Colloquies
Welcome to Colloquies, a dynamic index to current themes that run through Arcade’s field of literature, the humanities, and the world. For each Colloquy, a curator selects from a variety of intellectual work in different modes—journal articles, book chapters, multimedia recordings, and blog posts—to assemble a conversation.
Open Colloquies
Arts + Justice
Curators
Jisha Menon, Anna Jayne Kimmel
Approaching justice from the perspective of arts and culture enables us to attend to its affective, embodied, social, and political dimensions, thus bringing together a range of cross-disciplinary dialogues.
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The Right to the Creative City
Curators
Michael B. Kahan, Peggy Phelan
In 2002, Richard Florida, an urban studies scholar then at Carnegie Mellon University, published The Rise of the Creative Class, which became a surprise best-seller. In 2005, he followed that book with what he called a "prequel," Cities and the Creative Class. more
Comparing Literatures: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Urdu
Curator
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?
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On Being a Medievalist and More
Curator
Marisa Galvez
This Colloquy is one of two that originated in the "After 1967" conference in which we celebrated the work of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. more
Personification and Allegory: Selves and Signs
Curator
Vladimir Brljak
What has allegory to do with personification, and personification with allegory? Are we justified in speaking, as we often do, of “allegorical personifications” and “personification allegory,” or does such usage, however widespread, obscure fundamental differences between the two? more
Queer Environmentalities
Curator
Irena Yamboliev
How can queer theory and ecocriticism inform each other? And why should they? more
Critical Semantics: New Transnational Keywords
Curator
Anston Bosman
This Colloquy arises from a 2018 MLA Convention session I organized on behalf of the Forum on Comparative Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. more