JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION最新文献

{"title":"Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World by Anna Arabindan-Kesson (review)","authors":"Zay Dale","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913844","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World</em> by Anna Arabindan-Kesson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Zay Dale </li> </ul> <em>Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World</em>. By Anna Arabindan-Kesson. Duke University Press, 2021. 320 pp. <p><strong>I</strong>n <em>Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World,</em> Anna Arabindan-Kesson attends closely to the role of cotton and Blackness in aesthetic and commodity traditions in the United States and globally. Arabindan-Kesson makes it clear that her work is not after a diachronic study of cotton and history; rather, she is concerned with the “visual and material associations between Blackness and cotton” (6). In this well-written, lavishly illustrated, and thoroughly researched book, Arabindan-Kesson develops an approach to art and Blackness that begins in textiles. What emerges from Arabindan-Kesson’s work is a new study of art, history, and literature through Black bodies and white cotton via attention to the visual modality of reducing “Black lives to raw material” (18), a modality in which cotton, Blackness, and history are all violently intertwined.</p> <p>The aesthetic nature of cotton in art forms the central thesis of the book. In the art in which cotton is depicted, Arabindan-Kesson identifies a belief that there exists a certain fugitive space in the threads of cotton: according to this belief, in the viewing, touching, and feeling of cotton, one can recognize its “speculative vision” (21). Each of the four chapters and the coda incorporate this <strong>[End Page 153]</strong> notion of speculative vision to understand the networks of commerce and Blackness and the ways that Blackness comes to exist through artworks that posit it as a speculative vision of resistance inhabiting the cotton they depict. The first chapter, “Circuits of Cotton,” looks at contemporary artist Lubaina Himid, particularly her artwork <em>Cotton.com</em> (2002), to examine the way Himid not only looks back at history in her work but also looks back upon past and present blindness to exploitation and questions how we can “not see this history” (32). By beginning with this contemporary artist and working back to nineteenth-century art and history, Arabindan-Kesson establishes this reduction of fiber to flesh, thereby building a relationship between Black bodies and textiles; but she also shows the eradication of Black handwork so that Blackness cannot be tied to aesthetics of textiles (38). Arabindan-Kesson guides the reader through the artwork while underscoring the importance of cotton’s role in the draping of the body: clothing for the Black body begins, in the US, not in clothing as artistic expression but clothing as “uniform” (46). Black wearers of this uniform were ","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"9 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"What Would Become of My Literary Career?\": Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Stoddard, and the Limits of Literary Traditions","authors":"Nicole C. Livengood","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913840","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>In <i>The Hermaphrodite</i> (ca. 1846) and “Collected by a Valetudinarian” (1870), Julia Ward Howe and Elizabeth Stoddard indulge in fantasies in which their protagonists, Laurence and Alicia, embrace fully Romantic modes of authorship. Laurence and Alicia can fulfill Romantic ideals of authorship partly because they publish their work through the circulation of ideas rather than in printed, mass-produced form; they also embrace life writing as a genre and explore the aesthetics of manuscripts’ materiality. Through these characters, Howe and Stoddard explore the costs and consequences of self- and literary authorship at the intersections of two overlapping mid-nineteenth-century media traditions: nonprint salon and manuscript cultures and the more recent tradition of commercial print culture. Even as <i>The Hermaphrodite</i> and “Collected” emphasize life writing’s artistry and authenticity and showcase nonprint modes of authorship and circulation as a way of embracing literary and personal autonomy, they also reveal those pathways as imperfect. When read together, these works neither condemn one tradition nor condone the other. Rather, they ask readers to reassess—and address—critical paradigms that limit conceptions of authorship and literary careers.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"9 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Redeeming Professions: Wollstonecraft, Austen, and Vocational Choice","authors":"Amy L. Gates","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913839","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Jane Austen’s novels insist that readers notice characters’ professions and vocational choices. This essay argues that Austen’s ideas develop from—and expand on—Wollstonecraft’s claims about the power and potential of vocational choice to benefit self and society. In <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Men</i> (1790) and <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft famously critiques clergy, soldiers, and sailors because too often men in these professions were—like women of the time—without choice of career and without self-determination within those careers. Austen illustrates novelistically many of the complaints Wollstonecraft levels against men in clerical and military professions, but she also offers examples that redeem these professions and the men who intentionally adopt them. Previous studies of Wollstonecraftian influence on Austen have largely overlooked Austen’s insistent attention to men’s careers and the ways in which they affirm Wollstonecraft’s critiques as well as extend the possibility of moral and social benefits to be realized from vocational choice, equipping men, too, to be better marriage partners and citizens. This essay provides an overview of Wollstonecraft’s theories about vocational choice and Austen’s fictional echoes of these theories within the context of contemporary ideas of vocation and the professions. Then it turns to two case studies from Austen’s fiction and two characters who most directly and extensively discuss their choices of profession: Edward Ferrars in <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> (1811) and Edmund Bertram in <i>Mansfield Park</i> (1814). Bringing these elements together not only illuminates another aspect of Wollstonecraft’s influence on Austen that has received scant critical attention but also reveals Austen’s contribution to changing notions of profession and egalitarian marriage partnerships.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"8 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gothic: An Illustrated History by Roger Luckhurst (review)","authors":"Amanda L. Alexander","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913843","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913843","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Gothic: An Illustrated History&lt;/em&gt; by Roger Luckhurst &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Amanda L. Alexander &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Gothic: An Illustrated History&lt;/em&gt;. By Roger Luckhurst. Princeton University Press, 2021. 288 pp. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;G&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;othic: An Illustrated History&lt;/em&gt; is a vibrant book for the twenty-first century Gothic scholar. The text’s layout, colorful visuals, and cover all contribute to an enticing experience and live up to the moniker of “an illustrated history.” Luckhurst frames this history around the idea that both material and immaterial qualities of the Gothic have always informed how we encounter its various incarnations.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Each of the text’s four primary sections contains five chapters, all with their own thematic focus related to the section’s category. Luckhurst introduces these sections and essays in the preface as “a collection of ‘travelling tropes’ that, while they originate in a narrow set of European cultures with distinct meanings, have embarked on a journey in which they are both transmitted and utterly transformed as they move across different cultures” (8–9). This early emphasis on the shifting and flexible nature of the Gothic establishes what becomes a well-rounded look at the genre’s transnational appeal across physical and digital media. While both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras feature prominently, covering the traditional Gothic fiction period of 1764–1820, Luck-hurst uses this familiar territory to point readers toward unexpected perspectives, like those of architects or authors of captivity narratives. &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 149]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Section 1, “Architecture &amp; Form,” covers material symbols of Gothic aesthetics in “The Pointed Arch,” “Ruins,” “Fragment,” “Labyrinth,” and “House.” Luckhurst gives each trope an introduction, and from there he discusses the religious, cultural, and nationalistic ideas that made each trope “Gothic” in England and Western Europe, before demonstrating how each was re-envisioned globally. A highlight of this section includes a captivating look at the eighteenth-century English fashion for artificially created ruins that leads readers into the all-too-real and pressing images of urban decay in Detroit and nuclear devastation in Chernobyl and Fukushima. The contrast of this essay, from artificial to authentic, underscores a key duality in much of the Gothic—a simultaneous desire for, and fear of, material signs of the past. As Luckhurst’s analysis suggests, artifacts and their histories could be fabricated, but the fears they represent are often not.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Luckhurst next turns to larger, slightly more abstract ideas of space. “The Lie of the Land” gives section 2 its focus, traversing material on “The Country &amp; the City,” “Village,” “Forest,” “Wilderness,” and “Edgelands.” These chapters ext","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"8 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Illness in Isolation: Katie Farris's A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving in Conversation with Emily Dickinson","authors":"Ronnie K. Stephens","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913841","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Katie Farris’s chapbook, <i>A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving</i>, chronicles the author’s diagnosis and subsequent treatment of breast cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Farris directly invokes Dickinson on several occasions and employs some of her stylistic idiosyncrasies, such as the em dash. Farris taps into a connection between the societal fears of tuberculosis during Dickinson’s lifetime and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as between the two poets’ personal challenges: the fact that both Dickinson and Farris experienced health issues that hindered their ability to create. Speaking directly to these parallels, other scholars have noted the ways in which tuberculosis informs Dickinson’s writing and have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic will influence contemporary authors in many of those same ways. This article describes how Farris turns to Dickinson during her diagnosis, especially in the sense that Dickinson’s preoccupation with death and illness presents a conduit through which Farris can process her own mortality. I argue that Farris finds companionship and camaraderie in Dickinson’s work specifically because, in both instances, the women face potentially fatal illness largely in isolation. Farris’s invocations of Dickinson and of Dickinson’s poems help shed light on the earlier poet’s attempts to process the impact that tuberculosis had on her family, her social circle, and the nation at large.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"10 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ponchos y sarapes: El cine mexicano en Buenos Aires (1934–1943) by Ángel Miquel (review)","authors":"Jose Antonio Intriago Suarez","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913847","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Ponchos y sarapes: El cine mexicano en Buenos Aires (1934–1943)&lt;/em&gt; by Ángel Miquel &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Jose Antonio Intriago Suarez &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Ponchos y sarapes: El cine mexicano en Buenos Aires (1934–1943)&lt;/em&gt;. By Ángel Miquel. Peter Lang, 2021. 196 pp. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;M&lt;/strong&gt;y grandfather loved movies, especially the Westerns he used to watch as a kid in Saturday matinees with his brothers. His favorites were Mexican films, with songs, action, humor, and romance. They were some of the biggest Spanish-language films available in much of South America. These thoughts came to my mind as I read &lt;em&gt;Ponchos y sarapes: El cine mexicano en Buenos Aires (1934–1943)&lt;/em&gt; by Ángel Miquel. The book, published by Peter Lang in 2021, takes a storyteller’s approach, guiding readers through an important period of early cultural exchange between two of the biggest consumer markets in Spanish-speaking America. The central goal espoused by Miquel is to explore an under-studied period where the bases of Mexicós Golden Age of Cinema were cemented. The strength of the book lies in its multipronged approach to the topic: the examination not only of various aspects of the business of movies, including production, distribution, and the consuming of the cultural artefacts themselves, but also of the movies’ reception through the writings of numerous professional critics of the period. The work is divided into four chapters with multiple appendices that include movie data for the period as well as promotional materials and an index with the bibliographical &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 167]&lt;/strong&gt; information of the reviews used in the monograph. &lt;em&gt;Ponchos y sarapes&lt;/em&gt; is aimed at those interested in a scholarly approach to an aspect of Mexican cinema, but it will also find a home with those interested in a broader approach to the commerce of culture between nations.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;After an introduction that informs the reader of the genesis of the project, as well as a description of the work’s print sources and the general structure of the work, the book’s first chapter, entitled “Indefinición” (“undefined”), focuses on the period between 1934 and 1936. This chapter gives readers an account of the first nine Mexican films to be shown in Buenos Aires theaters. Here is where the multipronged approach of reception studies, historical assessment, and cultural criticism first appears to the reader. By weaving these three different strands, Miquel threads together the evolution of the Argentinian capital’s people’s consumption of Mexican cultural products and performers in an engrossing narrative that is supplemented by the authoŕs thoughts on the reasons behind these behaviors based on the evidence presented. Each chapter finishes with a statistics section, where Miquel delves into the raw data and compares the number","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"9 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"He's Busy Espalliering Sylvia\": Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Assia Wevill","authors":"Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913838","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Prompted by recent feminist recovery efforts, this essay traces and considers Assia Wevill (1927–1969) as a noteworthy woman writer, whose life and literary contributions were influenced and inspired by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and the former British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes (1930–1998). Reflecting on the manner in which Assia has been understood as a femme fatale archetype, the article seeks to reframe our understanding of her life primarily and her work secondarily by foregrounding them in her own words. While Assia has conventionally been approached as an attendant figure in the biographies and poetry of Plath and Hughes, this piece maintains that her life and literary contributions provide material for literary scholars to engage with and make inroads in feminist scholarship, as well as to forge new pathways in Plath studies and Hughes studies. Increasingly more than a footnote to Plath and Hughes, Assia Wevill emerges as a relevant subject for scholars who wish to track and map gendered dynamics in connection with biography in twentieth-century literature and letters.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138526621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elusive Allusions: Shirley Jackson's Gothic Intertextuality","authors":"Emily Banks","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913842","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This article analyzes Shirley Jackson’s use of allusions in <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i> and <i>Hangsaman</i>. Drawing from Nicholas Royle’s work on the Freudian uncanny in relation to literature and pedagogy, it argues that, in both novels, allusions draw readers with literary knowledge into the protagonist’s psychological experience and ultimately comment on literary studies as an inherently gothic practice. In <i>Hill House</i>, a connected web of allusions to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost,” and Samuel Richardson’s <i>Pamela</i> works to convey the house’s telepathic power while simultaneously inviting us to feel, along with Eleanor, a proud possessiveness if we are (or think we are) able to discern the allusions’ significance for the novel. In this way, Jackson puts her well-read readers in the place of gothic protagonist; we believe we have a special ability to unearth the novel’s secrets but must ultimately wonder whether we, like Eleanor, are the ones who have been consumed. In <i>Hangsaman</i>, allusions to <i>Pamela</i>, <i>Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</i>, <i>Through the Looking-Glass</i>, the 1908 pornographic novel <i>The Way of a Man with a Maid</i>, and \"The Waste Land,\" as well as the Tarot and Tony Sarg’s marionettes, lead readers through a disorienting maze of clues and connections that replicates its protagonist’s disconnection from reality during her first year of college. In both novels, Jackson cultivates an uncanny reading experience through uncertain recollections, telepathic communications, and surprising correspondences. She illuminates both the allure and danger of literature’s enchanting power, revealing the intrinsically gothic nature of our engagements with the literary tradition.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"35 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lichens: Toward a Minimal Resistance by Vincent Zonca (review)","authors":"Nicole Emanuel","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a913845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a913845","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Lichens: Toward a Minimal Resistance&lt;/em&gt; by Vincent Zonca &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Nicole Emanuel &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Lichens: Toward a Minimal Resistance&lt;/em&gt;. By Vincent Zonca. Translated by Jody Gladding. Polity Press, 2023. 250 pp. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;nce you begin read ing Vincent Zonca’s &lt;em&gt;Lichens: Toward a Minimal Resistance&lt;/em&gt;, it is likely that you will start to notice these minute life forms everywhere you turn. You may be surprised by the abundance of lichens in poetry; they appear in the stanzas of Tomas Tranströmer and Pablo Neruda, not to mention in ancient Japanese haiku, as well as in recent writing by indigenous poets such as Joséphine Bacon and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. Perhaps you will observe lichenous imagery in visual art as well, in the surrealist work of Antoni Pitxot and Bernard Saby, for instance, or the immensely enlarged photographs of Oscar Furbacken. You may even find yourself contemplating lichen in music, if you are attuned to the patterns of growth and transformation that inform the aleatory compositions of John Cage or the organically evolving sonic textures of György Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis. Of course, once your eyes and ears are opened to lichen in art, you will almost surely also note their living likenesses in the landscapes where you dwell. You may discover vital patches of texture and color clinging to a tree or a cement wall that you had never previously examined.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;All the writers, musicians, and artists mentioned above appear in Zonca’s book, and they &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 157]&lt;/strong&gt; represent but a fraction of philosophers, scientists, and creators whose work he connects to the topic of lichen. As the variety of these inspirations indicates, &lt;em&gt;Lichens&lt;/em&gt; is a wide-ranging text. It traces its subject from antiquity to modernity, traversing continents, epochs, epistemologies, and many diverse media along the way. Zonca revels in the motley assortment of sources his study takes in. In his own terms, “[e]ven more radically than the philosophy of science, ecocriticism, or anthropology,” Zonca’s approach brings “biology, literary and art criticism, ethnology, and philosophy all together at the same time in order to cultivate curiosity. This is the chosen stance of the undisciplined approach of the essay, the symbiotic functioning of lichen: joyously to blend the disciplines and extract the juices” (11–12). Zonca is committed to a lichenous praxis. Just as lichens make a mockery of taxonomic divisions by being simultaneously fungi and algae, Zonca’s writing embraces hybridity, plurality, and full-blown polymorphic possibility.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The border-crossing of Zonca’s methodology puts &lt;em&gt;Lichens&lt;/em&gt; in the company of recent texts such as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s &lt;em&gt;The Mushroom at the End of the World&lt;/em&gt; (2015) and Thom van Dooren’s &lt;em&gt;A Worl","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"9 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138512688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of explicit instruction in intercultural competence in the world language classroom","authors":"Janice M. Aski, Xinquan Jiang, April D. Weintritt","doi":"10.1111/modl.12889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12889","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes a research study of a three-semester elementary Italian language curriculum at a large Midwestern research university that incorporates intercultural competence (IC) training through cognitive dissonance image analyses, conversations with native speakers, classroom discussion, and reflections to determine the impact of this curriculum on learners’ development of IC. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered over three semesters to assess students’ IC and identify insights into the developmental processes. Students’ development of IC was measured in pre- and posttests using the Intercultural Development Inventory. Students demonstrated positive growth in IC with 9-point gains in developmental orientation scores (<i>p</i> &lt; .001). Qualitative data from student interviews and reflections were analyzed using the VALUE rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and illustrate that students increased awareness of cultural self and different others, applied openness and curiosity in intercultural interactions, and developed skills for empathy and perspective taking. While previous studies on language courses with no or limited intercultural learning content failed to prove effective in promoting IC growth, this study suggests that purposeful integration of IC materials and activities can promote intercultural development in elementary language learners.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"120 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138438941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}