Author Archives
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Feminism and Women’s Writing in the US
Women’s social movements in the United States can be divided into three “waves” (although these divisions are not strictly chronological or oppositional). First-wave feminism emerged from the involvement of women activists in the antislavery, temperance, and women’s-suffrage movements in the… Read More ›
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Introduction to Blue Humanities
Blue Humanities is one of the most enthralling and important areas of emergent research in disciplines ranging from history to visual arts, to cultural and literary studies. In 2009, literary scholar Steve Mentz coined the phrase “blue cultural studies” or… Read More ›
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Analysis of Julio Cortázar’s 62: A Model Kit
Like the author’s earlier Hopscotch, the novel 62: A Model Kit defies conventions of linear structure, time, and narrative, thereby seeking to redefine notions of how literary art might both be conceived and received. The reader is informed in an… Read More ›
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Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Silence
Silence is the best known of this Japanese writer’s prolific production of novels exploring the apparent disparity between existential experience and theological doctrine. The novel by Shūsaku Endō (1923–96) reflects some of the author’s own struggles with Catholicism, which he… Read More ›
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Print Culture Studies
Over the past two decades, Print Culture Studies has gained increasing attention, particularly from scholars disillusioned by what they perceived as the abstract complexity of theoretical discourse. Defining print culture is challenging due to its vast scope. Scholars in this… Read More ›
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Digital Humanities
Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus introduced the concept of “surface reading,” a reading practice focused on what a text plainly presents, aiming to understand the text “at face value” without seeking hidden meanings or counter-signals. They describe this approach as… Read More ›
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Analysis of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha
The German-Swiss writer Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) started the novel Siddhartha at the end of 1919, when his psychoanalytical novel Demian, (1919) was published, but after a few chapters he suspended his work on the novel for more than 20 months,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay
In this first novel by famed French author Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86), a theater couple, Françoise and Pierre, decide to sponsor the intellectual growth of a young woman from Rouen, and they pay for her to live in Paris, one… Read More ›
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Analysis of Zhang Henshui’s Shanghai Express
Shanghai Express: A Thirties Novel is the best-known work in English by Chinese writer Zhang Henshui (1895–1967). The novel was first published in 1935 in the journal The Traveler (Lüxing zazhi), which was a popular Chinese periodical of the day… Read More ›
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Analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The Sea Wall
One of the few texts that the French writer Marguerite Duras set in her childhood home of Indochina, The Sea Wall was also her first publication to gain both critical and popular notoriety and success. The novel incorporates themes of… Read More ›
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Derrida’s Différance
In Of Grammatology, his first major work, Derrida presents deconstruction as a critical reading of texts which brings to light what is already at work in the texts he deconstructs. But through his intervention we see the text differently. He… Read More ›
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Analysis of Simin Daneshvar’s Savushun
The thoughtful, provoking, and sensitive novel Savushun is considered the masterpiece of Persian author Simin Daneshvar (1921–2012). The novel has sold more than any other work in Iran since its publication (the English translation was in 1991). The work depicts… Read More ›
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Analysis of Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
A psychological tale of calculated murder unfolds in this short but evocative novel by Yukio Mishima (1925–70) about a boy, his widowed mother, and her new relationship with a sailor whose career serves as a testament to his distaste for… Read More ›
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Analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The Sailor from Gibraltar
Told from a first-person point of view, The Sailor from Gibraltar is a story by the acclaimed French author Marguerite Duras (1914–96). The novel tells of a dissatisfied man in his thirties who is in the midst of a hapless… Read More ›
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Scopus-indexed Journals English Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies
Here is an updated list of Scopus-indexed journals focusing on English Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies S. No. Journal Title ISSN Publisher Quartile 1 Men and Masculinities 1097184X SAGE Publications Inc. Q1 2 3 4 Poetics 0304422X Elsevier Q1 5… Read More ›
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Analysis of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Sacred Night
Tahar Ben Jelloun in The Sacred Night depicts Moroccan society and rails against social injustice, sexual and religious hypocrisy, gender inequalities, patriarchy, and women’s oppression. He conveys his social critique in a poetic and concise style blending realism with dreamlike… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between
The River Between is the first novel, though the second published work, by author Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The book represents a foray into the complex exploration of intracultural Gikuyu struggle expressed in the language of the English colonialist power that… Read More ›
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Analysis of Miroslav Krleža’s The Return of Philip Latinovicz
The Return of Philip Latinovicz is the major fictional work of the Croatian novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist Miroslav Krleža (1893– 1981). Krleža, who was to become a preeminent cultural and political figure in post–World War II Yugoslavia, wrote his… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rachid Boudjedra’s The Repudiation
Rachid Boudjedra (1941– ) began writing in the 1960s, a period during which the Algerian novel in French shifted from a critique of colonialism to a questioning of social, political, and religious structures. Like most of the Algerian Francophone writers,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Euclides da Cunha’s Rebellion in the Backlands
One of the most significant cultural currents in the mid- to late 19th century was an increasing interest in defining national characteristics as part of the development of nationalism. In the Czech lands this activity took the form of a… Read More ›
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