Anglophone Studies

In 1919, the American Modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe painted “59th Street Studio,” an intimate oil on canvas that portrayed the studio apartment at 114 East 59th Street, in New York, where the painter was struggling to find the right angle and light to start her career. By staring down from the windows of Alfred Stieglitz’s apartment, O’Keeffe observed the busy lives of New Yorkers, aware of what the New World was blooming into, and how Americans were reacting to this new vertical space highly praised by European artists.
This contribution aims to show how O’Keeffe’s rooms in New York opened the door to the beginning of a new way of making art, and to a new way of conceiving women’s spaces. The paper cross-examines the reading of O’Keeffe’s painting and early career life through poetry. Christopher Buckley’s poem “59th Street Studio” (Flying Backbone) casts a private gaze into O’Keeffe’s rooms; Cathy Song’s “Black Iris—New York” (Picture Bride) draws the reader into some domestic moments of the artist’s life; Alicia Ostriker’s “O’Keeffe” (The Little Space) pictures the artist ready to show her Midwestern “fist.” The poets help us visualize the minimalist space O’Keeffe was imagining in New York, in her attempt to capture patches of sky from its streets and her windows. By stripping away details, hollowing out shapes, and carving out her role as an artist—a process that Kate Braid reproduces in her book of poems Inward to the Bones: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr—O’Keeffe dismantled the walls of her patriarchal house, and profession. Space expanded in her new order. She trespassed the boundaries of stereotyped feminine realms that led her to the open, transnational houses–her adobes in New Mexico–where she boldly changed the nature of domesticity, and art.

The uploaded Introduction is part of my monograph Negotiating Borderlines in Four Contemporary Migrant Writers from the Middle East. The book is inspired by the increased awareness that the world of today is exceptionally sensitive to boundaries. The intensity of geopolitical conflicts and their spectacular concentration in the last two centuries as well as the accelerated pace of their continuation in the present day have produced discourses of both extreme openness and extreme closure of geopolitical borderlines. The frequency of forced and voluntary migration, along with the mass displacements that followed after decolonisation, is held responsible for the frittering borders of both the former empires and their colonies. Against this background, contemporary critical debates tend to embrace the assumption that boundaries, as Michel Foucault, Nicole Schroeder, Syed Islam, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Stephen Klingman argue, are not as much sites of division/connection, but movements of transition in the continuous flow between places/times/identities.
    My investigation seeks to contribute to this field of studies by focusing on a particular and rather problematic case of negotiating border space – the persistent tendency to represent the “Middle East” as a region enclosed in relatively impermeable boundaries. The inherent openness of this part of the world is suggested by the ambiguity of the very term “Middle East”,  which implies both transition between places and cultures, and the intention to delimit this transition in a culturally (and even geographically) questionable static label. This perspective of enclosure haunts Middle Eastern studies and is part of ongoing cultural debates on cross-border circulation. In the present book I analyse critically works of four contemporary Anglophone migrant writers from the “Middle East” to demonstrate that in spite of the resistant lines that remain after religious, ethnic and political disputes have come and gone, this region does not exist as a rigidly delimited place in the writing of migrants who claim it back from beyond its borders. Rather than being a permanent location, it is constructed as a place that flows into other places and is constantly reshaped by a variety of personal stories, migrant trajectories, departures and returns.

This thesis aims to show the influence of English on a
minority language such as Kasim, the reasons for
language to borrow some words in a context of contact
or geographical location. the approach used is a qualitative one . The results shows that  English words have been nativised in Kasim, thus , a Kasim learner of English may encounter similarities and differences in term of words pronunciation.

L’article explore l’émergence depuis une vingtaine d’années des études universitaires sur le “tourisme noir”, et analyse la terminologie relative au phénomène. Il décrit la manière dont ce terme continue à décrire une activité ambivalente et souvent controversée. L’étude met en évidence la prédominance du travail anglophone dans ce domaine, et considère la façon dont les approches interculturelles et comparatives nous permettent d’analyser des versions concurrentes du passé et de montrer également comment
la commémoration du “patrimoine noir” varie selon les historiographies nationales. L’article se termine par une discussion au sujet des tendances récentes et les recherches actuelles, y compris l’affirmation de perspectives postmodernes, les nouveaux axes de réflexion autour de la culture visuelle, et l’intérêt grandissant pour les approches interculturelles.

The article explores the emergence over the past twenty years of academic studies on "dark tourism" and analyses the terminology related to the phenomenon. It traces how this term continues to describe an ambivalent and often controversial activity. The study highlights the predominance of English-language work in this area, and the way in which intercultural and comparative approaches can analyse competing versions of the past and show that the commemoration of 'dark heritage' varies across national historiographies. The article ends with a review of recent trends and current research (for example, the growing interest in intercultural approaches), particularly from a post-modern perspective.

This contribution discusses the 1972 Soviet preface to one of Flanders’ favourite novels, Willem Elsschot's Cheese (Dutch: Kaas, 1933). With the help of its fairly recent reception in the Anglophone world, as a means of comparison, it will be scrutinized how the Russian editors tried to deal with the ‘un-Soviet’ topics of commerce and capitalism, which the novel has so famously thematized.

review essay
.......
Flann O'Brien had serious problems with authority... so how come he's next in line for literary canonisation?  The collection of critical essays reviewed here engages with the surrealist humour of his novels, journalism, and scripts. Flann O'Brien, aka Brian O'Nolan, is presented in this interesting collection as a worthy exemplar of...  um, what? We are told that he was ‘modernist’, ‘late-modernist’, ‘postmodern’, ‘(post-)modernist’, ‘modernist and postmodernist’, late modernist revivalist, or a case of ‘anti-modernist modernism’ (all gleaned from the volume). What is going on? Is there any hope for Flann O'Brien Studies, when his legacy of contrariness and mischief makes academics sound like a 'Hot Air Brigade'?

...........
Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
“Flann O’Brien: Problems with Authority” – review [peer reviewed journal]
Irish University Review.  Vol 48 No 2 (Autumn/Winter 2018): 387-390.

This is the first issue of an academic journal, of which I am aware, to focus on Henri Lefebvre and urban planning. Urban spatial planning evolved as a concept to integrate the complex social, economic, environmental, political and land use conundrums of late 20th century society. Similarly, the spatial ideas of Henri Lefebvre encompass these issues but stress the importance of everyday life, production, culture and history. This thematic issue of Urban Planning is predicated principally on three of Lefebvre’s major works: The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 974/1991), Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991) and The Urban Revolution (Lefebvre, 1970/2003). Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the investigation of cities and urban society have been taken up most rigorously in the fields of geography, urban studies and latterly architecture. Despite this, it is clear that Lefebvre’s five central concepts: the production of space, abstract space, everyday life, the right to the city and planetary urbanisation—provide powerful tools for the examination of urban planning, cities and urban society in the Global North and South. Anglophone urban planning first embraced Lefebvre’s ideas in the 1980s. Surprisingly then, it is only in the last ten years or so that urban planning academia and research has witnessed a blossoming of interest in Lefebvre’s ideas.

Late fatherhood and the role children play in creative works of senior writers frames my discussion of fathering in the late work of J.M. Coetzee. Drawing on David Attwell and the late J.C. Kannemeyer, I focus on Coetzee’s allegorical treatment of fractured father-son relationships in The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, written in the author’s mid-seventies. Kannemeyer described the 1989 death of Coetzee’s son Nicolas as producing “a constant, corrosive pain,” and decades later an “undercurrent of grief.” My claims about the “side-shadow” of the son draws on literary criticism, and on my own literary nonfiction in which both critic and author share a similar affective matrix. Having also "lost" a troubled, “special” son, and having processed the grief through writing in senior years, I claim an “affective kinship” with Coetzee. Drawing on the literary nonfiction I teach, and have employed to narrate my experience of “senior fathering,” I critique the dystopian outcomes of the father-figure’s (Simón’s) compulsive self-erasure. His “blind faith” in a mother’s superiority represents both the author’s reflections on his fatherly shortcomings, and his interrogation of the absence of the father in literary traditions.

Arndt, Susan. “Literaturwissenschaft und Transtextuelle Transkulturalität. Überlegungen zu Ottmar Ettes Visionen einer zukunftstragenden LebensWissenschaft.” Literatur Leben. Albrecht Buschmann, Julian Drews, Tobias Kraft, Anne Kraume, Markus Messling, Gesine Müller, eds. Berlin: Walter Frey: 403-414.

Interkulturell. Multikulturell. Transkulturell. Worin unterscheiden sich diese Konzepte? Was ist Transkulturalität und wirkt sich diese auf die Literatur als Lebenswissen (Ette) und ihre Wissenschaft als „Literaturwissenschaft in Bewegung“ (Ette) aus? Wie kann Kristevas Intertextualität und Genettes Transtextualität neu gedacht werden, um Machtkontexte als grundlegende Pfeiler der  Begegnungen von Text/ualitäten zu verstehen? Glissants „poetique de la relation“, Spivaks „planetarity“ und Ettes „Literaturwissenschaft in Bewegung“ öffnen hier neue DenkRäume, die dieser Ottmar Ette gewidmete Artikel am Beispiel der Transcultural English Studies bzw. der Transkulturellen Anglophonie exemplarisch diskutiert.

Arndt, Susan. "Migration, Rhizomic Identities and the Black Atlantic in Postcolonial Literary Studies. The Trans-Space as Home in Pauline Melville's Short Story 'Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water.'" Contested Communities: Communication, Narration, Imagination. Susanne Mühleisen, ed. Leiden et al: Brill, 219-235.

Colonialism has been a global player that has created transatlantic, transnational and transracial entanglements and hierarchies on both local and global stages. Part and parcel of these hierarchical entanglements is the complex history of forced and voluntary migration and the rhizomic identities thus created. These processes are addressed by Paul Giroy's concept of the Black Atlantic and two postcolonial paradigms: Critical Occidentalism and Critical Whiteness Studies. The exploration of the theoretical framework and epistemological gain offered by these approaches is the purpose of this paper. After discussing their theoretical grammar, I will demonstrate in part two how these postcolonial theories offer a means of approaching aesthetic processes. To make this point, I will examine the short story "Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water" by the British-Guyanese writer Pauline Melville. In conclusion, I will elaborate on the consequences that emerge from these considerations for the study of literature and suggest a framework for Transcultural Anglophone Studies.

Arndt, Susan. "Migration, Rhizomic Identities and the Black Atlantic in Postcolonial Literary Studies. The Trans-Space as Home in Pauline Melville's Short Story 'Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water.'" Contested Communities: Communication, Narration, Imagination. Susanne Mühleisen, ed. Leiden et al: Brill, 219-235.

Dans le prolongement des précédents ouvrages de la collection « Chemins croisés », ce recueil d’articles de jeunes chercheurs anglicistes adopte une perspective pluridisciplinaire et transnationale afin de faire émerger de nouvelles pistes dans le champ d’étude des mécanismes de (dé)construction de l’altérité dans le monde anglophone.
L’altérité se construit et se déconstruit d’abord dans le discours, par des mécanismes linguistiques de différenciation ou d’assimilation qui permettent de penser l’autre et de le désigner. Elle est travaillée en littérature et dans les arts représentatifs par des figures de dissociation ou de comparaison, par la fixation de types et la création de voix; elle est constamment interrogée, remise en cause ou renversée par les littératures minoritaires ou postcoloniales. Elle forme enfin le cœur de problématiques identitaires collectives concernées par la définition et les rapports politiques entre groupes sociaux ou entre nations. Elle traverse l’histoire de la colonisation et de la décolonisation, des luttes sociales, des conflits armés, du rapport entre pouvoir et minorités.
Le rapprochement de ces mécanismes linguistiques, culturels ou politiques dans le présent ouvrage permet d’offrir des éclairages multiples et de souligner des convergences possibles dans l’étude d’un sujet complexe et essentiel à l’heure du renouveau des discours identitaires.

Throughout the 20th century, the United States of America had struggled with the
question of which ideology ought to be as the US foreign policy whether isolation or
intervention. Precisely from the early 1920 up to 1975, U.S. foreign policy has clearly shifted
from isolationism to interventionism. Hence, the dissertation deals with the transformation of
US foreign policy from 1920 to 1975. It sketches the US involvement in World War II,
besides it analyses the US intervention in Vietnam. The aim of the paper is to examine the
evolution of US foreign policy.
The present dissertation attempts to provide a further analysis of the US foreign policy
shift. It investigates the different circumstances that were behind the alteration of the US
foreign policy from isolationism toward interventionism. The introductory chapter deals with
the return to isolationism as the US foreign policy after World War I. Next chapter highlights
the US Foreign Policy shift from Isolationism to Interventionism from 1935 to 1945. Last but
not least the final chapter tackles the US foreign policy of interventionism from 1945 to 1975
with an illustration as a case study about the US intervention in Vietnam.