Category Archives: Universities

Natasha Trethewey, Emily Dickinson: Partners in Crime

Posted on June 12, 2013 by wcd2

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 Beyond Katrina, Derek Walcott, Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson is Dead, Gulfport Mississippi, Jane Langton, Joanne Dobson, Los Angeles Review of Books, Mary Willis Walker, Natasha Trethewey, Quieter than Death, Robert Penn Warren, Zero at the Bone | Leave a comment

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

Posted on May 13, 2013 by wcd2

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 African National Congress, Atlantic trade, BBC, Beyond a Boundary, C. L. R. James, Cambridge University, cricket, F W de Klerk, Gallery of Modern of Modern Art, Guradian, John Arlott, Middlesex, Mike Brearley, Mike Dibb, Nelson Mandela, Robert Hill, Scotland, Selma James, Sout Africa, suger cane, tobacco, University of Glasgow, West Indies, William Cunninghame | Leave a comment

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: “Re Dis Appearing”

Posted on October 24, 2012 by wcd2

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 "Re Dis Appearing", Berkeley, Busan, Christian Metz, Demeter, Dictee, France, Joan of Arc, Korea, Manchuria, New York, Persephone, Raymond Bellour, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Thierry Kuntzel, Tumblr, World Humanities Forum, Yu Guan Soon | 1 Comment

Audre Lorde in Mexico, Maya Angelou in Ghana

Posted on September 26, 2012 by wcd2

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 All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Audre Lorde, biomythography, Ghana, Maya Angelou, Mexico, National University of Mexico, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, Zami | Leave a comment

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

Posted on August 22, 2012 by wcd2

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 African diaspora, African-American, Atlantic Sound, Benny Profane, Black Hebrews, Bob Marley, Botticelli, Brazil, Brooklyn, Caryl Phillips, Celebrations for a Grey Day, Israel, Jamaica, Joan Baez, Laurie Anderson, Radiohead, Redemption Song, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Tekiyah, Thomas Pynchon, V, Venus, Vheissu | Leave a comment

All Saints Bookstore, Beijing

Posted on June 13, 2012 by wcd2

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 All Saints Bookstore, Beijing, Beloved, candlelight vigil, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, Hong Kong, Liu Suli, Liu Zaiobo, Mark Twain, Nobel Prize, Peking University, Richard Powers, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Steve Jobs, Strand, The Echo Maker, The Road, Thinkers Cafe, Tiananmen Square crackdown, Toni Morrison, Tsinghua University, Wansheng Bookstore, World Literature Institute, Zhao Baisheng, Zora Neale Hurston | 9 Comments

Two Toledos

Posted on April 25, 2012 by wcd2

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 1492, Cervantes, Christians, Cide Hamete Benengeli, Don Quixote, Henry Doermann, ijtihad, Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, Jews, La Mancha, M, Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, Mudéjar architecture, Muslims, Ohio, Russell Brown, Sister Cities, Spain, Synagogue of El Transito, Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca, Toledo | 20 Comments

Wallace Stevens, amigo of Cuban writers

Posted on April 18, 2012 by wcd2

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 " José Rodríguez Feo, "Academic Discourse in Havana", "Someone puts a Pineapple 'Together", Antillean, Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban, El Sol, Hartford, Havana, Key West, Madrid, Secretaries of the Moon, Wallace Stevens | 2 Comments

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