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Volume 3, Issue 1 (2024)Read More

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Visual Art
3 November 2024

Dancing on the Cliff Edge

Una Yan
This painting represents a reflection between our inner awareness and the unstable comtemporary social environment. It explores how to find personal and community pathways and order in the contemporary context, and moving forward with responsibility (the heavy things on the body of the figure), courageously seeking balance.
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Poetry
3 November 2024

" A Beautiful Maiden Shot My Heart" By Antar Bin Shadad:

Yasser Aman
This is a translation of an Arabic poem from Pre-Islamic poetry written by Antara Bin Shadad. This poem is an example of appropriation in literary translation. When the meaning is not only cultural but when it is ambience- bound as well, appropriation is difficult but not impossible to achieve. " رمتِ الفؤادَ مليحة عذراءُ" " A Beautiful Maiden Shot My Heart" is an example of a hard choice whether to translate a poem into classical or modern poetry. However, the best I have done was to appropriate between both choices. Images are almost kept the same, but the classical style, structure and eco-specific, such as "saba'u'" (the east wind), are rendered in modern ones in the target language. Byronic as well as Wordsworthian images[i] are appropriated in line four. [i] See Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" and Wordsworth's "Daffodils".
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Current Articles

Articles1 January 2024

Mapping Literature in the Age of AI

Virginia Ramos
"Mapping literature in the age of AI" discusses the concept of "mapping", from its historical meaning to its technological meaning in the field of literature and AI tools developed in recent years and designed to "map literature". The article addresses ethics, biases, and the issue of human capacities vis a vis machine capacities, in support of the critical and crucial value of the humanities and their unavoidable relationship with GenAI.
Articles3 November 2024

Mapping Gender and Territory: The Continent Allegories on European World Maps from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance until the Early Enlightenment

Katharina Oehmichen
The four-part set of female continent allegories, which originated in the early Renaissance, was born out of a European need for a new vehicle of thought that served the functions of representing imperial expansion and the superiority of Western science and civilization, while gratifying the curiosity of the readers about newly discovered lands at the same time. The shift from the Christian symbolic tradition of the representation of the continents on world maps mirrored the shift in Western perception and knowledge of the world and Europe’s position in it. Apart from geo-political and imperial agendas that might have favored a certain personification over another, the predominant depiction of the continents as young women also points towards a gendered bias in cartography that has persisted at least until the early nineteenth century during which the focus shifted towards national allegories, who have often been conspicuously personified as females, too. The trend of the continent allegories starting in the late Middle Ages, finds its climax during the Renaissance, and due to inner-continental European conflicts slowly begins to lose significance in the early stages of the Enlightenment. To understand the significance of gender in the representation of continents we will explore the artistic tools of mapmakers, namely the allegorical form. The female body, I argue, lent itself readily as a surface for Eurocentric ideologies, because, like foreign territory, women were frequently stripped of their agency, female identity was evaluated and hierarchized by beauty, and female bodies were utilized as objects onto which ideas could be projected by predominantly European male authors for an assumed male audience. The choice for an all-female set of continent allegories might have been inevitable rather than accidental, in the sense that female bodies already brought with them connotations of passivity, otherness, and male ownership. On top of that, women were often excluded from cartographic knowledge-making processes all together. And yet, the gendered practices and power structures in the processes of knowledge production have been vastly ignored by research so far. For a lack of space, the focus of this paper will be on the gendered aspects of the allegorical depictions of the continents on European world maps, although we need to acknowledge that the dimensions of race, class, and gender intersected and interacted with each other to create a colonial discourse.
Articles3 November 2024

Body, Mind, and Archives: A Critical Questioning of “Places for Knowledge” in David Treuer’s The Translation of Dr. Apelles

Lisa Brau-Weglinski
Western conceptualizations of time and space are common topics to be queried within the field of Indigenous literary study. However, while the focus has been laid on temporal and spatial literary conventions, too little attention has been drawn to the conceptualization and norms around an identity forming element: knowledge. This paper is particularly suspicious of Western conceptualizations of “places for knowledge,” as this has very real consequences for how we understand and treat ourselves and others. As such, my work highlights that “places for knowledge” can cloud and limit our perception of reality, which, concerning the project of decolonization in North America, poses a vital problem. This paper hence seeks to provide a deeper understanding of “repositories for knowledge,” by implementing the concept of cultural competence (Hanson 243) as a unit of analysis for close reading that better represents alternative conceptualizations of (places for) knowledge. Specifically, my work analyzes cultural functions of “places for knowledge” in Ojibwe scholar and novelist David Treuer’s The Translation of Dr. Apelles, focusing on the library/archiveas compared to the body as a “place for knowledge” (Treuer 140). Treuer’s novel asks the reader to contend with not knowing/understanding everything and vents that because of the normalized Western understanding of “places for knowledge,” Indians and their cultures were never considered part of Western reality. Consequently, this paper asks: How can literary study more meaningfully help to obliterate Western conceptualizations of knowledge that isolate Indigenous peoples and seal them into the past? In this paper, I argue that reshaping the concept of “places for knowledge” poses very real consequences for decolonization within literary study.
Articles3 November 2024

Living Losses

Courtney Brown
Contextually, I am from a line of strong black women. I am from a community of strivers and survivors who’ve accomplished great things through the blanket of patriarchy and civil injustices. I stand on the shoulders of many who took literal and figurative hits so that I could have opportunities they only dreamed of. I have followed in this legacy shattering glass ceilings into unrecognizable pieces for those who will come next. However, breaking through has not come without cuts, bruises, scrapes and wounds. The celebration of smashing stereotypes should at least be balanced with the acknowledgement of the formidable sacrifices required. Oh, at what cost does progression come?

Most Popular Articles

Articles
1 January 2023

Magpies, Bridge and Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols and Rediscovering the Lost Goddess in Chinese Qiqiao Festival

Juan Wu
The Qiqiao Festival, also known as the Qixi Festival, or Chinese valentine’s day, is a festival celebrating the annual meeting of the Cowherd and Weaver Maid in mythology. The most influential version focuses on the romance or love theme; however, it ignores its underlying historical context, gender tension and mythical belief. This paper takes the texts, rituals and materials related to the Qiqiao festival to investigate its origin and evolution. First, it takes the anthological case of the Qiqiao festival in Xihe county to explore its core image of the holy bridge and Goddess Qiao. Second, it traces the bridge image in the Qiqiao festival to the archeological evidence of the oracle Hong and Jade Huang to explore the interaction of the rainbow bridge and goddess in the Qiqiao festival. Third, it presents multiple textual evidence to explore the mythic image of the magpie bridge in the Qiqiao festival to reveal the connection between bird worship and Goddess Worship. It proposes a possible mode of evolution of the Qiqiao festival: first originated from the initial sacrifices to Goddess Qiao, to pray for the holy bridge or pray to Goddess for the craft, then to the romance of the Cowherd and Weaver Maid. This paper extends from the aesthetic narrative of the Qiqiao Festival to its mythological context, highlighting its underlying ideology and gender tension. The Qiqiao festival is not only about romance; it reveals the profound tradition of the Goddess, bridge and bird mythology before the patriarchal society. The evolution of the Qiqiao festival demonstrates the tension between man and woman, fictional imagination and mythical worship, aesthetic autonomy and embedded ideology.
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Articles
30 December 2018

THE QUEST FOR SELF: USING MANDALA ART IN REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNALING

kathleen quinn
This article is a nexus of research, personal journaling reflections, and mandala creation from the authors own journals and focuses on the use of Mandalas as part of a reflective practice journaling process. Attention to mandala usage within reflective practice considering depth interiority, engaging and sharing with others. The authors approach to mandala construction is included followed by an exercise for observation and assessment of mandalas. The structure for reflective practice helps shape transformational leaders, using expressive arts, narratives in journaling. This transformational Discovery pathway and narrative exercises can be used for creating professional learning communities. This form of reflective practice has possibilities for increased self-awareness and self-care by creating a permanent record of thoughts and anchors.
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Articles
30 December 2018

IN BETWEEN REALMS: THE SEARCH FOR FEMININE SELFHOOD IN THE ESSAIS OF MONTAIGNE

Anna Suarez
My purpose is to explore factors of the Renaissance that determined women’s selfhood in Montaigne’s Essais. I argue that the shift into modernity is responsible for the loss of women’s autonomy as well as the anxiety experienced by men regarding their power as well as their potential. Montaigne and Renaissance discourse defines women only by their bodies (sexual organs) and I explore the elements that established biological essentialism. This paper exemplifies comparative literature in the sense that it combines literature, theory, and art for the purpose of creating a well-researched examination of the root causes for why women were villainized and oppressed in the Renaissance era. I utilize feminist theory to discuss embodiment, which my argument defines as women being inseparable to their biological roles and the loss of their economic autonomy by way of them losing their property rights. Another aspect of embodiment in which I use is the loss of women midwives to male physicians, which calls for men to establish women’s reproductive rights, furthermore, trap them inside the narrow male definition of woman. Paradoxically, women are embodied due to sexist power dynamics, but feared for their possible demonic powers. The fear of witchcraft in women is due to men’s fear of castration and the tension that women will take away men’s power. Art theory from the Renaissance integrates cultural attitudes towards women’s bodies on a vast scale. This research paper is an exercise to examine the history of women’s selfhood.
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Articles
1 January 2024

Feminist Phenomenology and First-Person Narrative: Understanding Gender and Social Conflict in Anna Burns’ Milkman

SUSHREE ROUTRAY, Rashmi Gaur
In her magnum opus Milkman (2018), Anna Burns employs a subversive and artfully crafted first-person narrative, deftly exposing the arduous and tumultuous struggles encountered by individuals who dare to defy the confines of traditional gender roles. Through a relentless and unflinching narrative, the novel fearlessly confronts the harrowing manifestations of psychological torment, the insidious spectre of relentless stalking, and the manipulative machinations of gaslighting, all the while fervently interrogating the notion of a fixed and immutable gender identity. In a relentless odyssey toward self-realization, the protagonist's journey unfurls against a backdrop of traumatic events and the unyielding pressures imposed by society. The protagonist's plight is a reflection of wider societal injustices as well as the community's refusal to acknowledge stalking as a form of sexual harassment and its lasting impact on individuals. Exploring the themes of sexual harassment, victim-blaming, and himpathy through the lens of Feminist Phenomenology, the paper also examines the novel's portrayal of surveillance, biopower, and the deeply ingrained binary divisions that shape and constrain our societal fabric. By disentangling these themes, the narrative emerges as a critique of conformity, injustice, and the erasure of individual identity. The paper concludes that the first-person narrative in Milkman serves as a powerful conduit for revealing subjective experiences, challenging societal norms, and promoting a deeper understanding of gendered lived experiences.
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