CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

文学研究的合法化: 一种新实用主义 · 整体化和经验主义文学与文化研究方法 (Legitimizing the Study of Literature: A New Pragmatism and the Systemic Approach to Literature and Culture)

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:27:33 PDT

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Wen hsüe yen chiu ti ho fa hua. Chen t'i hua ho ching yen chu i wen hsüe yü wen hua yen chiu fang fa (Legitimizing the Study of Literature: A New Pragmatism and the Systemic Approach to Literature and Culture). Trans. Ma Jui-ch'i. Peking University Academic Lectures Series 7. Beijing: Peking University Press, 1997. ISBN 7-301-03482-2 217 pages. The book contains texts of invited public lectures at Peking University in 1994, 1995, and 1996 on radical constructivism, culture and literary theory and methodology, women's writing, film and literature, and Canadian and Hungarian modern and contemporary prose. The Peking University Press 1997 print version of the book does not include a Works Cited: in the 2011 pdf version the Works Cited is added. Copyright release by Peking University Press to Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek.

Annual Reports of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1999-

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:29:00 PDT

Bibliography for Work in Hungarian Studies as Comparative Central European Studies

Louise O. Vasvári et al. — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:29:15 PDT

The "Bibliography for Work in Hungarian Studies as Comparative Central European Studies" includes English-language scholarship only. It includes scholarship published about Hungarian culture in the widest definition thus in several disciplines, e.g., (comparative) cultural studies, literature, history, political science, linguistics, gender studies, folklore, film, music, sociology, cultural anthropology, the other arts, etc. In keeping with the notion that Hungarian culture is best studied in the context of Central and East European culture, the Bibliography includes publications of work in the comparative and contextual perspective. The Bibliography contains scholarship published in the last three decades although some seminal texts are also listed. Articles published in collected volumes are listed separately when relevant. The Bibliography is an extended and revised version of Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, and Carlo Salzani, "Selected Bibliography for Work in Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies." Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies. Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2011. 347-70. For a bibliography of work in a wider context of Central and East European culture and with foreign-language publications, thus with less focus on Hungarian culture per se, see Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. "Selected Bibliography for the Study of Central European Culture." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (Library): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/ceecbibliography>.

Bibliography of Publications in Media and (Inter)mediality Studies

Geert Vandermeersche et al. — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:16 PDT

A Case Study of (Inter)medial Participation

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:14 PDT

In his article "A Case Study of (Inter)medial Participation" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents survey data followed by quantitative and qualitative analysis about the daily intake of media in cultural participation. The survey data of the study are the result of questionnaires conducted 2001-2002 with advanced undergraduate students enrolled in media and communication studies at Northeastern University and with advanced undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. As the survey was conducted in 2001-2002, the data and the analysis have "historical" relevance with regard to (inter)medial cultural participation in the digital age. The data are from a mid-size urban setting (Boston, USA) and from a provincial urban setting of the then just over ten-year old former East Germany (Halle, Germany). The data and the analysis suggest that (inter)medial participation and practices in the two different settings do not differ significantly.

Intersubjectivity and Intermediality in the Work of Serra

Rocío von Jungenfeld — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:13 PDT

In her article "Intersubjectivity and Intermediality in the work of Serra" Rocío von Jungenfeld examines the intersubjective space in which artworks are conceived and the cross boundaries of media in order to construct a general understanding of intersubjective perception in visual and plastic arts and an understanding of the processes that determine works of art, reflective perception, and intersubjective experience. Although the argument is that perception is subjective and untransferable, (i.e., a unique personal experience) influenced by innumerable factors and bound to a specific context, there are some elements of perception which can be understood intersubjectively as they apply to human beings in general. The aim of defining these elements of perception is to examine the intermedial nature of and the intersubjective components of works of art. Richard Serra's work has been selected for the implicitness of intermedial and intersubjective perceptual processes involved in the conceptualisation and materialisation of his artistic creations. Serra's artworks are complex entities with multilayered semantics, and so are the processes and the conceptual definitions of the media used in his creations.

Intermediality, Architecture, and the Politics of Urbanity

Virgilio Tortosa Garrigós — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:11 PDT

In his article "Intermediality, Architecture, and the Politics of Urbanity" Virgilio Tortosa Garrigós discusses aspects of the exponential development of large cities, the neoliberal economy, and the "spectacle" of architecture in the context of intermediality. With the connivance between land speculators and politicians — which has led not only to the loss of spatial identity but to irreversible pollution and geographic degradation — urbanity is epitomized on the Mediterranean coast line. In reaction to this development, a series of anti-globalization organizations and social movements, rooted in urban neighbourhoods, resist the homogenization of taste with anti-billboards and anti-advertising against consumerism and urban development. Architects who view the said urban development critically are also involved with counter movements such as street theatres and documentaries. Tortosa discusses these attempts occurring in various intermedial actions in order to conceive the city as a humane living space against consumerism.

Computer Mapping of Geography and Border Crossing in Scandinavia

Øyvind Eide — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:09 PDT

In his article "Computer Mapping of Geography and Border Crossing in Scandinavia" Øyvind Eide discusses computer based methods for enquiry into a set of border protocols created in the mid-eighteenth century based on interviews with inhabitants of northern Scandinavia. Most of the interviews are with common people: semi-nomadic reindeer herders, fishers, and farmers of Sámi, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish origin. Eide discusses the value of the interview material as source material which can be used to understand the way people spoke, especially about geographical matters. The data and their analysis suggest the relevance of mediality and materiality with not only scholarly but general knowledge impact. Accepting the shortcomings of the data, Eide demonstrates that with available methods of digital humanities the border protocol material is worth a close study as a possible source of knowledge about cognitive structures of people in the multi-ethnic area of northern Europe.

Digital Humanities in Developed and Emerging Markets

Verena Laschinger — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:08 PDT

In her article "Digital Humanities in Developed and Emerging Markets" Verena Laschinger discusses the impact e-culture has on humanities pedagogy both in affluent countries and emerging markets. Claiming that e-literacy training generally offers opportunities to recover the traditional agency of the humanities thus catapulting the disciplines into the educational forefront of the creative economy, special attention is given to the chances digital humanities education offers in Turkey’s emerging market economy. Given that technology promotes the country's economic development, which includes a rapidly growing private educational sector, digital humanities education helps citizens to adjust to critical democratic exchange, to facilitate and sustain processes of self-governance, thus reducing social, economic, and juridical disparities. Digital humanities education will work to the benefit of both local and global communities, if educators everywhere embrace their chance to educate future community leaders in integrated digital humanities programs.

Intermediality as Cultural Literacy and Teaching the Graphic Novel

Geert Vandermeersche et al. — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:06 PDT

In their article "Intermediality as Cultural Literacy and Teaching the Graphic Novel" Geert Vandermeersche and Ronald Soetaert argue for the inclusion of the graphic novel for the teaching of cultural literacy and literature. As the printed book is no longer the sole carrier of cultural literacy, Vandermeersche and Soetaert postulate that literary culture must be repositioned in intermedial culture and practices. In order to do so, Vandermeersche and Soetaert apply Werner Wolf's typology of intermediality, aspects of narratology, and scholarship about comics. Following a theoretical discussion they analyze the graphic novel series The Unwritten, a text that thematizes the intermedial nature of (Western) culture today and mediates the function of literature and cultural literacy. Consequently, as Vandermeersche's and Soetaert's analysis suggests, narration incorporates references to and the thematization of other media and literary texts, which, in turn, creates embedded stories that try to link the entire fabric of literary culture together. As such, it changes the way we look at the transfer of cultural literacy to readers and students of literature and culture.

Digital Media, 419, and the Politics of the Global Network

Paul Benzon — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:04 PDT

In his article "Digital Media, 419, and the Politics of the Global Network" Paul Benzon analyzes advance fee fraud, a scam in which con artists communicate with potential victims via email, promising them a monetary reward in return for financial assistance in extracting an allegedly astronomical (yet ultimately nonexistent) fortune from within a geographical zone often characterized as highly violent and unstable. Advance fee fraud is often referred to simply as 419, in accordance with the section of Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud. Benzon reads advance fee fraud as a practice of epistolary narrative that self-consciously allegorizes central processes of global financial circulation, trading in digitized narrative information rather than in digitized capital. In this sense, he suggests, it functions as a highly abstract financial instrument within the network of the global economy, dealing in a paradoxically literal fashion with imaginary money and thus using narrative form to probe and problematize the question of how and where money might move as data. Tracing the geopolitical and geoeconomic dimensions of advance fee fraud’s narrative and formal structure, Benzon argues that its random interpellations, arbitrary twists, and exaggerated claims deploy literary narrative in a manner that both relies upon and mirrors the material instability of global digital mediation itself.

Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap

Isabelle Marc Martínez — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:03 PDT

In her article "Intermediality, Rewriting Histories and Identities in French Rap" Isabelle Marc Martínez analyzes aspects of French hip hop culture. As an example of resistant cultural manifestations, hip hop scenes all over the world develop strategies to subvert mainstream values and to replace them by new de-localized, contesting identities via intermedial and intertextual processes. In France during the 1990 rap was intended to reassess French national history and national self-perception. Foundational hip hop bands such as Assassin, Ministère AMER, IAM, and NTM aimed at discrediting official narratives concerning the French culture's colonial and social past. hip hop artists, who viewed themselves as poets in a romantic vein, invested themselves with a responsibility that was political, ethical and aesthetic. From this position of poetic superiority, they attempted to alter official narratives by questioning and reviewing the educational system of France. The outcome of these resistant strategies was the forging of new multicultural and multiethnic identities of French culture, which have been in fact partly appropriated by mainstream culture and politics.

Musical, Rhetorical, and Visual Material in the Work of Feldman

Kurt Ozment — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:01 PDT

In his article "Musical, Rhetorical, and Visual Material in the Work of Feldman" Kurt Ozment compares early and late scores by Morton Feldman and argues that Feldman's interest in the visuality of the score was not limited to his experiments with graphic notation. More specifically, Projection 3 (1951) and String Quartet (II) (1983) suggest that Feldman experimented with notation from beginning to end. Up until the early 1980s, one of Feldman's main strategies for commenting on his music was to refer to painting. In his essay "Crippled Symmetry" and in an interview with the percussionist Jan Williams, Feldman also turns to rugs, linking the patterns in his scores to the materiality of certain rugs. Feldman's emphasis on the materiality of paintings, rugs, and notation stands in sharp contrast to the materiality of the spoken and written comments themselves, which tend to cross media.

The Spirit of Matter in Büchner

Barbara Natalie Nagel — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:00 PDT

In her article "The Spirit of Matter in Büchner" Barbara Natalie Nagel investigates different vectors of Georg Büchner's materialism: historical, philosophical, ethical, physiological. The analysis of what Büchner presents to be a necessary link between physiology and revolution aims to show how Büchner has a tendency first to entangle two relatively static, binary oppositions — literal/figurative and material/spiritual — in order then to play them against one another. Büchner thus uses the dynamics of literalization to evoke necessity: for example, if the revolution is conceived of in physiological terms, then the will either has to become physiological or biology has to become spiritual. With this, Büchner achieves a literary parody of materialism that points to alternative forms of materialism, such as Benjamin's "anthropological materialism" or Gnostic materialism, neither of which are purely material or purely ideal. Rather, Büchner's literary parody of materialism approaches what one might call "materiality without matter."

Intermedial Representations in Asian Macbeth-s

I-Chun Wang — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:58 PDT

In her article "Intermedial representations in Asian Macbeth-s" I-Chun Wang discusses three Asian versions of Macbeths that exemplify the cultural meanings through the interaction of landscape, body, and spectacles of power. Shakespeare remains one of the most popular playwrights in the Eastern world, and playwrights in the Asian world find Shakespearean plays attractive to the Asian audience. Among Shakespearean plays, Macbeth fascinates its Asian audience with its theme on kingship, territory of social relationships as well as moral and emotional development. These adaptations oftentimes become cross-cultural reproductions because each adapted text manifests not only cross-cultural interpretations but also highlights the ways that Shakespeare is read by audiences in other cultures. By probing into the meanings of spectacle and symbolic representations of landscape, I-Chun Wang analyzes how Asian directors, such as Akira Kurosawa, Vishal Bharadwaj, and Xing-guo Wu highlight cultural meanings of power struggle and territory through intermediality.

Old and New Medialities in Foer's Tree of Codes

Kiene Brillenburg Wurth — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:57 PDT

In her article "Old and New Materialities in Foer's Tree of Codes" Kiene Brillenburg Wurth analyzes how intermediality works — not what it "is" — in the analysis of literary texts. How intermedial can texts "do," precisely when they consist only of words? Do such texts compel us to reconsider literature as a verbal art? Her analysis focuses on a recent book by Jonathan Safran Foer: Tree of Codes (2010), a literary work cut out of the remains of Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles (1934). Brillenburg Wurth points out how intermediality works as a productive interaction not only between verbal, visual, and sculptural arts, but also between analog and digital media. She argues that this interaction signals a larger concern with bookness and paper materiality in the present of the age of screens and electronic textualities. Is this concern a sign of nostalgia, of the book coming to an end, or of an unsuspected vitality of paper-based literature?

Towards a Multimodal Analysis of da Rimini's Dollspace

Maya Paniagua Zalbidea — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:55 PDT

In her article "Towards a Multimodal Analysis of da Rimini's Dollspace" Maya Zalbidea Paniagua analyzes Francesca da Rimini's Dollspace <http://dollyoko.thing.net/> (1997-2001). By analyzing Dollspace Zalbidea Paniagua reinforces the proposition that studies on material aesthetics and intermediality encompass a process of rethinking the notion of boundaries across material structures. This is clearly shown in da Rimini's Dollspace, where ambivalence cuts across discursive genres and distinct material formats of image, text, and audio. Hypertext engages the user/participant in a dialogue with the machine and, in the case of Dollspace, across people's sexual attitudes. Dollspace seeks to do more than to just shock the user: it wants to haunt its user to become an intersubjectively embodied act.

An Intermedial Reading of Paley's Sita Sings the Blues

Ipshita Chanda — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:53 PDT

In her article "An Intermedial Reading of Paley's Sita Sings the Blues" Ipshita Chanda discusses the film text of Nina Paley's 2008 animation film, a culturally reconceptualized version of Válmíki's Sanskrit epic Rámáyana. Chanda discusses the film as an intermedial retextualization of the Rámáyana in the film where media boundaries and genres are crossed in "textual," audio, and visual media. The basic premise from which Chanda proceeds is that the condition of intermediality in film is produced by a "conceptual fusion" of different media which, in turn, are analyzed using theories of reception and contact between different media across time, space, and cultures with regard to "source" text and "received" text.

Intermediality, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy

Kris Rutten et al. — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:51 PDT

In their article "Intermediality, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy," Kris Rutten and Ronald Soetaert discuss how the notion of intermediality challenges the institutions that traditionally "mediate" culture and they discuss implications for pedagogy. First, they focus on how the museum as an institution is questioned and problematized by describing it as a "medium" that is increasingly influenced by cultural and technological developments. Second, they focus on the implications of new material culture and intermedial practice and how this requires new perspectives on pedagogy. Rutten and Soetaert elaborate on previous work on the curriculum as a "contact zone" (Pratt) by focusing on the rhetorical nature of curricula and by introducing (new) rhetoric as a theoretical and conceptual framework for discussing the relationship between intermediality, culture, and pedagogy.

Intermediality and Human vs. Machine Translation

Harry J. Huang — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:41:50 PDT

In his article "Intermediality and Human vs. Machine Translation" Harry J. Huang analyzes translation as a process of transferring meaning and/or information. The process and the translated text represent a new medium. When machine translation originating from human translation is integrated into the world wide web, it becomes part of global media. Accordingly, machine translation may best be studied within the context of intermediality, especially its quality vs. that of human translation. Based upon data generated from an international survey of 300 translators, writers, editors, and translation scholars, Huang analyses the participants' expectations and their acceptance of imperfection in the translated text. Huang postulates the dividing line between the acceptability and unacceptability of the translated text demystifies the concept of "good" translation versus "bad." Huang also proposes a statistical approach