What Graduate Students Are Reading

Daniel Martini is reading "Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts" by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (2001), which can be found in De Gruyter's Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies (2021).
 
This piece informs Daniel's dissertation on the affordances of literature, specifically the means by which texts communicate through non-semantic stylistic features like parallelisms. 

Naz Keynejad is reading Persian poet Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami's "Yusuf and Zulaikha" (15th century CE).

The story of Yusuf and Zulaikha appears in Jami’s Haft Awrang (Persian: هفت اورنگ‎, meaning "Seven Thrones"). According to the story, Yusuf’s arresting beauty captures the hearts of all of the women he encounters. Zulaikha, unable to quell her thoughts of Yusuf, attempts to seduce him, but he rejects her advances until they meet again and marry many years later. 

Graham Feyl is re-reading/revisiting There's a disco ball between us: a theory of Black gay life (2021) by Jafari S. Allen. Lyrical and genre transforming/bending, Allen presents an ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls "Black gay habits of mind"  as a way of renarrating and reconsidering Black, gay histories. Moving across various temporalities and spaces, and using pieces from visual art, performance and literature, Allen considers how Black gay life has resisted and survived under systems of oppression through community, radical joy and care. Graham reaches for Allen's text because of his prose and methodological approach to history as flashes that are still present today. The text itself acts as an example of community: first names are used, there are reminders to take deep breaths, and it is a chorus of voices that come together to formulate alongside Allen. 
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Surojit Kayal is reading The Marvelous Clouds by John Durham Peters.

In The Marvelous Clouds, the author argues that though we often think of media as environments, the reverse is just as true—environments are media. Drawing from ideas implicit in media philosophy, Peters argues that media are more than carriers of messages: they are the very infrastructures combining nature and culture that allow human life to thrive.  

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Richard Nedjat-Haiem is reading Broadcasting Change: Arabic Media as a Catalyst for Liberalism by Joseph Baude.

Amid civil war, failing states, and terrorism, Arab liberals are growing in numbers and influence. Advocating a culture of equity, tolerance, good governance, and the rule of law, they work through some of the region’s largest media outlets to spread their ideals within the culture. This book analyzes this trend by portraying the intersection of media and politics in two Arab countries with seismic impact on the region and beyond. 

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James Nichols is reading Exorcismos de la memoria: Políticas y poéticas de la melancolía en la España de la transición by Alberto Medina Dominguez. 

Through an interdisciplinary approach in which the analysis of philosophical, filmic, literary and political texts coexist, the book deals with a reading hypothesis of the period in which the lines of demarcation between the aesthetic and the political are blurred.

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Ursula Friedman is reading The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, edited by Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant.

Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, this anthology offers a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.

Rachel Feldman is reading Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (Hebrew: פתאום בעומק היער: אגדה‎) by Amos Oz. 

A dark, yet gen­tle, "fable for all ages" about silence, tolerance, and the role of language, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Hebrew in 2005. The narrative is based in a mysterious town without animals or birds. Legend tells that they have been spirited away by the Pied Piper figure of Nehi, the mountain demon. Two children set out into the forest to find out more. 

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GCLR Event Proposal 

As we begin working to fill our calendar for the upcoming academic year, students and faculty, please submit your event suggestions for the GCLR by completing this form. All submissions will be reviewed by the GCLR board.

Harvard Institute for World Literature: Call for Applications

The Harvard Institute for World Literature is now accepting applications for its 2025 Summer Program through the GCLR!

The 2025 program will take place in July at Harvard University and is slated to feature esteemed scholars such as David Damrosch, Jennifer Wenzel, and our very own Dominique Jullien!

Two of the successful UCSB student applicants are automatically accepted into the HIWL and will receive a 50% reduction of their fees. Applications will be processed on a rolling basis from November 15th to December 15th. For more information visit our How to Apply Page. 

 

"Culturalism: A Weapon of Empire" — A talk by Prof. Jennifer Ponce de León

The tendency to treat reified cultural or ethnic features as the key for explaining social conflicts is a cornerstone of bourgeois ideology and useful weapon of imperialism. Yet, such an approach characterizes many Western academic discourses that purport to combat ‘coloniality’ and racism, including decolonial theory. This talk addresses important differences between culturalist approaches to analyzing imperialism, racism, and ideology, and the historical materialist and dialectical orientation of Marxism, particularly in the forms it has taken in the Global South.

This event will take place November 14th on Zoom (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/83259571366) from 12-1:15pm as part of the GCLR's new Interdisciplinary Brown Bag Lunch series, co-sponsored by the departments of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and German and Slavic Studies.

Prof. Sara Pankenier Weld, "Miniature Revelations: Childhood in Nabokov's Writings"

In her book project Miniature Revelations: Childhood in Nabokov’s Writings, Sara Pankenier Weld argues that attention to childhood and the often neglected and inscrutable child, who might be mistaken for a marginal figure, in fact offers a miniature revelation and key to Vladimir Nabokov’s novels. Looking through the lens of childhood also allows for pointed critiques of the solipsism of brilliant but flawed protagonists and reveals ethical dimensions of the text that may be ignored by the protagonist or obscured by the author, who frequently offers interpretive challenges for the reader and creates texts that are not what they seem to be. 

Thursday, October 24, 12-1:15pm in Phelps 6206C

This new series is offered jointly by the GCLR, the Comparative Literature Program, the Dept. of French and Italian, and the Dept. of Germanic and Slavic. Two brownbag lunches per quarter with speakers from UCSB and beyond will be organized. Everybody is welcome!

 
 
Public Lecture "The Expansion of Muslim Atheism in 1960s Central Asia." Prof. Eren Tasar
Prof. Tasar will discuss the second chapter of
his book in progress, Muslim Atheism in
Central Asia. The chapter, entitled
"Expansion," charts the dramatic growth in
atheistic literature in languages spoken by
Central Asian Muslims throughout the 1960s,
a decade that witnessed Khrushchev's
antireligious campaign as well as a
subsequent effort to rein in that campaign's
excesses.
 
Friday, October 18
4:00 p.m. HSSB 4020
 
 
 
Eren Tasar is Associate Professor of History at UNC Chapel Hill.
Call for Papers: 2024 Fall Roundtable "Technology and the Humanities"

The GCLR is pleased to announce that we are currently accepting submissions for our 2024 Fall Roundtable "Technology and the Humanities" to be held on October 17th from 6-8pm in Phelps 6206C!

Interested applicants are encouraged to submit short papers/works-in-progress alongside an abstract and brief author biography to complit-gclr@ucsb.edu.

Deadline: October 13th, 2024. Selected presenters will be notified the following day. 

Refreshments will be served

Fall Quarter Weekly Writing Group

The GCLR is pleased to announce that the Weekly Writing Group will be continuing this quarter on Thursdays from 10am-1pm in Phelps 6206C.

 

We hope that you'll stop by for a comradely environment, writing accountability, and of course: coffee and snacks! 

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