• Blog Post

    The Problem of Sancho's Shit

    by Ricardo Padrón
    Are there limits to the pursuit of realism in fiction? For Cervantes, at least, those limits are to be found somewhere in between three hundred goats and the bodily needs of Sancho Panza. more
  • Blog Post

    Against Hate: "Hello, Brother" (V)

    by Mohammad Salama
    In the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, a reflection on the need to confront hatred, to come together as one human community and to learn that our difference is the formative experience of existence on earth. more
  • Colloquy

    Personification and Allegory: Selves and Signs

    by 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... more
  • Blog Post

    Texting Under Drone-Crossed Skies

    by Ayten Tartici
    How has the experience of being a refugee changed in a world of drones , 24-hour live news feeds, and text messages that zip across the globe in seconds? How does contemporary fiction capture the contradictions of being a refugee in a hyperconnected 21st century? more
  • Colloquy

    Queer Environmentalities

    by Irena Yamboliev
    How can queer theory and ecocriticism inform each other? And why should they? Scholars working to bring these two fields together argue that each has undermined its central goals by keeping aloof... more
  • Colloquy

    Prosody: Alternative Histories

    by Eric Weiskott, Natalie Gerber
    What are the historical stakes of prosody, and why should we ask? ‘Prosody’ refers both to the patterning of language in poetry and to the formal study of that patterning. In both senses, it is ... more
  • Colloquy

    Critical Semantics: New Transnational Keywords

    by 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. The original call for papers read simply: "Extend... more
  • Colloquy

    Animals, Animacy, and the Moving Image

    by Moira Weigel
    Animals attract moving images. They always have. Animals flapped and galloped around the zootropes, bioscopes, phenakistoscopes, and other proto-cinematic toys of the mid-nineteenth century. They... more
  • Colloquy

    Thing Theory in Literary Studies

    by Sarah Wasserman, Patrick Moran
    That things capture our imagination is hardly news. As Andrew Cole wrote in a 2016 issue of October, "materialism is as old as the hills." Cole claims that new approaches to studying things allow us to find similarities where we have too often found difference, and that this method dates back at least to Hegel and Marx. more

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    Seeing Through Water
    by Patrick Trefz
    Margaret Cohen, Anne Higonnet, and Jim Denevan discuss representations of the ocean in painting, sculpture, photography, and film.
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    Imagining Oceans
    by Melissa Langer and Catharine Axley
    The ocean is not just one thing. How have we imagined the oceans? How have we represented them? Margaret Cohen and Anne Higonnet reflect on these questions.
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    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...

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Recent Blogs

The Problem of Sancho's Shit
by Ricardo Padrón
Are there limits to the pursuit of realism in fiction? For Cervantes, at least, those limits are to be found somewhere in between three hundred goats and the bodily needs of Sancho Panza.
Against Hate: "Hello, Brother" (V)
by Mohammad Salama
In the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, a reflection on the need to confront hatred, to come together as one human community and to learn that our difference is the formative experience of existence on earth.
Iberia and the American Colonial State: Paperwork, Archives, and Fictional Claims
by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
In both the Iberian Peninsula and the New World, the archive played a central role in the creation of borders. Through the alchemy of litigation and treaty mediation, the paperwork of fictional claims was transformed into lines on the ground.
Texting Under Drone-Crossed Skies
by Ayten Tartici
How has the experience of being a refugee changed in a world of drones , 24-hour live news feeds, and text messages that zip across the globe in seconds? How does contemporary fiction capture the contradictions of being a refugee in a hyperconnected 21st century?
On Early Modern European Political Theory and African Slavery
by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Offering a provocative critique of the unspoken liberal underpinning of historiography on slavery, Herman Bennett's new study is addressed to Europeanists who have ignored the centrality of slavery to early modern political theory.

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