scholarly journals On the Borders of Text and Cult

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-199
Author(s):  
Zsófia Kalavszky ◽  
◽  
Alexandra Urakova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Broken Ice ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Crown Prince

The essay focuses upon interrelated phenomena of literary cult and cultic text. Bearing on the conceptual ideas of Sergey Zenkin and Péter Dávidházi, we problematize the boundaries between text and cults on the example of two case studies. One has to do with one of the recent interpretations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a nineteenth-century bestseller novel that had a great impact on literary and political life of the United States in the antebellum period. David S. Reynolds argues that Ulyanov-Lenin’s escape from the Finnish mainland by breaking their way on the broken ice of the river to an island might have been inspired by his reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin where a fugitive slave Eliza does exactly the same thing. This essay invites to see this random encounter of the East and the West, the fictional and the “real” not as a curious anecdote or coincidence but as a mechanism of inventing cultic texts. What happens when one of the prominent figures of the European historical narrative, the crown prince assassinated in 1914, reads the works of the Russian poet before the fatal day in Sarajevo? Milorad Pavić is building his short story„“Prince Ferdinand Reads Pushkin” upon recognizable allusions to Pushkin texts, the similarities and differences, the fatal and the accidental in the stories of the poet shot in the duel and the Austrian crown prince being a victim of an assassination – two intersective storylines that may be described as “isomorphic plots.” Pavić’s short story is a unique voice in the so-called twentieth century “Pushkiniana,” speaking both within and beyond the Pushkin myth and cult.

scholarly journals Exploring the Boundaries of Texts and Literary Cults

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
Zsófia Kalavszky ◽  
Alexandra P. Urakova
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Broken Ice ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
Crown Prince ◽  
Recent Interpretation

The essay focuses on the interrelated phenomena of literary cult and cultic text. Bearing on the conceptual ideas of Sergey Zenkin and Péter Dávidházi, we problematize the boundaries between text and cults on the example of two case studies. One has to do with a recent interpretation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a nineteenth-century bestseller novel that had a great impact on literary and political life of the United States in the antebellum period. David S. Reynolds argues that Ulyanov-Lenin’s escape from the Finnish mainland by breaking his way on the broken ice of the river to an island might have been inspired by Uncle Tom’s Cabin where a fugitive slave Eliza does exactly the same thing. This essay suggests seeing this random encounter of the East and the West, the fictional and the “real” not as а curious anecdote or coincidence but as a mechanism of inventing a cultic text. What happens when one of the prominent figures of the European historical narrative, the crown prince assassinated in 1914, reads the works of the Russian poet before the fatal day in Sarajevo? Milorad Pavić building his short story Prince Ferdinand Reads Pushkin upon recognizable allusions to Pushkin’s texts, highlights similarities and differences, the fatal and the accidental in the stories of the poet shot in the duel and the Austrian crown prince being a victim of an assassination — two intersective storylines that may be described as “isomorphic plots.”

A Chinese Whore Making Good Business on Gold Mountain: Using Historical Research to Create Historical Fiction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
School Year ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Historical Accounts

For the 2011 – 2012 school year, I engaged in a year-long research project on Chinese sex workers in the “Wild West” during the Antebellum period. Typically brought to the United States under false pretences by members of Chinese tongs, Chinese sex workers were kept in homes and brothels starting from a very young age. Missionary groups attempted to "free” Chinese sex workers from these brothels, educate them and raise awareness of their plight. Historical accounts of these activities come exclusively from the perspective of the missionaries themselves, rather than the perspective of Chinese sex workers, which results in a biased account of Chinese sex workers as helpless girls. However, the research that I did indicates that there may have been examples of agency amongst Chinese sex workers.  In order to share my research on agency amongst Chinese sex workers during the Antebellum period, I opted to write a historical fiction (a short story which was eventually published in the Queen’s Undergraduate Review). It is the process of translating historical research into historical fiction which I will focus on presenting. I rewrote the story and plot a number of times in order to maintain a balance of historical fact and creative license, and I struggled with the ethics of portraying historical characters and events for creative purposes. I learned what’s valuable for writing a successful historical fiction: exhaustive research, the understanding that realism is more impactful than sensationalism, and constant awareness of personal agenda or bias.

Crumbling into Dust

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Levi Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Unfinished Business ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
David Walker ◽  
Historical Times

This chapter situates Chesnutt’s writing within a tradition of black classicism as political engagement and historical critique extending from the antebellum period to the twentieth century and beyond. Reading Chesnutt as a figure at the crossroads of multiple historical times and cultural forms, the chapter examines his manipulation of multiple mythic traditions into a cohesive and unsettling vision of history as unfinished business. In the novel The Marrow of Tradition and the late short story “The Marked Tree,” Chesnutt echoes a nineteenth-century tradition that included David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, and writers and editors for antebellum black newspapers, while at the same time anticipating a later anti-imperial discourse generated by writers such as Richard Wright and Toni Morrison. Chesnutt provides a fulcrum for a collective African American literary history that has emerged as a prophetic counterpoint to the prevailing historical consciousness in America.

Specters of Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

In the context of research on the “thickening” of borders, Specters of Belonging raises the related question: How does transnational citizenship thicken across the political life cycle of Mexican migrants? In addressing this question, this book resembles what any good migration corrido (ballad) does—narrate the thickening of transnational citizenship from beginning, middle, to end. Specifically, Specters of Belonging traces Mexican migrant transnationalism across the migrant political life cycle, beginning with the “political baptism” (i.e., naturalization in the United States) and ending with repatriation to México after death. In doing so, the book illustrates how Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody transnational citizenship in constant dialectical contestation with the state and institutions of citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Drawing on political ethnographies of citizenship classrooms, the first chapter examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States and grapple with the contradictions of U.S. citizenship and its script of singular political loyalty. The middle chapter deploys transnational ethnography to analyze how Mexican migrants enact transnational citizenship within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state, focusing on a group of returned migrant politicians and transnational activists. Last, the final chapter turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México.

The Empire of Disgust

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Change Point ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Swimming Pools ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Group Resistance

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups. Frequently these exclusions are underwritten with a rhetoric of disgust: people of a certain group, it is alleged, are filthy, hyper-animal, or not fit to share such facilities as drinking water, food, and public swimming pools with the ‘clean’ and ‘fully human’ majority. But exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from the United States and India present a detailed comparative study of the varieties of prejudice and stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life: prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, transgender, disability, religion, and economic class. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the authors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that both explain group-based stigma and suggest ways forward. These forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, point the way towards a public culture that is informed by our diverse histories of discrimination and therefore equipped to eliminate stigma in all of its multifaceted forms.

Fiduciary Principles in Contemporary Common Law Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 564-582
Author(s):  
Matthew Conaglen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Standards Of Care ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Fiduciary Duties ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Fiduciary Relationships

This chapter examines the principles of fiduciary doctrine that are found in contemporary common law systems. More specifically, it considers the current similarities and differences between various jurisdictions such as England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The similarities focus on the duties of loyalty, care and skill, and good faith, as well as when fiduciary duties arise and the kinds of interests that are protected by recognition of fiduciary relationships. The chapter also discusses the issue of differences between various jurisdictions with regard to the duty of care and skill before concluding with an analysis of differences between remedies that are made available in the various contemporary common law jurisdictions when a breach of fiduciary duty arises. It shows that the regulation of fiduciaries appears to be reasonably consistent across common law jurisdictions and across various types of actors, even as such actors are expected to meet differing standards of care. Statute plays a key role in the regulation of various kinds of fiduciary actors, especially corporate directors.

What is Happening in the United States? How Social Classes Influence the Political Life of the Country and its Health and Quality of Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199484
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Race And Gender

This article analyses the political changes that have been occurring in the United States (including the elections for the presidency of the country) and their consequences for the health and quality of life of the population. A major thesis of this article is that there is a need to analyse, besides race and gender, other categories of power - such as social class - in order to understand what happens in the country. While the class structure of the United States is similar to that of major Western European countries, the political context is very different. The U.S. political context has resulted in the very limited power of its working class, which explains the scarcity of labor, political and social rights in the country, such as universal access to health care.

scholarly journals Representing, commemorating, and memorizing terrorist attacks: Discussing the US and French experiences

2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110244
Author(s):  
Alice M. Greenwald ◽  
Clifford Chanin ◽  
Henry Rousso ◽  
Michel Wieviorka ◽  
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Do So

How do societies and states represent the historical, moral, and political weight of the terrorist attacks they have had to face? Having suffered in recent years from numerous terrorist attacks on their soil originating from jihadist movements, and often led by actors who were also their own citizens, France and the United States have set up—or seek to do so—places of memory whose functions, conditions of creation, modes of operation, and nature of the messages sent may vary. Three of the main protagonists and initiators of two museum-memorial projects linked to terrorist attacks have agreed to deliver their visions of the role and of the political, social, and historical context in which these projects have emerged. Allowing to observe similarities and differences between the American and French approach, this interview sheds light on the place of memory and feeling in societies struck by tragic events and seeking to cure their ills through memory and commemoration.

NCSS notable trade book lesson plan: the girl who buried her dreams in a can

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-126
Author(s):  
Takisha Durm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Elementary Grades ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Future Date

PurposeThe Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can, written by Dr Tererai, profiles a cultural, yet global experience of the power of believing in one's dream. Through this study of the similarities and differences of how children in the United States and abroad live and dream of a better life, this lesson seeks to enhance students' understandings of the power and authority they possess to effect change not only within their own lives but also in the lives of countless others in world. After reading the text, students will work to create vision boards illustrating their plans to effect change within their homes, schools, communities, states or countries. They will present their plans to their peers. To culminate the lesson, the students will bury their dreams in can and collectively decide on a future date to revisit the can to determine how far they have progressed in accomplishing their goals.Design/methodology/approachThis is an elementary grades 3–6 lesson plan. There was no research design/methodology/approach included.FindingsAs this is a lesson plan and no actual research was represented, there are no findings.Originality/valueThis is an original lesson plan completed by the first author Takisha Durm.

Longing, Nostalgia, and Golden Age Politics: The American Jeremiad and the Power of the Past

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Political Ideal ◽  
American Society

I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to problems in the present. To probe these dynamics, I turn to the American jeremiad, a longstanding form of political rhetoric that explicitly invokes the past and laments the nation's falling-away from its virtuous foundations. I begin by focusing on the Christian Right's traditionalist jeremiad, which offers both nostalgic and Golden Age rhetoric in its assessment of the United States' imperiled national promise. I argue that, despite differences in the historical location of their ideals and the significant rhetorical power that they bring to political life, such nostalgic and Golden Age narratives represent a constraining political ideal, one ultimately incapable of doing justice to an increasingly diverse American society. I argue furthermore that there is another strand of the American jeremiad and conclude by sketching a different way of drawing on the past, a progressive jeremiad epitomized by the thought of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Such a jeremiad is also deeply rooted in the American tradition and offers a far more promising contribution to a diverse and pluralistic American future.

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