• 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
  • 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
  • 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

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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...
"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...
“Neither Arabic nor Persian literature has an originative poetics per se.”
by Alexander Key
Ma'na is not the same as “meaning” at all; it is its own story.

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