Cultural Studies and Languages
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Item Event Series for Fall (poster)(2023) Cultural Studies and Languages DepartmentItem French Film Festival Screening (poster)(2023-11) Cultural Studies and Languages DepartmentItem Reviews of Books(2021) Harris, Sarah D.Book review of ‘Las crónicas de Oselito’ en ‘Frente Sur’, ‘Frente Extremeño’ y ‘Frente Rojo’. Edición crítica de Rafael Alarcón Sierra. Madrid: Guillermo Escolar. 2018. 238 pp.Item The Skin I Live In: Hunger, Power, and the Monstrous Feminine(Monsters and the Monstrous. Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISBN: 978-1-84888-405-2., 2016) Harris, Sarah D.In his first film to premiere outside of his native Spain, international superstar director Pedro Almodóvar tackles the horror genre for the first time. The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) maintains a certain consistency with the director’s earlier films, especially in the theme of gender identity and melodrama. In this film, however, there be monsters. One dwells and schemes in some classic monstrous spaces: a dark cave and a private laboratory/fortress, where he builds Vera, a cyborg-like character whose seams remind us of Frankenstein’s monster, or of the Louise Bourgeois sculptures that fascinate her. The mad and wealthy doctor who designs Vera also keeps vigilant watch over her, tinkering with and gazing upon his masterpiece. This vigilance introduces a visual play on power through images of hunger and desire. Meanwhile, when another, less socially powerful, but more physically adept monster penetrates the fortress the two main characters have shared, the power dynamic shifts drastically. Looking at Vera, the intruder gushes, ‘It smells good. I’m hungry,’ and licks the screen of the security camera. This talk draws on notions of the monstrous feminine by Laura Mulvey, Barbara Creed, and Donna Haraway, to consider all three characters’ monstrosity through the hungers that drive them and their slippery power dynamic. Key Words: Film, horror, Spain, gender, hungry gaze, power, cyborg, scientist, animals, vagina dentata, revenge, Almodóvar, Creed, Haraway, Bourgeois, Mulvey, bioethics.Item The Monster Within and Without: Spanish Comics, Monstrosity, Religion, and Alterity(Routledge, 2015) Harris, Sarah D.Stereotyping based on ethnic and racial difference has also led to a practice whereby artists represent, and viewers understand, the “Other” as monstrous in comics and cartoons. Building on the idea that comics rely on physical exaggeration, on Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s seven theses on monstrosity, and on Spain’s multicultural and multiethnic history, this chapter explores the depiction of monstrosity and alterity from two divergent moments in Spain. More specifically, it argues that two chosen examples represent the extremes of a range of practice in using stereotypes to depict monsters, from near absolute appropriation of monstrous characteristics, on the one hand, to unadulterated “othering” of the monstrous enemy on the other.Item Quick Fixes(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2006) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs, by Marcus Boon. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. 339 pp.Item Slogans and Attitudes(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2009) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature: Englishness and Nostalgia by Christine Berberich. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 218 pp.Item Late and Getting Later(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2007) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of "Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Other Late Novels," by Bernard Schweizer. A Companion to the British and Irish Novel: 1945-2000. Ed. Brian W. Shaffer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 608 pp.Item Other Peoples' Dyschronia(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2008) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel, by John J. Su. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 226 pp.Item Homely Thoughts(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2009) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of Nation and Novel: The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day, by Patrick Parrinder. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 502 pp.Item Brideshead Remodernized(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2003) Pitcher, JonathanItem The World is Always Too Much(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2004) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of Evelyn Waugh and the Modernist Tradition, by George McCartney. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003. 211 pp.Item Déjà-Vu All Over Again(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2005) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s by Bernard Schweizer. Charlottesville, VA: UP of Virginia, 2001. 216 pp.Item Two Stories(2014-04) Pitcher, Jonathan; Freire, MarcelinoJonathan Pitcher's translation of two stories, "About Peace" and "Armed Struggle", by Marcelino Freire.Item Et in Arcadia Non Ego(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2004) Pitcher, JonathanA book review of Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Biography, 1924-1966, by John Howard Wilson. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2001. 198 pp.Item Emollient Schisms(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2012) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of Atlantic Republic: The American Tradition in English Literature by Paul Giles. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.Item Nostalgia for Novelty(The Evelyn Waugh Society, 2013) Pitcher, JonathanBook review of The Modernist Novel: A Critical Introduction, by Stephen Kern. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 253 pp.Item The Art of Making Do in Naples by Jason Pine(University of Rhode Island, 2014) Alfano, BarbaraA book review of The Art of Making Do in Naples by Jason Pine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2012.Item The Transatlantic Gaze. Italian Cinema, American Film,(Routledge, 2015-02-18) Alfano, BarbaraA book review of The Transatlantic Gaze. Italian Cinema, American Film by Mary Ann McDonald Carolan. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014Item L'(in)efficacia dell'amore in Non ti muovere di Margaret Mazzantini(SAGE State University of New York at Stony Brook, Center for Italian Studies, 2015-05) Alfano, BarbaraQuesto saggio si occupa del significato dell’amore passionale nel romanzo di Margaret Mazzantini Non ti muovere (2001). Narratore e protagonista della storia è Timoteo, chirurgo di successo, sposato con Elsa, la cui figlia adolescente, Angela, si trova in ospedale tra la vita e la morte. Ad Angela, che non può ascoltarlo, Timo racconta la storia della relazione extraconiugale che ebbe nel periodo della nascita della ragazza e che cambiò il suo modo di guardare all’umanità. Quella storia iniziò con uno stupro. Nel romanzo, l’amore è rappresentato come forza rivoluzionaria che diventa strumento critico di conoscenza dell’altro e agisce spingendo il protagonista fuori dalla sua vita altoborghese, costringendolo a ripensare la sua umanità. Timoteo si apre così ad una comprensione del genere umano più profonda, laddove norme e pratiche sociali della sua classe d’appartenenza avevano invece fallito. Eppure, a dispetto del potere che esercita sull’individuo, l’amore lascia inalterate le strutture sociali che sfida e si propone di cambiare. In questa prospettiva, lo stupro resta un elemento non poco problematico della lettura critica del testo.