ARCADE

Blog Post
“Suddenly and Deliberately”: What Campus Evacuations during Japanese American Concentration Can Teach Us about Digital Humanities and Remote Learning
by Rhae Lynn Barnes
At the time of Pearl Harbor, during December 1941, around 700 Japanese Americans were enrolled at the University of California, and at least thirty were at Stanford University. [1] Within weeks,... more
Blog Post
On certainty
by William Flesch
How interesting John Milton's use of the word "certain " is. more
Blog Post
I am Saint Wolf: Poetry Dwelling of Zurab Rtveliashvili
by Irakli Zurab Kakabadze
The Georgian poet and multimedia artist Zurab Rtveliashvili (1967-2021) represents how poetry's power to dwell confronts authoritarianism. more
Dibur Article
Periphery or Center? Ukrainian Modernism in Kyiv
by Irena R. Makaryk
Contesting the use of the geospatial concepts of “periphery” and “center,” this essay argues that a mathematical metaphor, the Möbius strip, better expresses the continuously morphing, interrelated, dynamic mesh that we call modernism. One of the major but still understudied nodes on this strip was Kyiv (Russian: Kiev). Flourishing between 1905 and the early 1930s, modernism in Kyiv was distinctive by virtue of its historical-political circumstances and by its rapid acceptance, vitality, and astonishing efflorescence. more
Blog Post
"Parentheses" (and quotations)
by William Flesch
Geoffrey Nunberg (somewhere) makes the point that parentheses and quotations follow similar typographical, and, you could say syntactic rules: If you open a parentheses (with a lunula) you have to... more
Blog Post
"I wish to be cremated": On Writing My Un-Islamic Will
by Ali Shakir
It was raining heavily that May morning in 2019. I reluctantly walked into the law firm’s office in Auckland, greeted Joy, the receptionist and legal assistant, and took a seat, waiting for the... more
Dibur Article
The Shape-Shifting Margin: Patterns of Change in Arabic Modernism Past Beirut
by Daniel Behar
This essay presents an initial foray into the rich field of modern Arabic poetry after the canonization phase of modernism in midcentury Beirut. The chosen case studies cover major orientations in forms of second-wave modernism that swept across poetic writing in the last quarter of the twentieth century. By consciously forming fissures, Arab peripheries propose a reintegration of poetic modernity into a more historically grounded, inclusive, and synchronized project. more
Blog Post
Can a Colonial Archive be an Anti-Colonial Archive? The Centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Library at UT-Austin
by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
The Nettie Lee Benson Collection is a library that originated as part of the larger collections of the University of Texas at Austin since the 1890s. The Library began initially as a typical colonial... more
Colloquy
Comparing Literatures: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Urdu
by Alexander Key
Comparative Literature has spent the last few decades expanding its focus beyond Europe and the Anglophone Americas. But has it succeeded? Departments around the world include scholars working on Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, and to a lesser extent Turkish, Urdu, and other non-European languages. But the desire for coverage remains a chimera, always tempting with the prospect of inclusion: "if only we had somebody who did…" What would success, even if we subscribed to such teleology, look like? more
Essay
Morrison’s Things: Between History and Memory
by Kinohi Nishikawa
Toni Morrison began to formulate her engagement with the black past early in her career, in a project for which she served as editor and makeshift curator of objects. In 1974 Random House brought out a book that Morrison had spent 18 months assembling with four collectors of black memorabilia: a 200-page, oversized compendium that conveys the story of African and African-descended people in the New World. more
Blog Post
Online Learning in the Time of Corona
by Mohammad Salama
I grew up in the aftermath of Nasser’s Egypt, where public education was made free for all. For me, learning has always been remote… It began with walks to the public libraries, and random flaneur... more
Essay
The Queerness of Straight Time in an Era of Climate Change
by Sylvan Goldberg
What can the nineteenth-century American novelist Sarah Orne Jewett tell us about inhabiting a present in which historical time appears both deranged and inescapable? more

Featured Colloquies

Updated

Comparing Literatures: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Urdu

Curator

Alexander Key

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Updated

Queer Environmentalities

Curator

Irena Yamboliev

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Updated

Elena Ferrante

Curator

Barbara Alfano

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Updated

Thing Theory in Literary Studies

Curators

Sarah Wasserman, Patrick Moran

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On Being a Medievalist and More

Curator

Marisa Galvez

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Personification and Allegory: Selves and Signs

Curator

Vladimir Brljak

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Prosody: Alternative Histories

Curators

Eric Weiskott, Natalie Gerber

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Critical Semantics: New Transnational Keywords

Curator

Anston Bosman

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Animals, Animacy, and the Moving Image

Curator

Moira Weigel

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Pages

Recent Multimedia

video
Art/History: How South of Market Became SOMA

by Michael B. Kahan and Janet Delaney

Michael B. Kahan and Janet Delaney discuss the history of San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood from 1970 to the present.
video
The Artist as Interpreter: Caetano Veloso at MLA 2016

by Caetano Veloso

The singer and songwriter is interviewed by Marjorie Perloff at the 2016 Modern Language Association Convention in Austin. He discusses his early encounters with American music, how he views his...
video
Humanities West: Shakespeare and Cervantes

by Roland Greene

How did Cervantes and Shakespeare meet, if not in person?

Publications

Occasion Article
Introduction: The Charlie Hebdo Attacks and Their Aftermath

by Cécile Alduy, by Bruno Cornellier, by Dominic Thomas

International scholars, artists, writers, and activists offer a range of timely perspectives on the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Rofl Article
Secular Spectacle? Cervantes, Hardy, and the Question of Religion

by Sonia Velázquez

How a controversial Cervantes story and its French version help us reimagine early modern religion as circulation and mediation rather than sacralization
Rofl Article
'La gitanilla' in France: From Page to Stage

by Karen Newman

How the treatment of gypsies changes from the Cervantine original to its French translation and adaptation.

Recent Blogs

“Suddenly and Deliberately”: What Campus Evacuations during Japanese American Concentration Can Teach Us about Digital Humanities and Remote Learning

by Rhae Lynn Barnes

At the time of Pearl Harbor, during December 1941, around 700 Japanese Americans were enrolled at the University of California, and at least thirty were at Stanford University. [1] Within weeks,...

On certainty

by William Flesch

How interesting John Milton's use of the word "certain " is.

I am Saint Wolf: Poetry Dwelling of Zurab Rtveliashvili

by Irakli Zurab Kakabadze

The Georgian poet and multimedia artist Zurab Rtveliashvili (1967-2021) represents how poetry's power to dwell confronts authoritarianism.

Can a Colonial Archive be an Anti-Colonial Archive? The Centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Library at UT-Austin

by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

The Nettie Lee Benson Collection is a library that originated as part of the larger collections of the University of Texas at Austin since the 1890s. The Library began initially as a typical colonial...

"Parentheses" (and quotations)

by William Flesch

Geoffrey Nunberg (somewhere) makes the point that parentheses and quotations follow similar typographical, and, you could say syntactic rules: If you open a parentheses (with a lunula) you have to...