May 14-May 28, 2021

Six Faculty Earned Professorships at UNL

Congratulations to Kwame Dawes, Margaret Jacobs, Christian Binek, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jennine Capó Crucet, Tomas Helikar. These hardworking and determined individuals make up the six University of Nebraska-Lincoln professors that were awarded professorships from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor this year.

FALL 2021! ENGL 445K: Seminar in African Literatures!

ENGL/ETHN 445K: Topics in African Literatures: Lesotho, eSwatini, South Africa, & Zimbabwe

This course examines the representation of communities, urban areas, and landscapes in southern African literatures. We will read from early South African texts by Sol Plaatje and Thomas Mofolo to understand how writer-activists embarked on the journey towards anti-apartheid resistance. In addition, we will analyze how writing by Petina Gappah, Yvonne Vera, and Phaswane Mpe added to the chorus of voices demanding democratic change - not just in South Africa, but also in Zimbabwe. Because we are focusing on southern Africa, we will have numerous opportunities to investigate not only the history of the region, but also its creative works in poetry, music, and film. On aggregate, all of these cultural artifacts enable us to better understand southern African communities that have been at the forefront of global activism, not only in the 1880s against the British South Africa Company, but also in 2020 as demonstrated by #RhodesMustFall.

Dr. Mũchiri, TR 9:30-10:45

*This course counts toward the following: 1) English major concentration or English ethnic lit requirement and 400-level; 2) English minor upper level; 3) Ethnic Studies major or minor; 4) African Studies minor; and/or 5) Global Studies major or minor.

Number Of Americans Fully Vaccinated Tops 100 Million

Thirty-nine percent of the nation’s adult population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning the number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has reached another milestone: 100 million.

Link For Full Article: here

The War on Critical Race Theory

"The exact targets of CRT’s critics vary wildly, but it is obvious that most critics simply do not know what they are talking about. Instead, CRT functions for the right today primarily as an empty signifier for any talk of race and racism at all, a catch-all specter lumping together “multiculturalism,” “wokeism,” “anti-racism,” and “identity politics”—or indeed any suggestion that racial inequities in the United States are anything but fair outcomes, the result of choices made by equally positioned individuals in a free society. They are simply against any talk, discussion, mention, analysis, or intimation of race—except to say we shouldn’t talk about it."

Read more from David Theo Goldberg at The Boston Review.

Monstrosity Plucked From Garbage Can: On Mae West’s Early Career as a Controversial Playwright.

"Mae West is an icon: literally, a representative symbol. In the popular imagination, Mae West stands in for a certain type of seduction—blonde, campy, one-liner-heavy. But though West is best known for her distinctive performances, she was also a controversial playwright; before West established the acting persona that would stick in the public’s minds for a century, she was offending critics and facing jail time for shows that she called “comedy-dramas of life,” illuminating elements of life yet to be popularized onstage."

Link For Full Article: here

Banning My Book Won't Protect Your Child

"She and the other parents like her demanded the removal of my book and several others from district reading lists for high school English class book clubs, from which students were allowed to select one of 15 titles. The school board ultimately decided to remove a number of books, including “V for Vendetta” and a graphic novel version of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and is currently considering whether it should remove more, including mine.

I have teamed up with Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult, Jacqueline Woodson and many other authors whose works have been targeted for removal from class reading lists in Leander. In conjunction with PEN America, a group that promotes free literary expression, we wrote a letter to the school district demanding that our books remain available to students. While our books may contain passages that are potentially uncomfortable, challenging or even offensive, exposure to our books is vital to expanding minds, affirming experiences, creating appreciation for the arts and building empathy — in short, respecting the adults that the students in Leander, Texas, will soon become."

Read more of Carmen Maria Machado's essay in NYT here.

The Obsessive Scholar Who Rescued Iceland’s Ancient Literary Legacy

"Arni loved being Icelandic, but he hated Iceland. It was no place for a scholar. Through his political connections, he kept a close eye on Iceland’s current affairs and had only a year earlier described, in a letter to a Norwegian friend, how Iceland had “only the worst of news, sheep widely extinct, people passing away, ravaged by famine, in the immense depth of snow.” That dire situation had only escalated. Europe was under a cold spell, known now as the Little Ice Age, which was felt most acutely at the edge of the continent. Fjords and bays were frozen over, and the coastline facing the Arctic Ocean was blocked by drifting icebergs. Fishing was impossible. Ships carrying food could not navigate the ice. Horses were too skinny for travel. Wool was in short supply."

Read more about Arni Magnusson and his mission to save Icelandic literature at LitHub.

The Dark Side of an Auteur: On Alfred Hitchcock’s Treatment of Women

Hedren’s memoir was published a year before the torrent of allegations against Harvey Weinstein and numerous other powerful media figures catalyzed #MeToo. The sharpened focus provided by that phenomenon impels even those unconvinced by Hedren’s allegations to take heed of the ways in which Hitchcock was known to have behaved around at least some women during his years in the film industry. Brigitte Auber, who played Danielle in To Catch a Thief, valued the friendship she struck up with Hitchcock, somebody she looked to as a kindly mentor. One evening in Paris, after the two had met for dinner, they sat in a car outside the apartment where Auber lived with her boyfriend. Hitchcock lunged at her, kissing her on the lips, though she immediately pulled back, stunned, much as Hedren claims to have done during the filming of The Birds. He was instantly contrite and embarrassed, and attempted to revive their friendship in the coming years, though Auber was unable to see him in the same light ever again. “It was an enormous disappointment for me,” she told biographer Patrick McGilligan. “I had never imagined such a thing. The quality of our relationship was entirely different.” McGilligan rejects the darker characterizations of Hitchcock, yet he acknowledges that the director was “capable of questionable behavior” and claims that Hitchcock “had at least two friendships with actresses” turn sour in the mid-​1950s in similar fashion, but only Auber was prepared to speak publicly about her experiences. McGilligan also describes Hitchcock’s penchant for groping women and for “thrusting his tongue inside [a woman’s] mouth.”

Read more from Edward White on LitHub.

Substance If Not Style: On the Radical Similarities of Alice Munro and Pedro Almodóvar

"Perhaps with the simple, but foundational, observation that they are exquisite observers of the norms and manners of their respective cultures, carefully constructing elaborate likenesses of their society’s version of patriarchy.

For Munro it tends to be a more antique, rural version of male chauvinism, presiding over hard-working, modest women scratching out a lonesome life. Although Almodóvar too has a penchant for women hustling on the margins, his scenarios often play up the bustle and luridness of urban, postmodern Spain, showing a modern, cosmopolitan version of misogyny. Both of them lovingly construct their own intricate dioramas of complicated social milieus—and then gleefully smash them up. In her recent book on the Australian writer Beverley Farmer, Josephine Rowe offered a pithy summary of how a Munro story feels: “A reader may think she’s settled in a demure domestic milieu when all of a sudden, someone’s elderly mother blows it to bits by listing into the particulars of a wistfully remembered orgy.” That’s a scene that should be in an Almodóvar film, if it isn’t already."

Read more from Veronica Esposito on LitHub.