CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Louisa Kirk, Fantasy and Event in Nella Larsen’s 'Passing'
Seminar
Fantasy and Event in Nella Larsen’s Passing Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), a noteworthy text of the Harlem Renaissance, portrays the strong and strange connection between Clare and Irene, two women who racially ‘pass’ between black and white in 1920's New York. The novel is often treated as a…
CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Kate Oakes, Till the Cows Come Home: A Scene from the Novel 'Westhill'
Seminar
Till the Cows Come Home: A Scene from the Novel Westhill In Animal Studies discourse, farms are places of marginalization and cruelty. Agricultural practices involve the killing of astonishing numbers of animals, and demonstrate, quite graphically, what Dinesh Wadiwel calls the “continuing warlike…
CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Monique Rooney, Mediating Sovereignty: The Crown as 'Interbrow'
Seminar
Mediating Sovereignty: The Crown as 'Interbrow' This paper reads The Crown as an example of narrative ‘interbrow’—my coinage for middlebrow stories produced in the time of the internet. The Crown depicts British royalty as susceptible to middlebrow culture pervading late-twentieth century life,…
CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Will Peyton, Liu Cixin's 'Diqiu Wangshi' Trilogy
Seminar
Liu Cixin’s Diqiu Wangshi Trilogy This thesis examines Liu Cixin’s Diqiu Wangshi (The Remembrance of Earth’s Past), a Chinese science fiction trilogy whose translation is unprecedentedly popular in the Western world. In his interviews and critical writings, Liu Cixin often explains that he is…
CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Manuel Clemens 'How (Not) to Become Tolerant: Affects and Habitus in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise'
Seminar
How (Not) to Become Tolerant: Affects and Habitus in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise The coincidences and phantasms that open Lessing’s Nathan the Wise reappear throughout the entire drama and even bring about its happy ending. While the usual interpretation of the plot maintains that the illusions held…
How books travel across the pond and down under: case studies in transnational reception of contemporary family-centered fiction
Seminar
Despite the transnational turn in book history (Shep, 2008) it is impossible to disentangle the nation from the text. It has been argued that the invention of the printing press was crucial to the creation of the modern nation-state (Anderson, 1983; Eisenstein, 1979; McLuhan, 1962), and that books…
CuSPP Literary Studies Seminar Series 2019: Katharina Bonzel 'Criminal Justice: Televisual Policing in the Age of Disillusionment'
Seminar
Criminal Justice: Televisual Policing in the Age of Disillusionment This paper argues that the popular television series The Blacklist (2013-present) marks a turn in “terror TV” (Tasker) towards criminals being the better police as trust in traditional law enforcement evaporates post 9/11. While…