Transnational Spaces: Celebrating Fifty Years of Literary and Cultural Intersections at NeMLA

Edited by Carine Mardorossian, University of Buffalo and Simona Wright, The College of New Jersey

This volume celebrates fifty years of NeMLA’s important presence in the world of academia with a collection of essays that adopt a transnational critical lens. With the present selection, we intend to add our voices to the ongoing debate centered on the renegotiation of space, national, and cultural geographies; to foster both the re-thinking of language(s) and literature(s) not exclusively in English and the study of race, gender, sexuality, and class within and across national boundaries. Most pertinently for this collection, we hope to add meaningful material to produce new theoretical paradigms and to rethink the role and significance of the humanities in today’s world. In this light, 'Transnational Spaces: Celebrating Fifty Years of Literary, Cultural, and Language Intersections at NeMLA' offers a contribution to the study of our present, transnational condition, from the point of view of an organization, the 'Northeast Modern Language Association', that since its inception in 1969, has sought to provide a space of encounter, debate, and open intellectual exchange for all its members as well as for the academe at large. The essays contained in this volume emphasize the interdependency and interrelations engendered by the globalized world in which we live, highlighting the possibility to create new knowledge and forms of understanding across the boundaries of nationhood and region. At the same time, they remind us that the present situation calls for a radical self-examination of a history of systemic racism which continues to produce episodes of police brutality, rationalizes cultural and economic exclusion, and normalizes the incarceration of African Americans and “illegal” immigrants, including children and minorities. In this light, with this volume, we hope to have provided inclusive, egalitarian, and cosmopolitan spaces of encounter, exchange, and interrogation.

Transculturación y trans-identidades en la literatura contemporánea mexicana

Edited by Herlinda Flores Badillo, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico

La historia y cultura de México han sido transculturadas desde la época prehispánica. La mezcla surgida a partir de la llegada de los españoles dio lugar a un proceso de transculturación y al surgimiento de nuevas identidades, que se trasladaron a la literatura de esta época, dando cuenta de la transición vivida. La literatura se presenta en México como un producto heterogéneo y diverso, fruto del proceso de transculturación, no sólo en su literatura canónica, sino también en aquella de los otros Méxicos, o del México Profundo. “Transculturacion y trans-identidades en la literatura contemporánea mexicana” explora el juego de identidades en las obras de Pablo Soler Frost, Álvaro Enrigue o Fernanda Melchor, entre otros. Una colección de ensayos que abrirá un diálogo entre investigadores y académicos cuya área de estudio esté relacionada con la intersección de culturas, literaturas y escritores, así como un volumen de gran interés a todo público interesado en la literatura mexicana, los fenómenos de transculturación, migración, translacionalismo y políticas identitarias. Mexican history and culture have been transculturated since the pre-Hispanic era. The mixture that developed from the Spaniards arrival promoted the increase of transculturation and the development of new identities. Examples that can easily be spotted in Mexican contemporary literature, showing that due to this phenomena, Mexican literature is heterogeneous and diverse, not only in its canonic literature, but in that from the other Mexicos, or “deep Mexico”. “Transculturation and trans-identities in contemporary Mexican Literature” explores identities in the works of Pablo Soler Frost, Álvaro Enrigue or Fernanda Melchor, to only cite a few. A book that will open a dialogue among researchers, academics and students whose area of study is related to the intersection of culture, identities, spaces, literature and writers. An ambitious collection of essays, of great interest regarding Mexican culture, but also “border culture”, migration, transcultural issues and identity politics.

Novels, Rhetoric, and Criticism: A Brief History of Belles Lettres and British Literary Culture, 1680 – 1900

Jack M. Downs, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane

Developing a history of the English novel requires the inclusion of a vast range of cultural, economic, religious, social, and aesthetic influences. But the role of eighteenth-century English rhetorical theory in the emergence of the novel – and the critical discourse surrounding that emergence – has often been neglected or overlooked. The influence of rhetorical theory in the development of the English novel is undeniable, however, and changes to rhetorical theory in Britain during the eighteenth century led to the development of a critical aesthetic discourse about the novel in Victorian England. This study argues that eighteenth-century 'belles lettres' rhetorical theory played a key role in developing a horizon of expectation concerning the nature and purpose of the novel that extended well into the nineteenth century. There is a connection between the emergence of the English novel, eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, and Victorian novel criticism that has been neglected; this study attempts to recover and articulate that connection.

Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark

A Collection of Essays on Shakespeare in his Christian Context

Edited by Michael Scott, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford and Michael J. Collins, Georgetown University

Christian Shakespeare? The question was put to each contributor to this collection of essays. They received no further guidance about how to understand the question nor how to shape their responses. No particular theoretical approach, no shared definition of the question was required or encouraged. Rather, they were free to join, in whatever way they thought useful, the extensive discourse about the impact that the Christian faith and the religious controversies of Shakespeare’s time had on his poems and plays. The range of responses points not only to openness of Shakespeare’s work to interpretation, but to the seriousness with which the writers reflected on the question and to their careful and sensitive reading of the poems and plays. The heterogeneity of Shakespeare’s world is reflected in the heterogeneity of the essays, each an individual response to the complex question they engage. In the end, what the plays and poems reveal about Shakespeare’s Christianity remains unclear, and that lack of clarity has also contributed to the variety of responses in the collection. All the essays recognize, to some degree or another, that the tension in Shakespeare’s world between old and new, medieval and early modern, Catholic and Protestant, brought uncertainty (and in some cases anxiety) to the minds and hearts of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. But what Shakespeare himself believed, how he responded in his work to the religious turmoil of his time remains uncertain. For some of the contributors Shakespeare’s plays are inescapably indeterminate (even evasive) and open to a multiplicity of possible readings. For others, Shakespeare takes a stand and, through the careful patterning of his plays, speaks more or less unambiguously to the religious and political issues of his time. Together the essays reflect the varied ways in which the question of Shakespeare’s Christianity might be answered.

Hispanic and Lusophone Voices of Africa

Edited by David Mongor-Lizarrabengoa, Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury, Maryland and Sarita Naa Akuye Addy, Canadian Center for Diversity and Inclusion

Africa is usually depicted in Western media as a continent plagued by continuous wars, civil conflicts, disease, and human rights violations; however, an analysis of the region’s cultural output reveals the depth and strength of the character of the African people that has endured the burden of colonialism. Undoubtedly, much of the scholarship on African literature focuses on countries colonized by the British such as South Africa and Nigeria; however, the African nations colonized by Spain and Portugal have also made major literary contributions. This volume examines the literature and cinema of the African nations colonized by Spain and Portugal (Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cabo Verde, Angola, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe) to demonstrate the complexity and heterogeneity of these countries in their attempts to establish a post-colonial identity. This volume is intended for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers seeking to study Hispanic and Luso-African literature and film, and so better understand cultural production in previously underrepresented nations of Africa.