Research and Innovation

Historical treatments of the “rogue lyrics” (qalandariyyāt) of medieval Persian poetry typically identify their origin in the Sufi poetry of Bābā Tāher, Abu Saʿid, and Sanāʾi and portray them as a poetic instantiation of the intellectual and antinomian critiques of the formalistic modes of piety practiced in the increasingly powerful institutionalized Sufi orders. However, the qalandari panegyrics of the Saljuq court poets Borhāni and Amir Moʿezzi—arguably the earliest datable examples of this poetry—analyzed in this article complicate this narrative. They utilize the heterotopic poetics of the qalandariyyāt not to subvert or critique, but rather to augment the sociopolitical authority of the ruler of Qazvin, constructing a new and distinctly Saljuq model of Islamic kingship, a Qalandar King.

Cette contribution porte sur une histoire de chiens… Ou plutôt deux histoires, celles que Charles Nodier soumet pour le recueil collectif Nouvelles vieilles et nouvelles qu’il copublie avec Toppfer, le comte de Peyronnet et le baron Dudley en 1843. La première a pour titre « Les Aveugles de Chamouny », et pour sujet les amours de deux jeunes gens rapprochés par une infirmité commune avant d’être séparés par une malencontreuse guérison. Le chien en question, un épagneul nommé Puck, y tient le rôle d’adjuvant et témoigne à son maître un amour et une loyauté exceptionnels puisqu’ils finissent par lui coûter la vie. La seconde histoire, aux accents folkloriques démarqués de Perrault, est intitulée « Histoire du chien de Brisquet », et porte sur le courage d’une chienne qui trouve la mort en sauvant les enfants de son maître de l’attaque d’un loup.

Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini sees this relationship as an impasse. To illustrate this theory, Resmini turns to Italian cinema to explore how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68.

Italian Political Cinema conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian.

A comprehensive and novel redefinition of political film, Italian Political Cinema introduces its audience to lesser-known directors alongside greats such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, and Bellocchio. Resmini offers access to untranslated work in Italian philosophy, political theory, and film theory, and forcefully advocates for the continued artistic and political relevance of these films in our time.

Contribution to the digital repository for innovative curricular and pedagogical initiatives in MLA fields: a digital edition of the first seven portraits of the series of "Contemporary Portraits" (1858-1859) published in Le Figaro, a non-political weekly newspaper, by Gabrielle Anna de Cisternes de Coutiras, under the pseudonym Jacques Reynaud. This project, produced in collaboration with Clara Danos, Marie Laverdiere, Michaëlle Vilmont (master's students) and Theavy Din, Charlotte Joublot-Ferré, Madeline Muravchik (doctoral students ), is the outcome of a digital humanities practicum co-taught with Raffaele Viglianti, researcher at the Maryland State Center for Digital Humanities (MITH), as part of the graduate seminar "FREN659: Literature and the Press in the 19th century: a return to the civilization of the newspaper in the digital age" (Fall 2021, University of Maryland).

This work presents an accuracy study of the open source OCR engine, Kraken, on the leading Arabic scholarly journal, al-Abhath. In contrast with other commercially available OCR engines, Kraken is shown to be capable of producing highly accurate Arabic-script OCR. The study also assesses the relative accuracy of typeface-specific and generalized models on the al-Abhath data and provides a microanalysis of the “error instances” and the contextual features that may have contributed to OCR misrecognition. Building on this analysis, the paper argues that Arabic-script OCR can be significantly improved through (1) a more systematic approach to training data production, and (2) the development of key technological components, especially multi-language models and improved line segmentation and layout analysis.

This work explores the integration of Brazil within the Latin American cultural and literary paradigm of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The project centers on the intellectual work of Antonio Candido, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal e Haroldo de Campos.

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, dictatorships in Latin America hastened the outward movement of intellectuals, academics, artists, and political and social activists to other countries. Following the coups that toppled democratically elected governments or curtailed parliamentary oversight, the incoming military or civilian-military administrations assumed that, by forcing those aligned with opposition movements out of the country, they would assure their control of politics and domestic public spheres. Yet, by enlarging a diaspora of co-nationals, the authoritarian rulers merely extrapolated internal dissent and conflicts, emboldening opposition forces beyond their national borders. Displaced individuals soon had a presence in many host countries, gaining the support of solidarity circles and advocacy networks that condemned authoritarianism and worked with exiles and internal resistance towards the restoration of electoral democracy. Exiles soon became vehicles for spreading cultural ideas from abroad, celebrating cosmopolitanism over nationalism, and emphasizing human rights and democracy in Latin American countries.

Exile, Diaspora, and Return explores how Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay have been affected by post-exilic relocations, transnational migrant displacements, and diasporas. Specifically, this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of diasporic experiences and the impact of returnees on the public life, culture, institutions, and development of post-authoritarian politics in the Southern Cone of the Americas. Bringing together sociopolitical, cultural, and policy analysis with the testimonies of dozens of intellectuals, academics, political activists, and policy makers, the authors address the impact of exile on people's lives and on their fractured experiences; the debates and prospects of return; the challenges of dis-exile and post-exilic trends; and the ways in which those who experienced exile impacted democratized institutions, public culture, and discourse. Furthermore, the authors present new readings of the recent history of South America and the diasporas that emphasize the importance of regional, transnational or global dimensions over the national.

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Este libro estudia, desde el análisis de las trayectorias personales y la inserción institucional, cómo Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay se vieron afectados por las experiencias del exilio y el posexilio. Se intenta revelar cómo la variada experiencia transnacional de aquellos intelectuales, académicos, artistas, profesionales y activistas políticos y sociales contribuyó, durante y luego del destierro, a democratizar el campo cultural y a renovar algunas de las ideas e instituciones de estas sociedades. El exilio y el destierro son algunos de los legados del autoritarismo en estos países; se trató de un proceso que incluyó proscripción, desplazamientos forzados, expatriaciones y diásporas emergentes. Por medio del análisis de estas sociedades se pretende reconocer, describir y descifrar sus diferentes caminos en el período posdictatorial.

Muchos de los desplazados tenían un capital social y cultural previo que experimentó diversos cambios personales y organizativos a medida que se adaptaban a los diversos ámbitos culturales, lingüísticos, sociales y políticos de los países anfitriones. El retorno no es el resultado “natural” del fin de las dictaduras, sino que fue una –solo una– de las opciones para parte de los desplazados, y constituye un fenómeno complejo y multifacético. Las sociedades en general no siempre acogían de buen grado a los retornados y a sus familias. Surgían discusiones acerca del sufrimiento relativo de los que se quedaron frente al padecer de los que se fueron. Dada la falta de alternativas, el regreso fue parcial y prolongado. Las cuatro sociedades han experimentado un cambio radical al reconocer la importancia de los connacionales en la diáspora. La obra ha sido galardonada con el Premio Arthur Whitaker del 2022, otorgado por el Mid-Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies del 2022 al mejor libro de temática latinoamericana.

Colección de ensayos sobre sociedad, cultura y política actuales en Puerto Rico, con especial atención a la democracia y la literatura. Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia (Santurce, Puerto Rico, 1963). Poeta, ensayista, crítico. 

Browne and Nakamura reflect on the ways in which they experience the multiple canons of Japanese literature, Japanese performance, and world theatre history. Because they reside between canons in their teaching and research, Browne and Nakamura argue for the value of actively negotiating canons. Canons already influence each other while they obscure their own mechanisms of knowledge production. It is critical, then, to intentionally direct these currents of knowledge so they converge and flow together. Putting canons in motion will innovate teaching, scholarship, and ultimately understandings of theatre and performance in our fields.

Es un doble placer: el leer la historia de cómo se enseña y cómo se aprende a ocupar el mundo, y el saber de pronto que esta historia es la traducción –quizás fiel, quizás no, y qué triple placer que no lo fuera– de una narración que se contó desde hace mucho, desde hace poco, en una lengua que es un reto a toda identidad y que es la identidad de la espera y la esperanza.

Walter Benjamin dijo de unas traducciones del griego al alemán hechas por Hölderlin que la armonía entre los dos lenguajes era tan profunda que las palabras tocaban sus significados así como el viento toca un arpa eólica. Saúl Sosnowski ha logrado en este texto la misma proeza: así como el viento toca las cuerdas, aquí el idish toca el español creando una armonía donde se reconoce al espíritu nómada, en la que se enfrenta sin miedo a la barbarie antisemita, donde se recogen los hilos más secretos de la humanidad, en la que se escucha la capacidad de nombrar y de ocupar el nombre, y también cómo se siembra, cómo se cultiva, cómo se derrota al tiempo. Y cómo se ama el amor.

El país que ahora llamaban suyo es la traducción perfecta: narración que sustituye a la original dejando intacta su autoridad fundacional; así como el nuevo país es propio sin borrar el menor detalle de la geografía de aquél que viene de ese otro lado. Doble placer ofrece este relato: reconocer lo invisible, olvidar lo inolvidable. Placer único: aquí, en este libro, con cada palabra el otro aparece en mí.

Jorge Aguilar Mora