Category Archives: Universities

Natasha Trethewey, Emily Dickinson: Partners in Crime

June 12, 2013 In her interview in the LA Review of Books (just out), Natasha Trethewey mentions only Derek Walcott and Robert Penn Warren as poets who touch her at moments of mass fatalities.  But I’d like to think that … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, contemporary poetry, Crime Fiction, Nineteenth-century literature, print medium, Universities | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beyond a Boundary: C. L. R. James in Glasgow

May 13, 2013 Scotland and the Caribbean?   The architecture of Glasgow tells a dramatic story.   Here, in the center of town, is  the many-pillared Gallery of Modern Art,  monumental  even for a museum, which used to be the … Continue reading

Posted in Americas, architecture, Atlantic, Caribbean literature, Cities, Colonization, Contemporary Art, film medium, Global South, oceans, Race, scale, slavery, Sports, Twentieth century literature, Universities | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: “Re Dis Appearing”

October 24, 2012 I’m getting ready for the World Humanities Forum, held next week in Busan, South Korea.   So I’ve been thinking about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, born in 1951 in Busan. She immigrated with her family to the … Continue reading

Posted in Arts communities, Asian-American literature, Autobiography, Cities, Comparative literature, Contemporary Art, Diaspora, digital humanities, digital platforms, Ethnicity, film medium, Gender, Genre, Interdisciplinarity, Media, print medium, Publishers, twentieth century art, Twentieth century literature, Universities, Visual arts, World religions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Audre Lorde in Mexico, Maya Angelou in Ghana

September 26, 2012 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Audre Lorde.  She had died at the age of 58, after 14 years of battling with breast cancer. But even before that, Lorde had always seemed associated with … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, Americas, Autobiography, Ethnicity, Genre, Global South, Latin America, mexico, Race, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Atlantic Sound: Caryl Phillips, Thomas Pynchon, Richard and Mimi Fariña

August 22, 2012 At the end of  The Atlantic Sound, Caryl Phillips is in Israel, visiting a community of Black Hebrews, almost 2000 of them, African-Americans who emigrated from the United States. They have given up their U.S. citizenship, but … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, African-American music, Asia, Atlantic, Black-Jewish alliances, Caribbean literature, collaboration, Creole, Diaspora, Educational institutions, Ethnicity, Mediterranean, Middle East, Music, oceans, peripheral networks, Remediation, slavery, Twentieth century literature, Universities, World history, world literature, YouTube videos | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

All Saints Bookstore, Beijing

June 13, 2012 We were in Hong Kong on June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.  A candlelight vigil had been held in Victoria Park for the past 23 years.  This year, 180,000 people showed up. There … Continue reading

Posted in Asia, Boostores, China, Cities, collaboration, Comparative literature, Contemporary novel, Diaspora, Dissidents, Educational institutions, literary magazaines, macro politics, Media, Nobel Prize, print medium, public universities, Publishers, Translation, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Two Toledos

April 25, 2012 I’m on my way to Toledo, I told people.  Ohio, not Spain, I added.  Then I found out that the two are in fact sister cities. The association began in the 1920s when University of Toledo President, … Continue reading

Posted in Arabic, architecture, Classics, Educational institutions, epic, Islam, Midwest, mixed races, Spanish, Translation, Universities, world literature, World religions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Wallace Stevens, amigo of Cuban writers

April 18, 2012 Wallace Stevens and Cristina García?   Not the most obvious pairing.  Yet it is Stevens’s poems that remained on García’s desk throughout the writing of Dreaming in Cuban, giving the novel its epigraph. And for Stevens, Havana is … Continue reading

Posted in Caribbean literature, Comparative literature, Cuba, Global South, Latin America, Letters, Modernist poetry, peripheral networks, Spanish, Translation, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Iraq in Poetry: Brian Turner

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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Moving Modernisms: Oxford 2012

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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments