Diverse Reflections
Asynchronous Session
Featured "Of Pains, Longings and Destiny": Christian Symbolism in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alvin Joseph
Christian religious tradition is around 2000 years old and is one of the major religions of the world. This religious tradition has got its own symbols and signs. In the novel "Grapes of Wrath" by the American author John Steinbeck, one can see the portrayal of the movement of a family of migrant workers, the Joads, from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression fleeing poverty and the Dust bowl, in search of greener pastures. In the novel description of a turtle traveling through the heavy soil foreshadows the slow and arduous journey the Joads will face. Steinbeck intertwines Christian images and the theme of Exodus throughout the narrative. The character of Jim Casy evokes thoughts about Jesus Christ in the reader. The novel is replete with Christian themes of endurance, hope in suffering, mutual care, sense of community/ togetherness, and a persevering mindset even in the midst of crises.
Remembering Lost Futures - Vaporwave and the Postmodern Condition: Ghostly Electronic Music as a Way to Think with and through Friendship, Mourning, and Solidarity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nicolas Gascon
Vaporwave is a genre of electronic music emerging in the early 2000's and 2010's. It features samples taken from genres like disco, muzak, R&B, elevator music, and smooth jazz. Slowing down tempos and drenching the samples in reverberation, distortion, and repetition, artists create a musical ambiance described as ghostly, uncanny, and hypnogogic. I use Vaporwave as a way to think with and through what has been recently posed in contemporary critical thought as the "decline of symbolic efficiency." The unique perspective provided by the genre offers a critique of various aspects of our life including relationships and art. Vaporwave's tendency to submerge previously vibrant vocals resonates with a suspension of the recognition of the friend and Heidegger's "horchen" while the "virtual dream plaza" trope opens onto a logic of images and reification. Over. the course of my work, I shift to questions of the genre's characterization as "postmodern" and its subversive potential. Vaporwave—a name that itself eschews the "solid"—provides us a way to reclaim a locus of agency in this evermore untethered social milieu.
Empire and the Haitian Revolution: White Feminism in Leonora Sansay's Zelica and Hero Worship in Harriet Martineau's The Man and the Hour View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sharon Worley
American author, Leonora Sansay, published her novel, Zelica, in London in 1820. It is a revised and expanded version of her novel, Secret History, or The Horrors of Santo Domingo, in a series of letters, written by a lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, late vice-president of the United States, principally during the command of General Rochambeau (Philadelphia,1808). Sansay’s novel places her heroine among the key figures of the revolution, including Leclerc, Napoleon’s sister, Pauline, Toussaint, Christophe and Rochambeau. These male characters who determine the fate of the island in the outcome of the revolution also interact with Sansay’s female character on an intimate level. The placement of her female characters within the political dynamics of revolution yields a distinctly American version of the Haitian Revolution as one that threatened whites with retaliation by both slaves and people of color. Sansay’s character is based on her own experiences as the wife of an American planter who returned to Haiti in 1802 when the French led by General Leclerc on Napoleon’s orders sought to reimpose French rule. In her adulation of the hero of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, who paved the way for Haitian independence from French colonialism, Harriet Martineau's The Man and Hour (1839) offers a stark contrast to Sansay's portrayal of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) which was led by Toussaint Louverture and ended with his control of the island as governor for life in 1801. Following his capture by the French, Louverture died in prison in 1803.
First Phase of CIRCE - Early Modern Theatre on Screen (CIGE/2021/086): Theatrical and Cinematic Intermediality during the Early Decades of Cinema and Its Impact in the Early Modern Theatre on Screen View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Víctor Huertas Martín
This study examines the results obtained after the conclusion of the first phase of the Research Project CIRCE (CIGE/2021/086; University of Valencia). In the light of the results obtained after examining data concerning the screen adaptations of early modern European theatre plays made during the early decades of cinema, I argue that traditional views which have established a split between ‘the theatrical’ and ‘the cinematic’ are lacking in nuance insofar as they treat the theatrical hypermedium and the art of cinema as incompatible. During the early decades of cinema, the view was widespread that films evolved from theatrical to pure cinema. The evidence thus far gathered for the database of “CIRCE: Early Modern Theatre on Screen” (a database, at present, in the making) shows, as a matter of fact, that our understanding of the contribution of early modern European theatre to the development of the European and the worldwide cinemas may be expanded by taking into account the stage tradition, which has proven to be determining not only for the adaptation and transposition of theatre productions onto the screen but also for the appropriations of characters, plots, themes and concerns associated to the early modern European theatre which have been appreciated in the cinema. Such stage tradition may be observed in the fact that films may be stage-to-screen transpositions of prestige theatre stagings of plays or may be embodied in the bodies of performers themselves (often, clowns, typecast characters, theatre stars).
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: The Migration of a Character from Literature to Film in the Spanish Arena View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mónica Martínez Sariego
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s portrayal of America was published in Paris in 1955 by the Olympia Press, a publisher devoted to paperback erotica. The novel had previously been rejected by four American publishers who were horrified at its subject-matter: the lustful obsession of a middle-aged pedophile, a divorced and learned European professor, for his twelve-year-old step-daughter. British novelist Graham Greene’s praise for Lolita brought it into the limelight. In 1958, Lolita was finally published in the United States, where its notoriety ensured its immediate success. Considered nowadays to be one of the best novels of the 20th Century, Lolita has become firmly established in the literary canon. Moreover, its main character, has become an icon in mass culture. However, by making her a teenage temptress with an out-of-control sexuality, popular culture has distorted the point of the novel. Film versions, including adaptations by Kubrick and Lyne and other “decantations”, have contributed to this misrepresentation. In this paper the archetype of Lolita is analyzed in two films produced in Spain during the 80s: El Nido (Jaime de Armiñán, 1980), and Memorias de Leticia Valle (Miguel Ángel Rivas, 1980), based on the novel with the same title by Rosa Chacel. Three elements of the myth in these films are considered: Lolita and the adult male characters and the nature of their relationship. The analysis is carried out from a Gender perspective, and it also takes into account the historical and social context in which the two films were produced.
Two Non-Homeric Quotations from Homer in the Novel 'The Death of the Gods. Julian the Apostate' by Dmitry Merezhkovsky: Commentary on the Novel View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vladislav Ronzhin
The aim of this study was to determine the path of reception and sources of the translation of two quotes from Homer's poems in Dmitry Merezhkovskii’s novel 'Death of the Gods. Julianus the Apostate.' Chapter 1.XVI contains a verse in Ancient Greek with a subscript translation into Russian from the 'Iliad.' Chapter 2.IX holds an into-Russian translation of several verses from the 'Odyssey'. Alexander Sobolev noted that the first quote was borrowed not from the Iliad (it is Hom. Il. 5, 83 originally), but from the Ammianus Marcellinus’ 'Res gestae' (Amm. Marc. XV, 8, 17). Neither Sobolev nor Zinaida Mints, in their commentaries to the novel, did not discuss the second quotation. Quoted verses appear in the 'Odyssey' twice. However, a study of the novelist's drafts and an analysis of the context show that they could fall into the novel as well not directly from the poem, but through a different text. I assume that Merezhkovsky borrowed it from a letter from Emperor Julianus to the main priest of Galatia Arsacius (Julian. 431, A–B). This allows accurate specifying of the quoted place – Hom. Od. XIV, 57–58. The comparison of both quotations with the into-Russian translations of Homer's poems existing by the end of the 19th century suggests that the text of the first quotation was borrowed (with a minor transformation) from a translation made by Vasilii Zhukovskii and the second quotation was translated by Merezhkovskii himself.
