Assistant Professor of French Receives NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grant to Create Digital Edition of Global Antislavery Periodical
The Revue des Colonies was published in France between 1834 and 1842.
Research in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures is interdisciplinary and vibrant.
Faculty and graduate students pursue research in numerous fields of study.
Read More about Smiling and the Negotiation of Humor in Conversation
Read More about The Invention of the Eyewitness. Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France
In this densely written, subtle, often insightful book, Naharro-Calderón takes on the task of localizing the various nuances of the socio-political condition that defined writers within and without Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. He sets up Juan Ramón Jiménez as a central figure for readings of Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, Pedro Garfias, Luis Cernuda, and Damaso Alonso that illuminate the weave of texts and intertexts in this period of Spanish poetry that formed the waning years of a Silver Age. The first quarter of the book is given over to a close discussion of the phenomenon of exile: "la pérdida del espacio de origen" (25). After an avalanche of notes, Naharro reaches an aporia (one of the words of postmodernist and deconstructionist discourse of which he is fond), and states resignedly that it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory "delimitaci6n semantica" of exile but that it is "un fen6meno antiguo y actual conectado con el origen y futuro de la tierra" (58). He establishes his terminology: instead of posguerra, he prefers "'d6cadas de entresiglo' o 'entresiglo' a secas," and to avoid prolonging the myth of "exilio interior," for which he feels Paul Ilie is responsible, he proposes "literatura perseguida, censurada, resistente, o disidente" (93). The rest of the book is less polemical and makes many contributions to enlarging and refocusing the account of Spain's poetry from 1940 to 1960. Naharro's discussion of the fortunes of Juan Ram6n vis-a-vis Antonio Machado shows sharply how politics, ignorance, and censorship combined to create the leyenda blanca about the reclusive Juan Ram6n and the socially committed Machado. The two Andalusians had much in common: they were both anti-moderns concerned about the algebraic spirit of the new poetry; they were both neoromantics in their conception of the poet as prophet and both congenial to Heidegger's ideas about poetry; they both exalted el pueblo ("lo mejor de España," "la aristocracia congénita," Juan Ramón; "el hombre elemental y fundamental," "la aristocracia española está en el pueblo," Machado [172-77]). Machado broke with Ortega's notion of a governing elite, but Juan Ramón was less perturbed, claiming, however, in a discussion of T. S. Eliot's Notes toward a Definition of Culture, that elitism had nothing to do with class. Finally, both Juan Ramón and Machado believed that poets do not write for the masses. Given these parallels, plus Juan Ramón's early and unconditional allegiance to the Republic and his refusal to negotiate, through Juan Guerrero, with the censors, it is a sad lesson in the genesis of legends that Naharro tells. The vexing story of Juan Ramón's relation with younger poets, heretofore anecdotal in nature, Naharro recasts in the language of Harold Bloom: the anxiety of strong poets to overcome their predecessors, means of adaptation and veering away. Ansiedad is the proper word for all parties concerned. The case of Cernuda is enlightening: he attacked, was attacked, responded, then freed himself and went, especially via his dramatic monologues, his own strong way. In "El poeta," Cernuda presented the figure of Juan Ram6n as a precursor of his own poetic devotion, thereby purging himself of his own anxiety of influence. Naharro is right to point out that Cernuda was not an inadaptado, but rather one of the poets of his generation who got beyond solipsism in a convincing way. In a final chapter, Naharro adds to the cultural panorama of the entresiglo through a discussion of the contents of the Juan Guerrero letters in the Juan Ram6n Jimenez collection in Puerto Rico. As early as March 22, 1940, Guerrero was sharing information with Juan Ramón' on the whereabouts of individuals and Blecua began his pursuit of books by Guillén and Juan Ramón'. A copy of "Poeta en Nueva York" was in Blecua's hands in April 1945 (400). In short, although few readers had access to the works of the absent Spanish poets, many individual writers went to great length to acquire now canonical texts. The Guerrero correspondence is, indeed, an invaluable source for the intrahistoria of Spanish poetry. Naharro's book is rich in detail, overlapping on occasion, but thoughtprovoking and illuminating in its effort to go beyond generalizations and ponder cultural details.HOWARD YOUNG
Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994. 463 p. ISBN 84-7658-438-5
Many of the articles of this groundbreaking symposium held at College Park in the Fall of 1989 (50 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War) make important contributions and the book as a whole became essential reading to all those working in the Spanish exile field. In his introduction, Naharro-Calderón lists a series of basic questions he trusts the book will go some way towards answering: '”¿Cómo fue la percepción estetica que tenían los exiliados y vice-versa de los españoles del interior? i,Cómo difiere la literatura exiliada de la pensinsular y qué dialogismos se producen con la realidad y la literatura de las Américas ...? iQué textos debemos seleccionar y de qué forma nuestro olvido sobre el exilio ha afectado el canon y su evaluación? ¿Cuáles son las similitudes y contactos del exilio castellano, del vasco, gallego o catalán?
This book presents a new history of German film from 1980-2010, a period that witnessed rapid transformations, including intensified globalization, a restructured world economy, geopolitical realignment, and technological change, all of which have affected cinema in fundamental ways. Rethinking the conventional periodization of German film history, Baer posits 1980-rather than 1989-as a crucial turning point for German cinema's embrace of a new market orientation and move away from the state-sponsored film culture that characterized both DEFA and the New German Cinema. Reading films from East, West, and post-unification Germany together, Baer argues that contemporary German cinema is characterized most strongly by its origins in and responses to advanced capitalism. Informed by a feminist approach and in dialogue with prominent theories of contemporary film, the book places a special focus on how German films make visible the neoliberal recasting of gender and national identities around the new millennium.
This book explores modern political and intellectual movements to protect local languages and cultures in the Sinophone world. The first half of the twentieth century saw East Asia-wide pressure to suppress and erase local languages in favor of enforcing national and colonial languages. This book analyzes language activism in Japan-occupied Taiwan, British Hong Kong, and Northwestern China by situating it in a pan-regional anti-colonial consciousness that sought to protect indigeneity from nationalism and imperialism.
This volume is the first to focus on teaching about Haiti’s complex history and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective. Making broad connections between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, contributors provide pedagogical guidance on how to approach the country from different lenses in course curricula. They offer practical suggestions, theories on a wide variety of texts, examples of syllabi, and classroom experiences. Teaching Haiti dispels stereotypes associating Haiti with disaster, poverty, and negative ideas of Vodou, going beyond the simplistic neocolonial, imperialist, and racist descriptions often found in literary and historical accounts. Instructors in diverse subject areas discuss ways of reshaping old narratives through women’s and gender studies, poetry, theater, art, religion, language, politics, history, and popular culture, and they advocate for including Haiti in American and Latin American studies courses.
Read More about Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives