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.

"Two Spatial Turns": Claudio Fogu and Eric Prieto in Dialogue
The GCLR invites you to join us for the next entry in the Interdisciplinary Brown Bag Lunch Series wherein professors Claudio Fogu and Eric Prieto will be discussing the role of spatial representation, thinking, and constructs in their respective research. Please see the attached flyer for more details and RSVP at the following link for a provided free lunch option. 
 
Time: February 11th, 12:00-1:30pm
 
Place: Phelps 6206C
2025 Winter Roundtable

The GCLR is pleased to announce our upcoming 2025 Winter Roundtable! Preempting our annual international student conference of the same theme, this quarter's roundtable will focus on "Blue Humanities and Aquatic Media." We hope to see many of you there! Please see the attached poster for more details. 

Time: Thursday, February 6th from 5-6:30pm. 

Place: GCLR Conference Room (Phelps 6206C). 

"From Mussolini to Meloni": A Lecture by Prof. Ruth Ben Ghiat (NYU)

The GCLR is pleased to announce our co-sponsorship of the UCSB Italian Studies Program inaugural Charles R. Ross Distinguished Lecture in Italian Studies—“Race, Gender, and Population in Italy from Mussolini’s ‘Battle of Babies’ to Meloni’s ‘Ethnic Substitution’”—to be given by historian Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU) on February 6, 2025 at 5pm in the Annenberg Room (4315 SSMS).

We anticipate that the lecture will be of great interest to faculty and students who are interested in race, gender, and politics, both past and present. An abstract for the lecture can be found here.

Talk/Discussion with Dean Sara Guyer (UC Berkeley) about the future of the Humanities [on Zoom]

Time: Friday, January 24, 12pm. Place: Zoom

We hope you'll join us for a timely discussion on the future of the Humanities with Dean Sara Guyer. Sara Guyer is the Irving and Jean Stone Dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities within the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley. She has been a champion of the value of a degree in the arts and humanities, and she is the Director of the World Humanities Report. Her priorities include a strategic focus on languages and writing, and several redesigned majors and minors. At UCB, she initiated the Task Force on Languages, Language-Based Disciplines and Global Citizenship, which remains one of her signature priorities, including a comprehensive report on language instruction. . 

Lecture by Prof. Eva Geulen (Max Kade Visiting Professor in GSS), "Walter Benjamin on Hope, and the Lessons of Experience"

Time: Thursday, January 23, 5pm. Place: (Phelps Hall #6320)

Eva Geulen is Director of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin and she teaches at Humboldt University. She has held teaching positions at Stanford University, the University of Rochester, and New York University, and she has been a professor of German Literature at the Universities of Bonn and Frankfurt. Her research focuses on literature and philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present, pedagogical discourses around 1800 and 1900, and Goethe’s interest in morphology and its reception in the twentieth century. Her publications include Aus dem Leben der Form. Goethes Morphologie und die Nager (2016), The End of Art: Readings of a Rumor after Hegel (2006); Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung (2005), Worthörig wider Willen. Darstellungsproblematik und Sprachreflexion in der Prosa Adalbert Stifters (1992), as well as essays on Nietzsche, Benjamin, Raabe, Thomas Mann and others. 

GCLR Weekly Writing Group (Winter 2025)

The GCLR is pleased to announce the return of our weekly writing group which will be held bi-weekly this quarter (Winter 2025) on the following Mondays (1/20, 2/3, 2/17, 3/3) from 10am-1pm inside the Comp. Lit Graduate Student Lounge (Phelps 6th floor). We hope you'll stop by for coffee, snacks, and a relaxing writing environment. 

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