On the polysemic nature of Iberian Studies: Definitions, spaces, limits

Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies

Iberian and Translation Studies: Literary Contact Zones offers fertile reflection on the dynamics of linguistic diversity and multifaceted literary translation flows taking place across the Iberian Peninsula. Drawing on cutting-edge theoretical perspectives from a comparative standpoint and on a historically diverse body of case studies, the volume’s sixteen chapters explore the key role of translation in shaping interliterary relations and cultural identities within Iberia. Mary Louise Pratt’s contact zone metaphor is used as an overarching concept to approach Iberia as a translation(al) space where languages and cultural systems (Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish) set up relationships either of conflict, coercion, and resistance or of collaboration, hospitality, and solidarity. In bringing together a variety of essays by multilingual scholars whose conceptual and empirical research places itself at the intersection of translation and literary Iberian studies, the book opens up a new interdisciplinary field of enquiry: Iberian translation studies. This allows for a renewed study of canonical authors such as Joan Maragall, Fernando Pessoa, Camilo José Cela, and Bernardo Atxaga, and calls attention to emerging bilingual contemporary voices. In addition to addressing understudied genres (the entremez and the picaresque novel) and the specific phenomena of self-translation, indirect translation, and collaborative translation, the book provides fresh insights into Iberian cultural agents, mediators, and institutions such as publishing houses and theatre companies. Iberian and Translation Studies: Literary Contact Zones is indispensable reading for those interested in Iberian studies, translation studies, in particular the history of translation in the Iberian Peninsula, and comparative literature.

Theorizing Iberian Studies Robert Patrick Newcomb In recent years, a series of proposals have been made with the aim of radically reconceptualizing the discipline of peninsular literary and culture studies (see Moraña, Resina, Santana). These proposals have in turn led scholars interested in peninsular literatures and cultures to reimagine the field from an Iberian perspective, as a means to recognize the national and linguistic diversity of the Iberian Peninsula. This diversity has too often been obscured by the implicit or explicit monolingualism of Hispanism and Lusofonia as disciplinary paradigms for the study of the language, literature, and culture of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. The growing number of scholars invested in Iberian Studies have instead asked how peninsular literary and cultural studies might be reimagined, and reinvigorated, by placing the Spanish and Portuguese canons into critical dialogue with each other, and with Galician, Catalan, Basque/Euskadi, and Latin American and North African immigrant writers, cultural actors, texts, and traditions. Major Iberian Studies symposia have been held in recent years at the University of Lisbon (2011), Stanford University (2011), The Ohio State University (2013), and UC Santa Barbara (2013). And Iberian Studies working groups have been formed in Europe (Project DIAA—Diálogos Ibéricos e Ibero-Americanos), the US Midwest (Midwest Iberian Studies Group), and California (UC Comparative Iberian Studies Working Group). It is within this context that Robert Patrick Newcomb of the University of California, Davis, on behalf of the MLA Division on Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature, and in collaboration with the AATSP, convened a panel discussion on “Theorizing Iberian Studies,” which took place during the afternoon of Friday, January 9, 2015 at the MLA Convention in Vancouver. The panel reacted to a discrepancy recently noted by Santiago Pérez Isasi and Ângela Fernandes, who observe, “The field of Iberian Studies, which could be defined as the methodological consideration of the Iberian Peninsula as a complex, multilingual cultural and literary system, has known an exponential development in the last years; however, it still lacks solid theoretical and methodological reflections”(1). The Theorizing Iberian Studies panel brought together researchers who have actively contributed to the ongoing Iberian Studies debate, and who approach this emerging field from a variety of geographic, disciplinary, and linguistic perspectives. The panel’s first speaker, Mario Santana (University of Chicago), delivered comments titled “Besides Theory: Critical Practices in Iberian Studies.” Santana noted that recent conferences and symposia have generated discussion on the (perceived) need to have a “theory” of Iberian Studies. However, rather than ‘theories,’ Santana argued that what is urgently needed are theoretically informed ‘practices’ that would facilitate the expansion of material archives, which in turn may facilitate the discovery and articulation of critical problems relevant to the field. Santana’s comments focused specifically on one of these areas in need of exploration, namely the role of translation in the constitution of literary inter-relations in the Iberian Peninsula. The second speaker, Jorge Pérez (University of Kansas), asked, “¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de Estudios Ibéricos?” Pérez contended that a federal model of cultural coexistence within the Iberian Peninsula, though necessary, is insufficient if scholars are to truly reconfigure [End Page 196] the discipline of peninsular studies. Drawing on the Mediterranean and North African dimensions of Iberian subjectivity, Pérez argued that if scholars fail to question the terms in which Iberian Studies have been conceived, they in effect promote a new paradigm that is already obsolete. In “¿Cómo y desde qué posiciones hermenéuticas e ideológicas hablamos de Estudios Ibéricos?” the third speaker, Silvia Bermúdez (University of California, Santa Barbara) developed reflections first presented in May 2012 at the First Annual UC Comparative Iberian Studies Symposium, hosted at UC Davis. Her paper assessed how Iberian Studies can be a useful transcultural paradigm for understanding the diversity and complexity of the geopolitical space constituted by the Iberian Peninsula. The final speaker, Robert Patrick Newcomb (University of California, Davis), addressed “Iberianism’s Lessons.” Newcomb discussed schemes developed by prominent fin-de-siècle Portuguese and Spanish writers to foster closer and more equitable political, economic, and cultural relations between the Iberian Peninsula’s component peoples...

The collected volume Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies - edited by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (Purdue University) and Tutun Mukherjee (University of Hyderabad) is intended to address the current situation of scholarship in the discipline of comparative literature and the fields of world literature and comparative cultural studies in a global context. While the discipline of comparative literature in the West appears to be losing ground in its institutional presence, in other parts of the world including Asia and Latin America, as well as in "peripheral" European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Macedonia, etc., the discipline is flourishing both in scholarship and in its institutional structure and pedagogical vitality. The field of world literatures is gaining renewed interest in US-American scholarship while the field of comparative cultural studies is a new area of study pursued by scholars who are committed to the intellectual trajectories of comparative literature - minus Eurocentrism and the nation approach - and cultural studies. 36 articles of around 6000 words each are presented in thematic groups in this volume: Part 1: Theories of Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies; Part 2: Comparative Literature in World Languages (including the histories of the discipline in various countries); Part 3: Examples of New Work in Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies; Part 4 is a Multilingual Bibliography of Books in Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies (also available online in open access at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativeliteraturebooks). The volume is intended for students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences, as well as a general readership.

The essay attempts to explore some possibilities of Comparative Literary History with respect to Assamese literature. Writing a literary history is a complex business, and the tenets underlying its conceptualisation and execution have often been determined by factors other than purely ‘literary’ ones. In the essay, the conceptual dimensions of literary historiography are examined in relation to its recently developed nexus with comparative literature and cultural studies. Within this theoretical framework, the essay briefly touches upon the development of literary historiography within the Indian context in the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods, and subsequently moves on to discuss its position vis-a-vis Assamese literature, particularly in the latter’s institutionalisation as a subject for graduate and postgraduate study under Gauhati University, Assam, in the post-Independence period. The essay deals specifically with the efforts of Professor Satyendranath Sarma, prominent academician and literary historian of Assam, towards the academic study of Assamese literary history. It explores the possibilities of comparative literary history in Assamese—one that is not based on a linear narrative of succeeding generations of poets and writers recorded and documented under a progressive model of impact and response, but rather a history of literary reception with many complex and multidimensional narratives often at loggerheads with each other.Key words: Literary Historiography, Comparative Literature, Comparative Cultural Studies, Indian Literature, Assamese Literature, Satyendranath Sarma

In his paper, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies," Tomo Virk discusses debates of the role, essence, and the future of comparative literature as it has developed since the 1995 publication of the Bernheimer Report. Virk explores the situation of the discipline in its North American context: "contextualists" argue for the abandoning of comparative literature understood as the study of literature with theoretical investigations of literariness while the "non-contextualists" underscore the study of the linguistic structure(s) of the text. Virk supports comparative literature understood as the traditional concentration of the discipline with focus on the specificities of literary questions while supplementing this focus with the discoveries of new theoretical frameworks and he suggests to maintain the investigation of literariness as a standard of the discipline but that is conditioned culturally. In the second part of his paper, Virk discusses the notion of "comparative cultural studies" -- a notion proposed, among others, notably by Canadian comparatist Steven Totosy de Zepetnek -- and puts forward the argument that the drawing of cultural studies to comparative literature would evoke fatal consequences for comparative literature as a discipline. While it is clear that under the current circumstances comparative literature is in need to function pragmatically, in the last instance comparative literature would self-destruct by a striving for social relevance and institutional assertions for survival. Virk concludes by drawing attention to the possibilities of the further development of comparative literature as an independent discipline for the future.

Comparative study of genetically and typologically unrelated languages involves the detection of differences in the worldview of representatives of a particular culture and speakers of certain languages. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to consider the folk names of measurements of the Kazakh language in comparative terms and to identify common and national-specific cultural and linguistic features in the lexicon of three specific peoples Theoretical significance of the paper is determined by the fact that the results of the study make a certain contribution to the theory of comparative linguistics and comparative cultural studies. The conclusions obtained in the course of the study can provide the necessary assistance both in considering general theoretical problems of linguistics, and in compiling scientific and theoretical developments and manuals, organizing special theoretical courses for undergraduates and postgraduates. Practical value covers the possibility of using the main provisions and findings of the study in university courses on comparative linguistics, ethnolinguistics, cultural studies, private theory and practice of translation and phraseology, as well as the factual material, collected in the course of the research, can be used in the compilation of explanatory, translated, ethnolinguistic dictionaries.

The studies presented in this volume are intended as an addition to scholarship in (comparative) cultural studies. More specifically, the articles represent scholarship about central and east European culture with special attention to Hungarian culture, literature, cinema, new media, and other areas of cultural expression. The volume's articles are grouped into five sections: part one, History Theory and Methodology of Hungarian Cultural Studies, includes studies on the prehistory of multicultural and multilingual central Europe. Part two, Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Literature and Culture, focuses on the reevaluation of canonical works, as well as Jewish studies, which has been explored inadequately in central European scholarship. Part three, Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Other Arts, includes articles on race, jazz, operetta, art, fin-de-siecle architecture, communist-era female fashion, and cinema. In part four, Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender, articles are about aspects of gender and sex(uality) with examples from fin-de-siecle transvestism, current media depictions of heterodox sexualities, and gendered language in the workplace. The volume's last section, part five, Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary, includes articles about post-1989 issues of race and ethnic relations, citizenship and public life, and new media.

The paper is an attempt make a comparative study of world civilizations to see the similarities and dissimilarities and to make clear Islamic view that there is no God save Allah and Hadrat Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah (صلی اللہ علیہ و آلہ وسلم) towards the whole mankind and a Mercy for all the worlds. Questions raised in the article are:The role of human beings on the earth started since the time the first male and female were sent down by the Creator on this earth. Who was the Sender? What is the proof and where is the proof that who was the sender? Who was sent? With what purpose sent? What was the role to be played on this earth by the sent ones? How was it to be performed? How was it to be judged? What was the guidance available? What was the consequence? and On what basis such consequence?

From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies

The Library Series of the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access quarterly in the humanities and the social sciences CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture publishes scholarship in the humanities and social sciences following tenets of the discipline of literature and the field of cultural studies designated as comparative cultural studies. Publications in the CLCWeb Library Series are 1) articles, 2) books, 3) bibliographies, 4) resources, and 5) documents. Contact:

The following reflections are based on my own experiences of various phases of the institutionalization of the comparative study of anglophone literatures and cultures on a global scale, a field of studies that came into being as 'Commonwealth Literature' in the 1960s, became widely known as the 'New Literatures in English' in the 1970s and 1980s, was often (rather unfortunately, I believe) subsumed under the label 'Postcolonial Studies' in the 1990s and 2000s, and is today increasingly referred to as 'Transcultural English (or Anglophone) Studies'. The vantage point from which I have witnessed much of the development and transformation of this field to which I have dedicated most of my professional energies over the last three decades or so has been the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. What follows may be read as a case study of the institutionalization and transformation of the comparative study of anglophone literatures and cultures at an institute whose members decided fairly early in the day to turn this field into one of the department's specializations designed to strengthen its teaching and research profile. I will provide a brief account of this institutionalization and transformation with regard to (i) teaching, (ii) research, and (iii) interdisciplinary research collaboration, before ending (iv) with a few observations on the non-institutionalization of postcolonial studies and the 'transcultural tum'.(i) With regard to teaching and curricular reforms, the 'Frankfurt experience' has unfolded as a 'mainstreaming' process that has moved the comparative study of anglophone literatures and cultures from a suspiciously eyed fringe position to the very centre of the institute's pedagogical profile. When Dieter Riemenschneider began to offer courses on anglophone African, Indian, and Caribbean literature and culture (soon to be followed by courses on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) in the early 1970s (a time when most German universities still ran shy of offering courses on these subjects), quite a few members of the Institute of English and American Studies - and possibly quite a few students, too - probably considered this field a fairly exotic adjunct of dubious relevance to the institute's curricular core concerns. Yet, by the early 1980s, both student demand for 'new literatures' courses and the growing research reputation of the new sub-department of anglophone literatures and cultures (known by the name of NELK, based on the German acronym of Neue Englischsprachige Literaturen und Kulturen) led to an amendment of the Magister course of studies to include NELK as an optional focus area. At the same time, NELK courses (and Staatsexamen with a NELK focus) also became a regular feature of the curriculum for teacher students. A fiirther major step towards mainstreaming the comparative study of anglophone literatures and cultures that decisively brought to an end any residual notions of exoticism and marginality was the introduction of the new Bachelor's programme in 'English Studies' in 2010, with NELK as one of four evenly balanced areas of focus: in addition to the obligatory Introduction to literary studies, the NELK Introduction ('Introduction to Anglophone Cultures and the New Literatures in English') is now the second-largest introductory course offered in the English-studies curriculum. The mainstreaming of anglophone literatures and cultures has become even more pronounced with the introduction of the new Master's courses due to begin in the winter term 2013/14: apart from a Master's in American studies, the Institute now offers a Master's titled 'Anglophone Literatures, Cultures and Media', in which NELK plays a particularly prominent role, and an interdisciplinary Master's titled 'Moving Cultures: Transcultural Encounters' taught in English, French, Spanish, and German, a joint venture between NELK and the Institute of Romance Languages and Literatures that includes optional courses in the social sciences, cultural geography, cultural anthropology, education, and religious studies. …

In his article World Literatures, Comparative Literature, and (Comparative) Cultural Studies Ning Wang argues that cultural studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature, but also because it challenges the discipline of comparative literature. On the other hand, (comparative) cultural studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of a sort of new comparative literature. Wang illustrates how some of the representative Anglo-American comparatists are now doing cultural criticism while still engaging in comparative literature and they paved the way for dialogue between literary and cultural studies. Therefore, deconstructing and subverting the Eurocentric discipline of comparative literature, (comparative) cultural studies has made a positive impact on the reconstruction of a new discipline of comparative literature and the field of world literatures. It has also enabled a remapping of world literatures by enlarging the canon with non-canonical Oriental literary works.

Teaching Gender through Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Texts and Cultures provides a dynamic exploration of the subject of teaching gender and feminism through the fundamental corpus encompassing Latin American, Iberian and Latino authors and cultures from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. The four editors have created a collaborative forum for both experienced and new voices to share multiple theoretical and practical approaches to the topic. The volume is the first to bring so many areas of study and perspectives together and will serve as a tool for reassessing what it means to teach gender in our fields while providing theoretical and concrete examples of pedagogical strategies, case studies relating to in-class experiences, and suggestions for approaching gender issues that readers can experiment with in their own classrooms. The book will engage students and educators around the topic of gender within the fields of Latin American, Latino and Iberian studies, Gender and Women’s studies, Cultural Studies, English, Education, Comparative Literature, Ethnic studies and Language and Culture for Specific Purposes within Higher Education programs.

Comparative culture studies is one of the promising and actively forming areas of the Russian humanities. The development of polar processes of globalization and localization of cultures, ethnocentrism and multiculturalism actualizes the task of studying the cultural diversity of the world. The discovery of common principles of harmonization of the human society and nature in the cultures of different countries and continents opens up new ways to prevent and solve acute political conflicts and environmental problems of our time. Created at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the research group brought together staff from various departments of the faculty engaged in holistic studies of cultural practices of the past and present. Special attention is paid to the actualization of the values and conceptual foundations of traditional cultures of the world. Along with theoretical problems, the research group in comparative culture studies is involved in the development and modeling of new forms of intercultural interaction and ways to improve the cultural competence of university and high school students. This is achieved, among other things, by organizing field culture studies in which the students of the faculty take an active part. The prospects and relevance of both theoretical and applied work of the research group “Comparative Culture Studies: Traditions and Modernity” are evidenced by a large number of conference papers and publications. The importance of scientific research in the field of comparative culture studies is due to the urgent need to update the 170 intercultural, interregional, interethnic and interconfessional aspects of modern humanitarian knowledge.