scholarly journals Transnational spaces, transitional places : Muslimness in contemporary literary imaginations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Neriman Kuyucu
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Diasporic Subjectivity ◽  
Complex Characters

This dissertation focuses on contemporary literature in English produced by writers of Muslim origin. My study analyzes Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account (2014), Leila Abuela's The Kindness of Enemies (2015), Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent (2003), Elif Shafak's The Saint of Incipient Sanities (2004) and Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home (2007), and Leila Aboulela's Minaret (2005), Shelina Janmohamed's Love in a Headscarf (2009), and Tanwi Nandini Islam's Bright Lines (2015) to explore and illuminate the ways in which Muslim diasporic subjectivity is being reconfigured in contemporary literary imaginations. Guided by developments in Muslim literary studies, postcolonial and diaspora theories, this dissertation examines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the particular conjunctures of literature, Muslimness, displacement, and belonging within the new analytic framework of Muslim diaspora space. This project seeks to move beyond the set of discourses -- radicalization vs. secularization; Islamism vs. liberalism-- that have defined Muslimness to highlight alternative positionalities in between. My analyses of the chosen texts through the lens of Muslim diaspora space, I argue, shift the focus from the preconceived notions about the authors' positionality as Muslim to the ways in which they create complex characters that represent the variety of Muslim discourses and practices. Rather than focusing on such over-asked questions as "Is the text Islamic or secular?" and "Western or Muslim?," Muslim diaspora space as a mode of analysis highlights how the writers negotiate the concepts of Islamic vs. secular and Muslim vs. citizen by redefining "Muslimness" as well as "western-ness."

scholarly journals LITERATURE AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE POST-SECULAR AGE

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Faisal Nazir
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Current State ◽  
Analytical Potential ◽  
And Function

This paper attempts to reconsider the nature and function of the ‘spiritual’ dimension in literary texts and in literary study in the context of the present state of the discipline of literary studies. The present era is often defined as a ‘post-secular’ era, one in which themes of spirituality and mysticism are increasingly noticeable in literary works. The paper argues that to maintain its relevance to contemporary writers and readers, literary criticism has to (re-)address these themes in a concrete and effective way. The paper recommends a comparative approach to the discussion of spirituality and mysticism in contemporary literature and literary criticism. In order to carry effective analytical potential, this approach, the paper emphasizes, has to be developed from specific spiritual traditions. The paper first discusses the disciplinary crisis literary studies have always been exposed to since their inception as a discipline of study in academic institutes. It then reviews the current state of the discipline and describes how the discipline came to be dominated by scientific and social approaches. Finally, it  suggests the reinstitutionof the ‘spiritual’ element in literary study as a way out from the state of crisis in the discipline of literary studies. The paper thus attempts to strengthen the disciplinary identify of literary studies while exploring interdisciplinary aspects of the study literature.

scholarly journals Poetry in Transmedial Perspective: Rethinking Intermedial Literary Studies in the Digital Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Experimental Poetry ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Media Change ◽  
Single Medium

Abstract In the digital age. literary practice proliferates across different media platforms. Contemporary literary texts are written, circulated and rea|d in a variety of media, ranging from traditional print formats to online environments. This essay explores the implications that the transmedial dispersal of literary culture has for intermedial literary studies. If literature no longer functions as a unified single medium (if it ever did) but unfolds in a multiplicity of media, concepts central to intermediality studies, such as media specificity, media boundaries and media change, have to be reconsidered. Taking as its test case the adaptation of E. E. Cummings’s experimental poetry in Alison Clifford’s new media artwork The Sweet Old Etcetera as well as in YouTube clips, the essay argues for a reconceptualization of contemporary literature as a transmedial configuration or network. Rather than think of literature as a single self-contained medium that engages in intermedial exchange and competition with other media, such as film or music, we can better understand how literature operates and develops in the digital age if we recognize the medial heterogeneity and transmedial distribution of literary practice.

scholarly journals Reviews/Interviews

Text Matters ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 291-316
Author(s):  
Adam Sumera ◽  
Wit Pietrzak ◽  
Monika Kocot ◽  
Fadia Faqir ◽  
Maria Assif ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Absent Fathers ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Native American Identity

Adam Sumera: Capital Ellowen Deeowen: A Review of The Making of London: London in Contemporary Literature by Sebastian Groes (Houndsmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011) Wit Pietrzak: Deconstruction and Liberation: A Review of Simon Glendinning’s Derrida Monika Kocot: Authenticity, Transdifference, Survivance: Native American Identity (Un)Masked: A Review of Native Authenticity: Transnational Perspectives on Native American Literary Studies, ed. Deborah L. Madsen Fadia Faqir Speaks with Maria Assif: Literature, the Arab Diaspora, Gender and Politics Norman Ravvin Talks to Krzysztof Majer: Absent Fathers, Outsider Perspectives and Yiddish Typewriters

Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu-Mei Shih
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
World System ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
Efficient Strategy ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
Economic Formation

Recent interest in globalizing literary studies has largely involved attempts to locate conjunctures between contemporary literature and the economic formation of global capitalism and thereby to name a new literary structure of feeling—structure in terms of the organization of various literatures into a world system and feeling in terms of the literary production of new affects in new forms, styles, and genres. Its precedent is the idea of “world literature,” first articulated by Goethe in 1827 and recently recuperated. While many scholars resuscitating this concept offer a nominal apology for its Eurocentric origins, this Eurocentrism's constitutive hierarchies and asymmetries are seldom analyzed. Twenty-five years after Edward Said's Orientalism and the book's specific criticism of Goethe, it appears that the critique of Eurocentrism in general has exhausted itself, that one only needs to show awareness of it because it is predictable. Instead of working through the problem, one gives recognition to it, which serves as an expedient and efficient strategy of displacement, a tropological caveat, able to push aside obstacles on the path to globalist literary studies of global literature.

scholarly journals Misrepresentation of the Other: A Postcolonial Study in Selected Arab and American Novels

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibraheem Ajeel Dakhil ◽  
Ibraheem Ajeel Dakhil
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Postcolonial Study

The paper sheds light on one of the important concepts in contemporary literature which tackles the representation of the Other in selected Arabic and American literary products. The representation of the other holds many misrepresentations and stereotypes, both varying and fixed; as such, the study of the literary representations of the other which comes as a remedy many fixed and prevalent frameworks between the self and the other which deals with the construction of an individual on cultural, political and social levels. The study tackles a topic of great importance for contemporary literary studies and critiques, especially at the level of national literature. The research aims to discuss how Arab writers envision the concept of the Other, on one hand; and it argues how American writers projects the concept in their novels, on the other hand. It also gives an insight about Arabs and Americans viewing the term the self and other or utilize the term Imagology which is very significant because it differentiates between the Oriental and Western points of view. The paper is restricted to argue the representation of the other in these four novels. Finally, the research ends up with conclusion and recommendations for further researches.

scholarly journals Historyk literatury i jego przyszłość. (Auto)refleksje

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Magdalena Partyka
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Historical World

The article shows the situation of literary historians, their social role and tasks in the contemporary literary theory. The author presents opinions on the discipline expressed by such experienced researchers as Kazimierz Wyka, Teresa Kostkiewiczowa, Włodzimierz Bolecki, and she askes how the students of literary studies perceive the history of literature. She writes about difficulties, dilemmas and quandaries associated with the work of contemporary literature researchers who are interested in old literature. She shows some examples of studies where historical imagery has become a foundation for the creation of numerous associations combining antiquity and modernity, where it allowed to see the polar character of references and follow-ups, as well as to describe the variability of creative endeavors and realisations in literature, and finally to reveal moments of coexistence of dichotomous phenomena. The author presents the dramaturgy of work of literary historians’ who are entangled in multilevel determinants of the historical world, which they investigate, and the present one, which they experience.

scholarly journals O czym śni Filipowicz? – próba analizy opowiadania Kornela Filipowicza „Gdy przychodzą we śnie” w perspektywie szeroko rozumianej filozofii egzystencjalnej

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 472-485
Author(s):  
Anna Bańska-Szuba ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
African Countries

The purpose of the article is to interpret the story “Gdy przychodzą we śnie” (When they come in a dream) by Kornel Filipowicz using the category introduced to literary studies by Michał Januszkiewicz – the so-called existentialist point of view. It is a procedure aimed at discovering the meaning of the exceptional text, as it does not fit into the typical themes of Filipowicz, the eulogist of the Polish province, and the bard of everyday life. The work was written in 1979 and was published in the collection “Koncert f-moll i inne opowiadania”, published in 1982. This story, making a great impression on today’s reader because of the exceptional topicality of the topic, which is the phenomenon of mass immigration from African countries to Europe, evokes the desire to ascribe to author of prophetic abilities. This is the source of many misunderstandings, which in turn leads to the conclusion by researchers of this prose that it is not easy to reach its essential meanings. Hence, an interesting proposal is to look at it from the perspective of broadly understood existential philosophy, in particular the thoughts of Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, Camus, thinkers who cannot be ignored when discussing contemporary literature. From this perspective, this unique story takes on new content. It leads, if not to a full understanding of its meaning, then at least to the discovery of previously hidden meanings.

Construction grammar and creativity: Evolution, psychology, and cognitive science

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Present Issue ◽  
Verbal Creativity ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Literary Studies ◽  
The Way

AbstractCreativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before, and to fundamentally change the way we live. Recently, one important area of creativity, namely verbal creativity, has attracted considerable interest from constructionist approaches to language. The present issue builds on this emerging field of study and adds an interdisciplinary perspective to it by also presenting the view from cognitive literary studies as well as psychology. First, however, this introduction surveys the recent issues arising in constructionist studies of verbal creativity.

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