-
Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black Square
Read more: Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black SquareIs there any such thing as a new idea? Bryony Coombs discusses similarities in artistic expression, centuries apart.
The Douglass family and the roots of activism and social justice
By Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor Frederick Douglass. Just the name alone is enough to inspire us to think of a life lived in activism and an unceasing fight for social justice. But there are other names in the life…
OLR 40th Anniversary – Jean-Luc Nancy
In 1963, Jean-Luc Nancy tackled the subject of generational silence in his article ‘A Certain Silence’ (republished in OLR in 2005). Nancy, a well-known French philosophy and writer, wrote ‘A Certain Silence’ only a year after he graduated in Philosophy…
OLR 40th Anniversary – Bill Readings
At just the age of 34, Bill Readings sadly died in a plane crash. He left behind a legacy of critical thinking and debate and was well renowned for being an outstanding thinker and a rigorous yet caring mentor. To…
Sex and Spanish Cinema from Screen to Academia
An extract from the introduction of Spanish Erotic Cinema, edited by Santiago Fouz-Hernandez If there is something that the various writings on aspects of eroticism in Spanish films reveal it is that it is impossible to understand the history of…
Anthony Burgess, Translation and Literary Forgery
By Martin Kratz In 1978, Anthony Burgess published several translations of work by the nineteenth-century Roman poet G.G. Belli. Burgess’s longstanding engagement with Belli had culminated the previous year in the publication of ABBA ABBA (1977), a hybrid novel/literary translation.…
Costume – Celebrating 50 Years of Publication
By Valerie Cumming and Alexandra Kim The year 2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Costume as a journal and we are celebrating this milestone in a number of different ways. The most obvious is that Costume‘s cover design has been…
Ford Madox Ford, music and the First World War
My research treats music as a crucial aspect of modernist literature, and the First World War was a crucial event for modernist writers, profoundly changing the fabric of social life. Ford Madox Ford served on the front line and wrote…
Transformative Power of Culture in Occupied Germany 1945-1949
Elaine Morley The Occupation of Germany is a unique field for comparatists to explore given the fact that in this period five major world cultures – American, British, French, German and Soviet – were literally rubbing shoulders in Germany. I’ve…
Shakespeare’s Questions
By Kevin Curran, University of Lausanne What is it about Shakespeare’s writing that makes it endure? Why do his plays and poems continue to entertain, engage, and instruct more than 400 years on? I think it might have something to do with…