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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Thomas Jefferson maintained a flock of geese to supply him with quills for his pens. The fastest speed for a professional business-letter-writer in 1834 was 30 words in 60 seconds, with the pen travelling 16.5 feet per minute. Jourdan Anderson,…
By Mary Nash By the 1960s the right to paid holidays and the development of cheap package tours facilitated mass tourism in Europe. Under the Franco dictatorship Spain then became a major destination attracting tourists to its beaches and warm…