texts such as La Celestina featuring bawds. This article explores cultural debates regarding whether the evil eye was a natural phenomenon caused by corrupted bodily fluids emanating from post-menopausal women, or a result of witchcraft. Midwifery manuals list the evil eye as one of the principal dangers to newborns and give advice regarding how to prevent it, perhaps implicitly providing another justification for women’s gradual exclusion from midwifery in the early modern period. Fictional texts portray the bawd as engaging in women’s healing practices such as midwifery and newborn care, and as casting and curing the evil eye. I argue that the literary archetype of the bawd-midwife reflects academic disagreements that alternatively portray the evil eye as a physical illness, superstitious nonsense, or the result of witchcraft. As such, the bawd becomes a focal point for expressing anxiety over perceived decadence and decline, often tied to witchcraft. By tracing the evil eye through the characterization of bawds, we can perceive subtle indications of ambiguity regarding women’s magical and medical practices that question whether their influence comes from the devil or from women’s inherently malevolent nature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Eye in Spanish Golden Age Medicine, Anatomy, and Literature)
10 pages, 309 KiB  
Article
The Eye as a Symbol of Ill-Fatedness in Two Canonical Picaresque Works: Lazarillo de Tormes and Guzmán de Alfarache
by Sarah Louise Ellis
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040077 - 04 Aug 2023
Viewed by 828
Abstract
It seemed unimaginable that the eye, denoting visuality and deemed accurate and reliable in accordance with Aristotelian theories in circulation during the Spanish Golden Age could be considered as anything other than a revered hallmark of guidance and intellect. Nevertheless, the literary phenomenon) [...] Read more.
It seemed unimaginable that the eye, denoting visuality and deemed accurate and reliable in accordance with Aristotelian theories in circulation during the Spanish Golden Age could be considered as anything other than a revered hallmark of guidance and intellect. Nevertheless, the literary phenomenon) of the picaresque emerged at the onset of the seventeenth century to defy the chivalric and pastoral fantasies that were masking the real anxieties faced by an era of decline. The picaresque genre brought warning that turning a blind eye to Spain’s already-waning fortunes could not last forever. Yet, by doing so, it lent favour to such blindness, underlining how the eye, both symbolically and substantially, actually evoked a sense of ill-fatedness and misfortune. This paper calls for an exploration of how an ominous utilisation of the eye is presented in the most canonical picaresque works: Lazarillo de Tormes and Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache. From the imperative role of the blind man in opening the eyes of the young protagonist, to the doomed interpolated cosplay of seeing and unseeing throughout Lazarillo’s trajectory, and from Guzmán’s receptivity to appearances and Alemán’s lending of visual lexicon to his picaro protagonist, one must ask: how and why does the bodily organ of the eye, through both notion and function, serve as a depiction of hardship and disaster within these picaresque texts, and how does it reflect the overarching societal views towards intellect and religion during this epoch of “ocularcentrism”? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Eye in Spanish Golden Age Medicine, Anatomy, and Literature)
13 pages, 285 KiB  
Article
Derek Jarman’s Tempest, William Shakespeare’s Salò
by Tomas Elliott
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040076 - 03 Aug 2023
Viewed by 995
Abstract
This article re-evaluates Derek Jarman’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979) based on archival research into the cinematic and historical intertexts that influenced the film. Specifically, it focuses on the impact of Pier Paolo Pasolini on Jarman’s aesthetics, particularly the Italian filmmaker’s [...] Read more.
This article re-evaluates Derek Jarman’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979) based on archival research into the cinematic and historical intertexts that influenced the film. Specifically, it focuses on the impact of Pier Paolo Pasolini on Jarman’s aesthetics, particularly the Italian filmmaker’s last work: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). The article explores how Jarman used Pasolini’s work as a filter through which to frame his adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. In so doing, he produced a decidedly Pasolinian twist on The Tempest, which he explicitly referred to in his notes as “Shakespeare’s Salò.” Bridging the gap between the Renaissance and Jarman’s contemporary moment, Jarman’s film offers a meditation on ideas of captivity and captivation in The Tempest, which extends from the play and film’s literal representations of imprisonment to their exploration of the affective power of performance and spectacle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adapting Fiction Into Visual Culture)
18 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
Palestine in the Cloud: The Construction of a Digital Floating Homeland
by Hanine Shehadeh
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040075 - 01 Aug 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3521
Abstract
A widespread revolt during the months of April and May 2021 in the Palestinian city of Jerusalem, also known as Habbet Ayyar, responded to Israeli actions aiming to ethnically cleanse and force out residents from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East [...] Read more.
A widespread revolt during the months of April and May 2021 in the Palestinian city of Jerusalem, also known as Habbet Ayyar, responded to Israeli actions aiming to ethnically cleanse and force out residents from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, where approximately 3000 people reside, and to limit the movement and entry of Palestinians to Al-Aqsa Mosque. These measures were met with an unprecedented wave of youth-led protests against the Israeli army, police, security agencies, and settlers. Habbet Ayyar stands out not only for its innovative and effective use of new media to amplify the protests beyond Israel’s sphere of influence and control, but also for the unity displayed by fragmented Palestinians as they confronted Israel. By exploring the larger historical and geographical context of the movement that led to Habbet Ayyar, this article aims to understand how Palestinians have utilized, for the past 20 years, new media as a battleground—despite enforced digital colonialism—and how these media served to articulate and create what I call a digital “floating homeland”. The concept of a “floating homeland” is useful for exploring how the Palestinian virtual social movement has redefined and reconnected with Palestine beyond Israel’s control and fragmentation. This digital homeland is constructed through new technologies that have reshaped Palestinian self-identification and allowed for a virtual and digital reconceptualization of a borderless Palestine. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Media and Colonialism: New Colonial Media?)
19 pages, 860 KiB  
Article
Communication and Violence in the Poetics of Terayama Shūji: From the Poetic to the Theatric
by Shunsuke Okada and Jason M. Beckman
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040074 - 31 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1006
Abstract
This article will focus on the theory of poetics Terayama Shūji develops in Postwar Poetry: The Absence of Ulysses (Sengoshi: yurishīzu no fuzai, 1965) and Language as Violence (Bōryoku toshite no gengo, 1970). Postwar Poetry, his first theoretical writings [...] Read more.
This article will focus on the theory of poetics Terayama Shūji develops in Postwar Poetry: The Absence of Ulysses (Sengoshi: yurishīzu no fuzai, 1965) and Language as Violence (Bōryoku toshite no gengo, 1970). Postwar Poetry, his first theoretical writings on prose poetry, can be said to be a book about the poetic communication and “discommunication”—a wasei-eigo coinage of Tsurumi Shunsuke’s that Terayama frequently invokes—that occurs in mass communication, stemming from the conflict with print (katsuji). In this book, Terayama develops not autonomous “monologue”, but a theory of the taiwa/dialogue of poetry. However, Language as Violence contains not only the taiwa (dialogue) of his early poetics but the problem of bōryoku (violence) in his later theatrical works and theory of theater, which becomes an important theme in his body of work. Comparing with Georges Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence that he cited, I would like to examine the description of the book’s titualar violence. As I shed light on Terayama’s poetics and view of language, I will attempt to establish a connection with his plays and theory of theater. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modern Japanese Literature and the Media Industry)
12 pages, 275 KiB  
Article
Fanaticism and E. M. Cioran’s “Lyrical Leprosy”
by Timo Airaksinen
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040073 - 31 Jul 2023
Viewed by 963
Abstract
People harass people to defend and promote their fundamental beliefs, political ideologies, religious dogmas, and the Truth. They create these with marvelous lucidity and unnerving verve, spreading, guarding, and enforcing their convictions. Fanatical ideologies penetrate and pollute our life world like “lyrical leprosy”. [...] Read more.
People harass people to defend and promote their fundamental beliefs, political ideologies, religious dogmas, and the Truth. They create these with marvelous lucidity and unnerving verve, spreading, guarding, and enforcing their convictions. Fanatical ideologies penetrate and pollute our life world like “lyrical leprosy”. We need a coping strategy. Conformists may want to go along and join the perpetrators, whomever they happen to be. Activists fight ideological pollution, a risky strategy. Indifference and apathy do not pollute others and are less dangerous than rebelling. Following E. M. Cioran, I discuss three defensive strategies: those of a skeptic, an idler, and an aesthete. I reject trivializing the third strategy; instead, I discuss an ironist’s options. A recommendable route to indifference is to read the Truth metaphorically and ironize it. This voids its contents, and the result is adiaphora. We can also start with irony and metaphorize it. Such linguistic–aesthetic methods thwart the viperous dogmas that otherwise harass us from the cradle to the grave. The Truth is a treacherous construct. How to avoid it? How to deflect ideologically motivated terror? Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Philosophy and Classics in the Humanities)
16 pages, 5430 KiB  
Article
Videographic, Musical, and Linguistic Partnerships for Decolonization: Engaging with Place-Based Articulations of Indigenous Identity and Wâhkôhtowin
by Joanie Crandall
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040072 - 28 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1031
Abstract
N’we Jinan, a group of young Indigenous artists who run a mobile production studio and an integrative arts studio, travel to different Indigenous communities, where they support youth in writing and recording music that involves the local community. N’we Jinan employs social media [...] Read more.
N’we Jinan, a group of young Indigenous artists who run a mobile production studio and an integrative arts studio, travel to different Indigenous communities, where they support youth in writing and recording music that involves the local community. N’we Jinan employs social media to articulate and protect Indigeneity through the sharing of Indigenous music videos, empowering youth to resist continued colonization. These videos serve to create a sense of connection in Indigenous communities in Turtle Island (Canada) as well as offer a means by which non-Indigenous listeners can learn about contemporary Indigenous cultures. Viewed in conjunction with Nunavut’s Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit and the Northwest Territories’ Dene Kede and Inuuqatigiit, which provide a framework of traditional knowledge, values, and skills specific to Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic, the texts implicitly invite non-Indigenous listeners’ engagement in social justice activism as settler allies. The texts invite listening to and viewing the empowering songwriting and recording practices through the lens of social justice and wâhkôhtowin or kinship relations, which involves walking together (Indigenous and settler) in a good way and engaging with Bourdieu’s influential framework of cultural capital. The themes explored in the songs include cultural identity, language, and self-acceptance. The empowering songs of N’we Jinan are place-based articulations of identity that resist coloniality and serve as calls to action, creating embodied videographic, musical, and linguistic partnerships that serve as important articulations of Indigenous identity and which promote the decolonization of reading and listening practices and, by extension, education. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Media and Colonialism: New Colonial Media?)
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10 pages, 224 KiB  
Article
Monsters on MTV: Adaptation and the Gothic Music Video
by Drago Momcilovic
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 71; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040071 - 27 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1889
Abstract
Music videos of the MTV era often use gothic visual signifiers as decorative elements or creative expressions of the musician’s star persona or latest record. But several video clips from the early 1980s adapt the figure of gothic monstrosity, and in particular, the [...] Read more.
Music videos of the MTV era often use gothic visual signifiers as decorative elements or creative expressions of the musician’s star persona or latest record. But several video clips from the early 1980s adapt the figure of gothic monstrosity, and in particular, the images and stories of the undead or beastly Other, in ways that dramatize the music video’s evolving aesthetic, commercial, and technological character and its unpredictable relation to Gothic. In this article, I look closely at the narrative elements of two important configurations of gothic-themed video clips: “Don’t Go” (1982) by Yazoo, “Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)” (1983) by Sheena Easton, and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” (1993) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which creatively adapt textual elements of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein and its various film adaptations and parodies and its cultural significance in the modern Western imaginary; and “Thriller” (1983) by Michael Jackson and “Heads Will Roll” (2009) by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which likewise adapt and reimagine aspects of John Landis’s 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London and its afterlife in the modern media ecosystem. These videos, I argue, trouble conventional understandings of the practice of adaptation as a one-to-one line of inheritance between source material and destination text. In so doing, furthermore, these clips amplify and elaborate certain socio-cultural anxieties about gender and race, personal and professional identity and autonomy, and technological innovation and automation that animate their source materials. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gothic Adaptation: Intermedial and Intercultural Shape-Shifting)
12 pages, 241 KiB  
Article
An Ecofeminist Perspective of the Alternate-History Novel Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
by Shrouk Yasser Sultan and Asmaa Ahmed ElSherbini
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040070 - 27 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1075
Abstract
Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is an interesting work of fiction that belongs to the genre of Alternate History, which is a subgenre of speculative fiction. The novel poses the question of: “what would have happened to the world [...] Read more.
Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is an interesting work of fiction that belongs to the genre of Alternate History, which is a subgenre of speculative fiction. The novel poses the question of: “what would have happened to the world if the Indigenous American tribes had been stronger and had made coalitions with each other, instead of being conquered and defeated by European forces?” This paper reads the selected novel from the Ecofeminist point of view, exploring various issues that are relevant to the theory of Ecofeminism. The analysis conducted in this paper tackles the roles women perform when trying to save their world; the connections between women and nature, and how patriarchal cultures treat both of them; the role technology plays in the times of natural disasters and how it can make the world a better place for women; whether or not technology is a tool in the hands of the White savior; and the empowerment of the Indigenous Americans or lack thereof. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reconstructing Ecofeminism)
20 pages, 323 KiB  
Article
Art and Storytelling on the Streets: The Council on Interracial Books for Children’s Use of African American Children’s Literature
by Nick Batho
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040069 - 25 Jul 2023
Viewed by 974
Abstract
From 1970 until 1974, the Council on Interracial Children’s Books (CIBC) ran the Arts and Storytelling in the Streets program throughout New York City. This program involved African American and Puerto Rican artists and storytellers bringing children’s literature directly to children in the [...] Read more.
From 1970 until 1974, the Council on Interracial Children’s Books (CIBC) ran the Arts and Storytelling in the Streets program throughout New York City. This program involved African American and Puerto Rican artists and storytellers bringing children’s literature directly to children in the streets. This occurred amid a rise in African American children’s literature and educational upheavals in the city as local communities demanded oversight of their schools. Originating in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district in New York City, the Arts and Storytelling on the Streets program helps to underscore the interrelation between African American children’s literature and educational activism. This article examines how storytelling sessions run by authors and illustrators became extensions of African American children’s literature and educational activism in the city as Black American children’s books became key tools in a fight for a more representative and relevant education. Storytelling teams hoped to use African American children’s literature to help engage children in reading and provide a positive association with literature among local children. The Art and Storytelling program mirrored ideas and themes within African American children’s literature including Black pride, community strength, and resisting white supremacy. The program also became a key extension of the literature as the locations, storytellers, and the audiences all helped to expand upon the impact and many meanings inherent in contemporary African American children’s literature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)
14 pages, 406 KiB  
Article
¿Por qué los Hombres tienen diversas Maneras de Ojos? Curiosities about the Eyes in Juan de Jarava’s Problemas o Preguntas problemáticas (1544)
by Folke Gernert
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040068 - 21 Jul 2023
Viewed by 992
Abstract
The so-called ‘problem books’ of the 15th and 16th centuries originate from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, which were rediscovered around 1300. Their authors were often physicians who prepared medical information for a broad public and combined it with highly heterogeneous pools of knowledge. [...] Read more.
The so-called ‘problem books’ of the 15th and 16th centuries originate from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, which were rediscovered around 1300. Their authors were often physicians who prepared medical information for a broad public and combined it with highly heterogeneous pools of knowledge. This article deals with different questions in regards to the eye and the sense of sight in Juan de Jarava’s Problemas o Preguntas Problemáticas, published in 1544. The physician, a man with Erasmist inclinations whose existence remains a mystery, divides his work into three parts, with each relating to love, natural phenomena, and wine. In all three parts, questions related to the eyes are raised. These issues are contextualized in the scholarly discourse of the time in order to determine to what extent Jarava is representative of knowledge about the eyes in the early modern period. The example of vision and the eyes can be used to show how early modern medical writers such as Juan de Jarava and Agustín de Ruescas tackled the complexity of the world in their problem books. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Eye in Spanish Golden Age Medicine, Anatomy, and Literature)
15 pages, 499 KiB  
Article
Strong Enough to Fight: Harriet Tubman vs. The Myth of the Lost Cause
by Laura Dubek
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040067 - 20 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1613
Abstract
Black creators who tell Harriet Tubman’s story engage in an ongoing rhetorical battle over historical memory with regard to slavery and the Civil War. This essay examines the challenges Tubman’s story poses to a Lost Cause narrative that took root in the nineteenth-century [...] Read more.
Black creators who tell Harriet Tubman’s story engage in an ongoing rhetorical battle over historical memory with regard to slavery and the Civil War. This essay examines the challenges Tubman’s story poses to a Lost Cause narrative that took root in the nineteenth-century and manifests in the work of celebrated children’s author Robert Lawson. Reading Ann Petry’s YA biography Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955), Jacob Lawrence’s picture book Harriet and the Promised Land (1968), and Kasi Lemmons’ film Harriet (2019) together, and within the context of Lawson’s award-winning They Were Strong and Good (1940) and his historical primer Watchwords of Liberty: A Pageantry of American Quotations (1943) offers an opportunity to assess the rhetorical firepower of creative work about a historical figure who continues to fascinate people of all ages. Such reading also underscores the extent to which the apartheid in and of children’s literature limits the imaginations of critics, thereby hindering efforts to promote social justice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African American Children's Literature)
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13 pages, 2210 KiB  
Article
Adaptation, Parody, and Disabled Masculinity in Motherless Brooklyn
by Christina Wilkins
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040066 - 19 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1136
Abstract
In the 2019 adaptation Motherless Brooklyn, the story is transposed from the 90s to the America of the 50s. These changes were made because of star and director Edward Norton’s desire to have a less ‘ironic’ rendering of the characters present in [...] Read more.
In the 2019 adaptation Motherless Brooklyn, the story is transposed from the 90s to the America of the 50s. These changes were made because of star and director Edward Norton’s desire to have a less ‘ironic’ rendering of the characters present in the text written by Jonathan Lethem. What it results in is a shift in the context that changes the story altogether; not only that but the lack of parody alters the relationship to genre, and the portrayal of disability functions as a performance. This article argues that there are multiple levels of adaptation here: the adaptation of the text, of the present to the past, and an adaptation of disability to fit the understanding of genre and medium. These layers illuminate both societal understandings of masculinity and disability, and Norton’s own, through Hutcheon’s notion of adaptation as palimpsest. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adapting Fiction Into Visual Culture)
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12 pages, 286 KiB  
Article
Questioning Walking Tourism from a Phenomenological Perspective: Epistemological and Methodological Innovations
by Chiara Rabbiosi and Sabrina Meneghello
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040065 - 19 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1295
Abstract
This article aims to illuminate the overlooked entanglement of space, material practices, affects, and cognitive work emplaced in walking tourism. Walking as a tourism activity is generally practised in the open air away from crowded locations; therefore, it is being encouraged even more [...] Read more.
This article aims to illuminate the overlooked entanglement of space, material practices, affects, and cognitive work emplaced in walking tourism. Walking as a tourism activity is generally practised in the open air away from crowded locations; therefore, it is being encouraged even more in this (post)pandemic era than prior to the pandemic. While walking is often represented as a relatively easy activity in common promotional discourse, this article argues that it is much more complex. It revises the notion of tourist place performance, focusing on walking both as a tourist practice and as a research method that questions multi-sensory and emotional walker engagement. While extensively revisiting literature on walking tourism and the most novel methodological innovations, the article draws from a walking tourism experience undertaken as part of a student trip to demonstrate that the emotions that arise from walkers’ embodied encounters with living, as well as inanimate elements, extend beyond what might be included in a simple focus on landscape “sights”. In conclusion, it is suggested that a phenomenological approach to walking may prove particularly useful for understanding key issues associated with space, place, and tourism mobilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism)
14 pages, 280 KiB  
Article
Out of Time: Disabling Normative Time in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White
by Drumlin N. M. Crape
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040064 - 13 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1505
Abstract
Responding to ableist and regimented notions of time, disabled activists and disability studies scholars alike have embraced “crip time” as a modality that better accounts for the ways disability transforms chronology. By applying this critical disability framework to depictions of time in Victorian [...] Read more.
Responding to ableist and regimented notions of time, disabled activists and disability studies scholars alike have embraced “crip time” as a modality that better accounts for the ways disability transforms chronology. By applying this critical disability framework to depictions of time in Victorian literature, my paper reveals the generative potential of nonnormative understandings of time in two foundational and widely studied texts: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. In each text, the presence of disability allows for the resistance to and subversion of hegemonic (and genre-based) modes of temporality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Storytelling, Body, and Disability in Fiction and Popular Culture)
13 pages, 285 KiB  
Article
Unveiling the Oppressed Body: Female Dalit Body Politics in India through Baburao Bagul and Yashica Dutt
by Bianca Cherechés
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040063 - 12 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3699
Abstract
India’s complex social fabric is marked by a rigid caste system that has perpetuated discrimination and marginalisation for centuries. The caste structure not only establishes clear boundaries between castes through endogamous social relations, but also determines control over resources, productivity, and sexuality. Among [...] Read more.
India’s complex social fabric is marked by a rigid caste system that has perpetuated discrimination and marginalisation for centuries. The caste structure not only establishes clear boundaries between castes through endogamous social relations, but also determines control over resources, productivity, and sexuality. Among the most vulnerable groups within this hierarchical structure are Dalit women, who face compounded forms of oppression due to their caste and gender, spanning economic, physical, and mental aspects. At the core of this oppression lies the Dalit woman’s body, a battleground where power dynamics intersect and the struggle for autonomy and dignity unfolds. This paper delves into the exploration of female Dalit body politics in India, with a particular focus on two influential literary works: Baburao Bagul’s When I Hid My Caste (2018) and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit (2019). The aim is to unveil, through these texts, the intersectionality of caste and gender, both past and present, revealing the violence, exploitation, and marginalisation that reflects on the Dalit female body, stemming from and affecting the economic, physical, and psychological dimension. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Storytelling, Body, and Disability in Fiction and Popular Culture)
13 pages, 231 KiB  
Article
South Asian COVID-19 Memoirs: Mourning and Erasure of “Grievable Lives”
by Lopamudra Basu
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040062 - 11 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1950
Abstract
This article analyzes how narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic are beginning to memorialize lives lost in the crisis. It juxtaposes the author’s personal experience of the loss of family members with emerging memoirs by South Asian women to explore the diversity of genres [...] Read more.
This article analyzes how narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic are beginning to memorialize lives lost in the crisis. It juxtaposes the author’s personal experience of the loss of family members with emerging memoirs by South Asian women to explore the diversity of genres like the lyric essay and the graphic memoir that memorialize lives lost to COVID-19. While acknowledging that the current pandemic and its effects are far from over, the essay argues that these memoirs are a conscious attempt to mourn and thereby restore the humanity of lives robbed of traditional acts of remembrance due to the isolation and bureaucracy of laws governing COVID-19 deaths and funerals. These texts by Barkha Dutt, Kay Sohini, and Jhumpa Lahiri are exceptional because the great majority of deaths during this time have been consigned to erasure, lack of documentation, or censorship. These texts are resisting the dominant trend to leave the pandemic behind and resume normal lives. By committing to grief instead of a facile recuperation, these memoirs are not just charting a private path of healing but also transforming private grief into a statement of shared suffering and solidarity, even when the pandemic has affected individuals differently based on stratifications of race, class, and privilege. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Directions in South Asian Women's Writing)
12 pages, 255 KiB  
Article
The Practices and Positionings of a Postcolonial Counterpublic: An Analysis of Black Lives Matter in Denmark
by Bolette B. Blaagaard
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040061 - 10 Jul 2023
Viewed by 943
Abstract
Drawing on postcolonial critique to analyze the work and political purpose of activist groups on social media, this article asks the question: How do digital media communications simultaneously reinstate binary oppositions and invite rhizomatic relations? While the concept of counterpublics is helpful when [...] Read more.
Drawing on postcolonial critique to analyze the work and political purpose of activist groups on social media, this article asks the question: How do digital media communications simultaneously reinstate binary oppositions and invite rhizomatic relations? While the concept of counterpublics is helpful when it comes to understanding the voices of opposition in public discourse, it is also necessary to introduce postcolonial critique and geopolitical and historical distinctions in order to grasp the particularities of global digital activism (Brouwer and Paulesc 2017; Blaagaard 2018). This article does exactly that: Illustrating the postcolonial, hybrid, and cosmopolitan qualities of digital activism on social media platforms, the article presents a discursive analysis of Black Lives Matter Denmark (BLM-DK) as they operate on the social media platform Facebook. The group’s posts are dedicated to juridical and political struggles over discrimination and racial violence in Denmark and the United States, thus producing a counterpublic. The posts moreover introduce and connect two very different geopolitical and historical contexts, thus showing social media’s potential for creating rhizomatic relations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Media and Colonialism: New Colonial Media?)
14 pages, 299 KiB  
Article
Blue Chambers, Bluebooks, and Contes Bleus: Gothic Terror and Female Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Adaptations of ‘Bluebeard’
by Alessandro Cabiati
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040060 - 06 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1809
Abstract
With its suspenseful atmosphere, mysterious and murderous male protagonist, and magical objects, it is hardly surprising that Charles Perrault’s conte bleu ‘La Barbe bleue’ (1697) was the inspiration for numerous Gothic tales in the nineteenth century. Some of these adaptations placed Gothic devices [...] Read more.
With its suspenseful atmosphere, mysterious and murderous male protagonist, and magical objects, it is hardly surprising that Charles Perrault’s conte bleu ‘La Barbe bleue’ (1697) was the inspiration for numerous Gothic tales in the nineteenth century. Some of these adaptations placed Gothic devices such as the representation of the terror experienced by Bluebeard’s latest wife within the broader nineteenth-century cultural discourse on female deviance, and its relations with masculine authority and dominance. By removing from the tale Perrault’s warning against female curiosity and imprudence and focusing on the wife’s feelings of fear and terror, these adaptations amplify the intrinsic Gothicism of the Bluebeard story, thus providing the female protagonist with a psychological depth that includes, as I demonstrate in this study, a display of a variety of abnormal behaviours. In these Gothic adaptations, the terror experienced by Bluebeard’s wife serves as a springboard for the representation of psychological and nervous disorders commonly diagnosed in the nineteenth century such as hysteria, monomania, female depravity, and masochism. Showing the interculturality and intermediality of these themes, this essay analyses rewritings of Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’ from nineteenth-century Britain, France, and the United States, including Gothic bluebooks, poems, dramas, and short stories. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gothic Adaptation: Intermedial and Intercultural Shape-Shifting)
11 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
The Slow Refugee: Transit as Stasis, Narrative Ethics, and Level Telling Fields
by Roy Sommer
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040059 - 05 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 963
Abstract
The slow humanities, this article argues, can make valuable contributions to the study of migration narratives. A slow take on literary representations of refugees and migrants has two distinct but related dimensions. On the one hand, the figure of the slow refugee introduced [...] Read more.
The slow humanities, this article argues, can make valuable contributions to the study of migration narratives. A slow take on literary representations of refugees and migrants has two distinct but related dimensions. On the one hand, the figure of the slow refugee introduced here challenges theories of migration which emphasize movement. On the other hand, the slow approach to literary representations of forced migration focuses on various forms of narrative empowerment. My readings of the novel What is the What (2008) by Dave Eggers and Parwana Amiri’s work My Pen Won’t Break But Borders Will: Letter to the World from Moria (2020) demonstrate how collaborative and allied forms of storytelling help restore narrative agency and authority, moving beyond the exemplary, documentary, and ambassadorial functions of vicarious storytelling. Instead of speaking on behalf of others, or even worse, for others—the default case in many conversations on migration—the literary representations of refugees discussed in this article emphasize the need to tell and share stories with others, for the benefit of everyone. In this sense, they help establish a level telling field, initiating a debate on the terms and conditions of fair conversation on forced migration. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)
22 pages, 2563 KiB  
Article
Ut sophistes pictor: An Introduction to the Sophistic Contribution to Aesthetics
by Clare Lapraik Guest
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040058 - 02 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1108
Abstract
This essay provides an introduction to the question of the contribution of the ancient sophists to aesthetics in Western art. It commences by examining the persistent analogies to visual arts in negative and positive discussions of sophistry, both philosophical and rhetorical, and proceeds [...] Read more.
This essay provides an introduction to the question of the contribution of the ancient sophists to aesthetics in Western art. It commences by examining the persistent analogies to visual arts in negative and positive discussions of sophistry, both philosophical and rhetorical, and proceeds to examine sophistic rhetoric in Gorgias, Aristides, Lucian, Philostratus and Byzantine ekphrasis, culminating with Philostratus’ discussions of mimesis and phantasia in Apollonius of Tyana. The discussions of the relation of being and nonbeing in Gorgias’ On Nonbeing and in Plato’s Sophist form the ontological core of sophistic claims about imaginative invention and the sophistic advancement of voluntary illusion (apatē) as a means to poetic “justice” or “truth”. Such claims should be considered in the light of the epistemological and ontological skepticism propounded by Gorgias. Although the opprobrium attached to sophistry obscures its later influence, we can nevertheless discern a sophistic aesthetic tradition focused on the reflective reception of artworks that re-emerges in the Renaissance. In the last section, I adumbrate the lines of study for examining a sophistic Renaissance in the visual arts, with attention to antiquarianism as an area where the significance of the beholder’s imaginative projection suggests the endurance—or revitalization—of sophistic aesthetics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Greek Sophistry and Its Legacy)
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