2016 Modern Languages and Literatures Publications and Grants

Frangieh, Bassam, Introduction to Rimad Az-Zikrayat (Ashes of Memories), a collection of poems by Antranick Boujikian, (Self-published memoir), Pasadena, California, 2016, pp. 3 - 13.

Frangieh, Bassam, “Muhammad Hebi Yu`aniq Najmat An-Mimr al-Abyad (Muhammad Hebi Embraces the Star of the White Tiger),” Al-Jabha Online Newspaper, Haifa, August 20, 2016.

Frangieh, Bassam, “Talal wa Sharar of Raghid Nahhas: Al-`Urs Al-Mutanaqqil (Dew and Sparks of Raghid Nahhas: The Movable Feast).” An-Nahar Daily Newspaper, Beirut, Lebanon, February 24, 2016.

Skinner, Lee. Gender and the Rhetoric of Modernity in Spanish America, 1850-1910. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 2016. 

Abstract: Nineteenth-century Spanish American writers reimagined gender roles, modernization, and national identity during Spanish America’s uneven transition toward modernity. This ambitious volume surveys an expansive and diverse range of countries across the nineteenth-century Spanish-colonized Americas, showing how both men and women used the discourses of modernity to envision the place of women at all levels of social and even political life in the modern, utopian nation. Lee Skinner looks at texts by Clorinda Matto de Turner, Jorge Isaacs, Soledad Acosta de Samper, Ignacio Altamirano, Juana Manuela Gorriti, and many others, ranging from novels and essays to newspaper articles and advertisements. She argues that the rhetorical nature of modernity made it possible for readers and writers to project and respond to multiple contradictory perspectives on gender roles, establishing a narrative that competed with other nation-building discourses. With special attention to public and private space, domesticity, education, technology, and work, Skinner identifies gender as a central concern at every level of society.

Skinner, Lee. "La movilidad femenina en Teresa la limeña."  Voces diversas: Nuevas lecturas de Soledad Acosta de Samper, edited by Carolina Alzate and Isabel Corpas de Posada, Bogota: Universidad de los Andes, 2016. 

Abstract: In Teresa la limeña (1869), the questions of geographic and narrative female mobility is of vital importance.  The novel's protagonist is in transit and transition, and her physical mobility, her ability to move from country to country, something usually not seen in female protagonists of nineteenth-century novels, allows her to create alternative spaces where she can exist, if not completely free from the influence of social norms, at least a little more liberated from them.  At the same time, there is a certain narrative mobility given that the text incorporates voices other than that of Teresa, in the form of letters and interpolated narratives.  This narrative mobility destabilizes narrative norms just as Teresa's movements destabilize the gendered norms that should confine her to the house.  Finally, there is an emotional mobility as well.  In this way, Acosta de Samper puts into play the normative codes that should govern women's behavior on various levels and establishes new models for women and for their texts.  

Vega-Durán, Raquel. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2016.

Abstract: Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain offers a new approach to the cultural history of contemporary Spain, examining the ways in which Spain’s own self-conceptions are changing and multiplying in response to migrants from Latin America and Africa. In the last twenty-five years, Spain has gone from being a country of net emigration to one in which immigrants make up nearly 12 percent of the population. This rapid growth has made migrants increasingly visible in both mass media and Spanish visual and literary culture. This book examines the origins of media discourses on immigration and takes the analysis of contemporary Spanish culture as its primary framework, while also drawing insights from sociology and history. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders introduces readers to a wide range of recent films, journals, novels, photography, paintings, and music to reconsider contemporary Spain through its varied encounters with migrants. It follows the stages of the migrant’s own journey, beginning outside Spanish territory, continuing across the border (either at the barbed-wire fences of Ceuta and Melilla or the waters of the Atlantic or the Strait of Gibraltar), and then considers what happens to migrants after they arrive and settle in Spain. Each chapter analyzes one of these stages in order to illustrate the complexity of contemporary Spanish identity. This examination of Spanish culture shows how Spain is evolving into a new space of imagination, one that can no longer be defined without the migrant – a space in which there is no unified identity but rather a new self-understanding is being born. Vega-Durán both places Spain in a larger European context and draws attention to some of the features that, from a comparative perspective, make the Spanish case interesting and often unique. She argues that Spain cannot be understood today outside the Transatlantic and Mediterranean spaces (both real and imaginary) where Spaniards and migrants meet. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders offers a timely study of present-day Spain, and makes an original contribution to the vibrant debates about multiculturalism and nation-formation that are taking place.