Estrangements of the World in the Familiar Essay

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Emily Sun
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Familiar Essay ◽  
Zhou Zuoren

Chapter 3 examines the form of the familiar or informal essay, which flourished in Republican China from the early 1920s until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, facilitated by the vibrant periodical press in metropolitan areas. In a 1921 essay in the Beijing Chen Bao or Morning News, Zhou Zuoren points to a line of Anglo-American essayists from Addison to Chesterton as inspiration for his Chinese contemporaries. What characterizes the familiar or informal essay, as distinct from the critical or polemical essay, is a casual, informal tone, with which the author simulates conversation with the reader as peer and uses occasions in ordinary life as points of departure and topics for reflection. This chapter studies how Charles Lamb, one of the essayists Zhou mentions, and Zhou himself use the medium of the familiar essay to explore the strangeness of the everyday in writings that subtly position London and Beijing within a global network of multiple locations, metropolitan and otherwise.

Jewish American Writing and World Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saul Noam Zaritt
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Isaac Bashevis Singer ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Literature Theory

Jewish American Writing and World Literature studies Jewish American writers’ relationships with the idea of world literature—how they place themselves within its boundaries, outside its purview, or, most often, in constant motion across and beyond its maps and networks. Writers such as Sholem Asch, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anna Margolin, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley all responded to a demand to write beyond local Jewish and American audiences and toward the world, as a global market and as a transnational ideal. At the same time, their work is deeply informed by an intimate connection to Yiddish, a Jewish vernacular with its own global network and institutional ambitions. This book tracks the attempts and failures, through translation, to find a home for Jewish vernacularity in the institution of world literature. Beyond fame and global circulation, world literature holds up the promise of legibility, in which a threatened origin becomes the site for redemptive literary creativity. But this promise inevitably remains unfulfilled, as writers struggle to balance potential universal achievements with untranslatable realities, rendering impossible any complete arrival in the US and in the world. The exploration of the translational uncertainty of Jewish American writing joins postcolonial critiques of US and world literature and challenges Eurocentric and Anglo-American paradigms of literary study. In bringing into conversation the fields of Yiddish studies, American Studies, and world literature theory, the book proposes a new approach to the study of modern Jewish literatures and their implication within global empires of culture.

Everyday Catastrophes: Gender, Labour and Power in Beckett's Theatre

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Trish McTighe
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Gender Boundaries ◽  
The Invisible ◽  
Making Art

In an era of public consciousness about gendered inequalities in the world of work, as well as recent revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in theatre and film production, Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) bears striking resonances. This article will suggest that, through the figure of its Assistant, the play stages the gendered nature of the labour of making art, and, in her actions, shows the kind of complicit disgust familiar to many who work in the entertainment industry, especially women. In unpacking this idea, I conceptualise the distinction between the everyday and ‘the event’, as in, between modes of quotidian labour and the attention-grabbing moment of art, between the invisible foundations of representation and the spectacle of that representation. It is my thesis that this play stages exactly this tension and that deploying a discourse of maintenance art allows the play to be read in the context of the labour of theatre-making. Highlighting the Assistant's labour becomes a way of making visible the structures of authority that are invested in maintaining gender boundaries and showing how art is too often complicit in the maintenance of social hierarchies.

“These Shall Come from Far”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Bross
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Global Network ◽  
The World ◽  
Basket Maker

Chapter 3 analyzes English claims to a central role in a global network of indigenous and English people connected by faith around the world, claims made manifest in Of the Conversion of Five Thousand Nine Hundred Indians on the Island of Formosa, a 1650 publication by Baptist minister Henry Jessey, printed by radical bookseller Hannah Allen. It reports on Dutch missions in Taiwan, comparing them with evangelism efforts in New England. The coda considers the experiences of an Algonquian woman who is unnamed in Jessey’s tract but is identified as a basket maker, speculating on the meaning she may have encoded in her basket designs. Though we cannot “read” them directly, the fact that she made them, coupled with the provocative arguments offered by recent scholars about Native material culture in the colonial period, enables us to reconsider the print archive in which she appears.

Is International Law International?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthea Roberts ◽  
Martti Koskenniemi
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
South China ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
International Lawyer ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Diverse Backgrounds ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American

Is International Law International? takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the international legal academy to reveal some of the patterns of difference, dominance, and disruption that belie international law’s claim to universality. Both revealing and challenging, confronting and engaging, this book is a must-read for any international lawyer, particularly in a world of shifting geopolitical power. Pulling back the curtain on the “divisible college of international lawyers,” the author shows how international lawyers in different states, regions, and geopolitical groupings are often subject to differences in their incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that affect how they understand and approach international law, including with respect to contemporary controversies like Crimea and the South China Sea. Using case studies and visual representations, the author demonstrates how actors and materials from some states and groups have come to dominate certain transnational flows and forums in ways that make them disproportionately influential in constructing the “international”—a point which holds true for Western actors, materials, and approaches in general, and Anglo-American ones in particular. But these patterns are set for disruption. As the world moves past an era of Western dominance and toward greater multipolarity, it is imperative for international lawyers to understand the perspectives of those coming from diverse backgrounds. By taking readers on a comparative tour of different international law academies and textbooks, the author encourages international lawyers to see the world through others’ eyes—an approach that is pressing in a world of rising nationalism.

Digital Childhood?

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-143
Author(s):  
Mariya Stoilova ◽  
Sonia Livingstone ◽  
Giovanna Mascheroni
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Digital Divides ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Smartphone Technology ◽  
Long Term Consequences

Mobile devices play a growing role in the everyday lives of children around the world, prompting important questions about their effects on childhood experiences. Exploring the recent global trends in children’s use of smartphone devices, the authors examine the reconfiguring of children’s communicative practices and cultures of connectivity, documenting the opportunities and risks that smartphone technology affords. Throughout the chapter the authors challenge the notion of “digital childhoods,” drawing on the most reliable research on children and smartphones including findings from Global Kids Online, which suggest that digital divides intersect with existing social inequalities, exacerbating the barriers for less privileged children. This raises further questions about the long-term consequences for children’s development, rights, and future access to opportunities and resources.

scholarly journals Islands and the world from an anthropological perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guoqing Ma
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The World ◽  
Marine Culture ◽  
External Transformation

Abstract Island studies play an important role in the development of anthropology. It is of academic value and practical significance to understand the island world as the field where multiple modernization forces and globalization interwine. This paper explores the intricate and diverse connections between continental and marine culture from a perspective of “viewing the world through the island”. In terms of overall diversity and exoteric mobility, this paper reviews the various aspects of island studies, examines the internal and external transformation of islands within land-sea interaction, and analyzes the dynamic historical process of the island world’s involvement in the global network, which blends and integrates various cultural elements of the external world. In the context of globalization, the island world is undergoing dramatic changes and in coping with them generating its new features.

Playful mobilities in the Global South: A study of Pokémon Go play in Rio de Janeiro and Nairobi

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110164
Author(s):  
Adriana de Souza e Silva ◽  
Ragan Glover-Rijkse ◽  
Anne Njathi ◽  
Daniela de Cunto Bueno
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Perceptions Of Risk ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is the most popular location-based game worldwide. As a location-based game, Pokémon Go’s gameplay is connected to networked urban mobility. However, urban mobility differs significantly around the world. Large metropoles in South America and Africa, for example, experience ingrained social, cultural, and economic inequalities. With this in mind, we interviewed Pokémon Go players in two Global South cities, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Nairobi (Kenya), to understand how players navigate urban spaces not only based on gameplay but with broader concerns for safety. Our findings reveal that players negotiate their urban mobilities based on perceptions of risk and safety, choosing how to move around and avoiding areas known for violence and theft. These findings are relevant for understanding the social and political aspects of networked urban spaces as well as for investigating games as venues through which we can understand ordinary life, racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities.

Towards a new convergence between Anglo-American and Russian literary linguistics: “mind style” and “kartina mira”

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben W. Dhooge
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
The World ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Mutually Independent

AbstractAnglo-American and Russian stylistics influenced each other substantially in the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1980s on, however, this fruitful mutual influence came to an end. The two schools started to grow apart, but despite that, they would develop almost parallel to each other, displaying many theoretical and methodological similarities. The present paper illustrates this by highlighting one such specificity – the idea of the possible reflection of one's conceptualization of the world in the use of literary language, and the possibility of reconstructing that conceptualization by means of a stylistic analysis (‘mind style’–‘kartina mira’). By comparing the Anglo-American and Russian theories on the topic, it is shown that the separately evolved conceptions are similar and even complement each other: the differences between them clarify and help solve possible theoretical and methodological gaps. Moreover, the juxtaposition of both conceptions allows us to perfect the notion of ‘mind style’ and its practical applications. A similar approach to other conceptions and tendencies in current seemingly mutually independent Anglo-American and Russian stylistics have the same potential, and may lead to a new convergence between the two schools.

scholarly journals Emancipating the Image: The Beijing Olympics, Regeneration, and the Power of Performance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Mei Barker
Keyword(s):  
Olympic Games ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Beijing Olympics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
Rapid Transformation

“In China, what makes an image true is that it is good for people to see it.” - Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1971 The Olympic Games gave the world an opportunity to read Beijing’s powerful image-text following thirty years of rapid transformation. David Harvey argues that this transformation has turned Beijing from “a closed backwater, to an open centre of capitalist dynamism.” However, in the creation of this image-text, another subtler and altogether very different image-text has been deliberately erased from the public gaze. This more concealed image-text offers a significant counter narrative on the city’s public image and criticises the simulacrum constructed for the 2008 Olympics, both implicitly and explicitly. It is the ‘everyday’ image-text of a disappearing city still in the process of being bulldozed to make way for the neoliberal world’s next megalopolis. It exists most prominently as a filmic image text; in film documentaries about a ‘real’ hidden Beijing just below the surface of the government sponsored ‘optical artefact.’ Film has thus become a key medium through which to understand and preserve a physical city on the verge of erasure.

Introduction

Popular Music ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
David Horn
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
International Association ◽  
Outstanding Contribution ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up

This issue of Popular Music is produced in honour of Paul Oliver, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to popular music scholarship.Paul was a member of the original Editorial Board for Popular Music when it was set up in 1980 and continued to serve as a member of that body, and subsequently of the Editorial Group, until 1990. He was also a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and has maintained a keen interest in the organisation, continuing to attend, and speak at, its international conferences. His vision of both the potential and the needs of the Association as a global network lay behind his proposal in 1985 that a project be undertaken to compile a worldwide encyclopedia of popular music, an idea which subsequently bore fruit in EPMOW (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World). All these achievements are worth celebrating in themselves, but it is Paul's outstanding contribution to scholarship in the area of vernacular – particularly African-American vernacular – music that we wish to honour with this issue.

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