Revista de estudios norteamericanos - 2021 - Nº 25
URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/149977
Examinar
Envíos recientes
Artículo The Hipster Subculture and its Representation in Lena Dunham’s TV series Girls(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Narbona Carrión, María DoloresHipsters are considered as one of the most relevant American subcultures at present. How ever, the term hipsteris notoriously difficult to define and has not received sufficient academic attention, especially when referring tow omen.Thus, one of the main objectives of this interdisciplinary study is to reverse this situation by bringing to light information and bibliography about this prominent cultural phenomenonin the US context. To prove its importance, this theoretical aspect will be complemented by its practical implementation, as this essay includes the evaluation ofthe representation of the hipster in one of the main cultural products w hich have reflected it, television and,more concretely,in Lena Dunham’s TV series,Girls. This analysis responds to the aim of discerning if Girls’s alleged hipsterism can be considered authentic andof elucidatingthereasons that may have led Dunham to thischoice for the creation of her characters and, also,for her self-branding.Artículo Corporeal Activism in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X: Towards a Self-Appropriation of US Afro-Latinas’ Bodies(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Martín Martínez, Macarena; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana)Scholars have typically studied Chicanas/Latinas in the US and African American women separately. However, this paper explores both the cultural appropriation of Afro-Latinas’ bodies in the US and the strategies they employed to reclaim their bodies and agencies through Elizabeth Acevedo’s novel,The Poet X.The protagonist’sbody is simultane ously and paradoxically hyper-sexualized by racist discourses,and called to chastity by the patriarchal Catholic doctrinepresiding overher Dominican community. Nevertheless,I argue thatthe protagonist makesher body a site of activism as shere-appropriates the agency over her body by moving from a self-imposed invisibility and silence in order to try to avoid the hyper-sexualization of her incipient curves, to a non-objectified visible position throughher sexual desire, self-representative embodied narrative, and performance of her slam poetry.Artículo Blowing Up the Nuclear Family: Shirley Jackson’s Queer Girls in Postwar US Culture(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Parra Fernández, Laura de la; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICIN). EspañaThis paper intends to analyze the representation of girlhood as a liminal space in three novels by Shirley Jackson: The Bird’s Nest(1954), The Haunting of Hill House(1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle(1962). Bearing in mind how nuclear fears and national identity are configured around the ideal of a safe domestic space in US postwar culture, the paper explores cultural anxieties aboutteenage girls who refuse to conform to normative femininity, following Teresa de Lauretis’s conception of women’s coming-of-age as “consenting to femininity” (1984).I will argue that Jackson criticizes the rigid possibilities for women at this time, and I will show how her representations of deviant femininity refuse and subvert the discourse ofthe nuclear familyand, therefore, of the nation.Artículo Between Hopelessness and Despair: Afropessimism and Black Nihilismin Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Works(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Puyuelo Ureña, EvaMost of the criticism that Ta-Nehisi Coates received in the aftermath of the publication of his work Between the World and Meorbits around its lack of hopefulness. Indeed, it is several times in the text that Coates tempers his son’s expectations about foreseeing an end to racial conflictsas he tells him that “I do not believe that we can stop [racists], Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves” (Between the World 151). Certainly, the previous contention has drawn critics into reading Coates’s work as an attack againstblack agency (Chatterton Williamsn.p.).It is our contention that, far from being read as a manifestation of cynicism, Coates’s negativity also has a galvanizing dimension. In fact, by emphasizing the futility of hope, which for Coates traps black individuals in an “unending pursuit” of progress (Warren“Black Nihilism” 221), heprovides readers with many alternatives to confront the rampant racism that still pervades U.S. society nowadays.Artículo Slavery as National Trauma in Richard Ford’s “Everything Could Be Worse”(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Peinado Abarrio, RubénThis article explores slavery as a national trauma in Richard Ford’s 2014 novella “Everything Could Be Worse.”First, slavery is conceptualized as trauma, emphasizing its role in the formation of contemporary Black identity in the United States. The categories of ‘postmemory’ (Marianne Hirsch), ‘phantom’ and ‘crypt’ (Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok) are presented,as they facilitate the study of multigenerational oppression and the transmission of trauma. Then, a brief discussion of the race question in Ford’s fiction and nonfiction contextualizes the analysis of the novella. In “Everything Could Be Worse,” which resembles a ghost story as well asa session of psychoanalysis, the intergenerational effects of trauma affectthe descendants ofboth victims and perpetrators of slavery. Finally, it is concluded that, despite certain shortcomings, Ford’s approach to racial difference is becoming increasingly sophisticated.Artículo Cosmopolitan and Border Experiences in the Global City of Zootopia(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) López Fuentes, Ana VirginiaThis paper analyses the Walt Disney’s animation film Zootopia(2016)within the context of contemporary cinematic representations of global cities as borderlands but also as bordering, exclusive, diverse and cosmopolitan places. Zootopia is a film about the city space, in this case, about the global city of Zootopia. The film reflects contemporary global cities in which the negotiation of space is a constant issue. It portrays a modern metropolis formed by different neighbourhoods with contrasting habitats such as Sahara, Jungle or Tundra, all comprised in the same space and separated by physical walls. Animals from every environment, size and form cohabit together in the city, but physical and metaphorical borders are erected between them. The film brings an inclusive message breaking with borders inside the global city and portraying moments of openness between the protagonists;a bunny anda fox.Artículo Environment and The Somatic Body in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes And Saints and Edwidge Danticat’sThe Farming of Bones(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Rubóczki, BabettThe paper offers a cross-cultural literary analysis of Chicana Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints(1992) and Haitian American Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998) and compares the play and the novel on the basis of their shared thematic link of interwoven environmental and racial violence directed against marginalized people of color. Despite the works’ geographically distant contexts—set in the US Southwest and the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, respectively—and the differing collective traumas of genocide the texts dramatize, both narratives foreground the motif of violated nature as a primary critical lens to unveil and critique the on going practices of colonialism permeating twentieth-century US and Caribbean politics. The interlocking images of women-of-colors’ disfigured bodies and the environmental devastation caused by (post)colonial violence underline the pervasiveness of harm done to both the earth and the somatic body.Artículo Identity As a Construct: Reading Blackness In Eugene O’Neill’sThe Emperor Jones(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Romero Pérez, María IsabelThis paper aims to explore how racialized identities are typified as a modernist construct in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones(1920). To this end, the notion of whiteness is identified as a mediated construct and contextualizedin the proliferation of American minstrel shows. This popular entertainment projected to white audiences the racial means of differentiation from black caricatures and clichés at the time of segregation. The echoes of minstrel showsand modernists’ instrumentalization of 1920s primitivism serve to initially address the characterization of blackness in Brutus Jones’ identity. Assessed through this in-between construction of symbolic borderlands in which the protagonist is both colonizer and colonized, his blackness becomes a metaphorical mask of otherness while his whiteness shapes the colonial performance of material whiteness. Although he envisions the white ideal in his systematic practices in the Caribbean island, his fragmented identity and his hybridity subject him to a primeval racialized past, to primitivism and atavism.Artículo The Hybridization of the Noir Genre as Expression of Ethnic Heritage: Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Marta Marini, AnnaIn his ongoing comic book series Sonambulo, versatile artist Rafael Navarro has been able to channel his Mexican American cultural heritage by creating a unique blend of narrative genres. In his work, Navarro exploits classic American film noir as a fundamental reference and hybridizes it with elements distinctive to a shared Chicanx heritage, such as lucha libre cinema, horror folktales, and border-crossing metaphors; the construction of an oneiric dimension helps bring the narrative together, marking it with a peculiar ambiance. Drawingheavily on a diverse range of film genres, as well asethnocultural pivots, thiscomic book series carves outa definite spacein the panorama of the Mexican American production of popular culture, addinga powerful voice to the expression of US ethnic minorities.Artículo Race Consciousness, the Audacity of Equality, and Transcultural Criticism in Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Khorakiwala, MuqarramThis article examines the role of the diasporic stand-up comic as a transcultural critic and the comedy set as an act of transcultural criticism of contemporary American culture. I use the frame work of transcultural criticism developed by Lew is(2002) for the purpose of cultural investigation in Hasan Minhaj’s stand-up comedy Homecoming King (2017). Through the amalgamation of political aesthetics and cultural civics, Lewis’ theorization of transculturalism offers an interesting approach for critical discourse analysis of racial injustice and inequality in Muslim American stand-up comedy. Minhaj uses persuasion games and language wars to highlight the dissonance in the dominant discourse about Islam. His goal is not to be a spokes person for Muslim Americans but to provide new imaginings to the discussion of race, religion, and belonging in the context of Brown Americans in the post 9/11 era both within and outside the community.Artículo “The long roads to forgotten regretted nostalgias”:Traumatic Wounds in the Letters of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Vázquez Novo, VanesaWhen twenty- five- year-old Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald asked her husband Scott Fitzgerald to resume her ballet lessons, he saw no objection to it. Fitzgerald thought the lessons would keep Zelda busy while he focused on his novel Tender is the Night(1934). Little did he know then that strenuous dancing rehearsals would lead Zelda to her first mental breakdown. While confined at several mental institutions from1930 to 1948, Zelda used the epistolary form in an attempt to move from victim to artist.It is through her letters to Scott Fitzgerald that we discover her inner struggles and her longing for a career of her own.This article analyzes a selection of Zelda Fitzgerald’s letters in order to determine whether the epistolary form allows Zelda to overcome or perpetuate her traumas while confined at several mental institutions.Artículo Anthologizing Poe. Editions, translations, and (Trans)National canon semron esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato, Editors Lehigh University press, 2020 [Review](Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Correoso Rodenas, José ManuelArtículo Performative Subjecthoods: Lesbian Representationsin Split Britches’Belle Reprieve(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Benítez Olivar, Inmaculada; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana)Emerging postmodern theories of gender and sexuality frame the terms in which society has understood these concepts in an evolutionary way throughout history.The last century has witnessed the radical changes carried out mainly by feminist and LGTB movements. On the other hand, thetheater, a subversive space where it is possible to experiment with different forms of subjecthood and communication, has been the laboratory in which it has been attempted to give a plastic form to these new currents of thought. In this sense, the work of Split Britches is remarkable for the innovative ways of bringing the abject to the political forefront. From the lesbian body to drag representation, Belle Reprieve(1991) is developed under the queerpremiseto dismantle heteropatriarchal hegemony and the binary gender system.Artículo Form and Perception of Nature in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Questions of Travel”(Universidad de Sevilla, 2021) Gordanpour, YazdanmehrElizabeth Bishop’s poetry is acutely form-conscious and human perception informs its descriptions of nature; critics who study Bishop’s poetry refer to her use of poetic artifice and note in passing the ethics of restraint and impersonality in her poetry.However, Bishop’s poetry is rarely discussed in the sphere of ecocriticism; and the formal significance of human perception infused with the descriptions of nature in her poetry is conveniently overlooked. Likew ise, anthropogenic climate change isunderrepresented in traditional ecocriticismw hich insistson removing form—and w ith it, any trace of the human—from the text. This article proposes that a study of Bishop’s travel w riting and exploring the significance of concern for nature in conjunction withform-consciousness can contribute to a more profound understandingofboth human-nature relationshipand Bishop’s ecopoetic sensitivities. “Questions of Travel” is one of Bishop’s poems that directly grapples w ith the ethics of human presence in nature. T he article explicates thetextual and formal features of this poemto elucidate the function of form in its ecopoetic descriptions. T he article show show Bishop acceptsthe inevitability of human perception of nature and its literary corollary in ecopoetryas form-consciousness,and, thus, by implication, points to the importance of such poetry for a deeper understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature in the context of climate change.