Category Archives: Media

Iraq in Poetry: Brian Turner

Posted on April 4, 2012 by wcd2

April 4, 2012 Teaching his poetry was easy. There was never any doubt in my mind that it belonged in the course – along with Whitman on the Civil War; John Hersey on Hiroshima; Ha Jin on Korea; Michael Herr … Continue reading →

Posted in Arabic, Classics, collaboration, Contemporary novel, contemporary poetry, Cuneiform, Educational institutions, epic, Handwritten script, Islam, lyric, Media, Mesopotamia, Middle East, Near Eastern poetry, Translation, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged Alhazen of Basra, American Civil War, analytical geometry, Brian Turner, Divisadero Street, Eulogy, Fresno, Gilgamesh. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Ha Jin, Here Bullet, Hiroshima, John Hersey, Katyusha rockets, Korean War, Michael Herr, Vietnam, Walt Whitman | 3 Comments

Moving Modernisms: Oxford 2012

Posted on March 28, 2012 by wcd2

March 28, 2012 I missed a whole day of the conference (had to teach, there was no getting around it). What did Paul Saint Amour say about slowness; Maud Ellmann about bi-location; Enda Duffy about high energy modernism; Ato Quayson … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, collaboration, Comparative literature, Contemporary novel, Educational institutions, film medium, globe, Media, Modernist poetry, print medium, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged Ato Quayson, cognitive science, emotional intelligence, Enda Duffy, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Julian Murphet, Maud Ellmann, modernism, Morocco, New College, Nigeria, Oxford University, Paul Saint-Amour, Route 66 TV series, Samuel Beckett, Tangerine Dream, Wole Soyinka | 6 Comments

Sudan: George Clooney, Dave Eggers, Valentino Achak Deng

Posted on March 21, 2012 by wcd2

March 21, 2012 Last Friday George Clooney was arrested protesting the new humanitarian violations in Sudan. The Satellite Sentinel Project, which he co-founded with John Prendergast in October 2010, collects digital images analyzed by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and used … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, collaboration, Contemporary novel, Ethnicity, film medium, Global South, Islam, Media, print medium, world literature, YouTube videos | Tagged Arabs, Dave Eggers, George Clooney, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, John Prendergast, Josiah Henson, Middle East, Nuba Mountains, Omar al-Bashid, Satellite Sentinel Project, Sudan, Valentino Achak Deng, What is the What, YouTube | 6 Comments

Edwidge Danticat: French, English, Creole

Posted on March 14, 2012 by wcd2

March 14, 2012 Her first languages were Creole and French. At 12, she spoke almost no English. At 26, her collection of short stories, Krik? Krak!, was nominated for the National Book Award. It’s mind-boggling to think of that trajectory … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Caribbean literature, collaboration, Comparative literature, Contemporary novel, Creole, Gender, Global South, Igbo, Latin America, Media, mixed races, peripheral networks, print medium, Radio, Remediation, Translation | Tagged Chinua Achebe, Creole, Edwidge Danticat, French, Haiti, Igbo language, Joseph Conrad, Krik? Krak!, literacy, mediascape, National Book Award, Paris Review, Polish, Radio Lumière | 82 Comments

Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence

Posted on February 8, 2012 by wcd2

February 8, 2012 Langston Hughes never went to Black Mountain College, but maybe he didn’t need to. 1948-49 was emblematic. A no doubt incomplete list of what happened during those months: in June 1948, Langston Hughes moved into 20 East … Continue reading →

Posted in abstract expressionism, collaboration, Cuban poetry, Media, Modernist poetry, print medium, Remediation, Translation, twentieth century art, Twentieth century literature, Visual arts | Tagged Arno Bontemps, Ben Frederic Carruthers, Black Mountain College, City Center, Cuba, Cuba Libre, Haiti, Home in a Box, Jacob Lawrence, Kurt Weill, Langston Hughes, New York, Nicolas Guillen, One-Way Ticket, Poetry of the Negro, Street Scene, Troubled Island, William Grant Still | 21 Comments

Charles Olson: Call Me Ishmael

Posted on January 25, 2012 by wcd2

January 25, 2012 In the early 1930s, while writing his Master’s thesis on Melville, Charles Olson began tracking down the books once owned by Melville, some with significant marginalia. Melville’s widow had sold almost 500 of these books to a … Continue reading →

Posted in epic, Experimental poetry, Handwritten script, Media, Nineteenth-century literature, Renaissance literature, Twentieth century literature | Tagged "Letter for Melville 1951", Black Mountain College, Call Me Ishmael, Charles Olson, Cy Twonbley, John Cage, Mayan hieroglyphics, Melville, Queequeg, Robert Duncan, Robert Rauschenberg, Shakespeare, University of Connecticut | 2 Comments

Rob Nixon: Slow Violence

Posted on January 11, 2012 by wcd2

January 11, 2012 The last day of the MLA: anyone still around? But it was one of the best panels I’d been to. A resonant title: “Velocities of Ecocriticism.” A full audience. And three great papers: Ursula Heise, Timothy Morton, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Environmentalism, Media, scale, Theater | Tagged Copenhagen Summit, environmentalism of the poor, human and nonhuman, macro and micro, Maldives, Rob Nixon, Timothy Morton, Ursula Heise, velocities of events | 20 Comments