Vol 3 No 1 - Page 2

Revisiting Untraded Paths: Literary Revisions of Eighteenth-Century Exploration Journals

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Miriam Fernández-Santiago, University of Granada, Spain

Abstract

The present article proposes a revision of the American imperialistic, scientific, literary and historical origins as they were encoded and re-coded in the writings and rewritings of exploration journals. It theorises on the reciprocal influence that the official and the personal, the scientific and the fictional, the historical and the epical have in the production of a national referent as it is inscribed within the American travel-writing tradition. This article proposes an allegorical and literal reading of “line drawing” in its study of texts by William Byrd, Charles Mason and Thomas Pynchon, which merges experienced and reported realities into a complex multi-text. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Autopoiesis and Cummings’ Cat

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Aaron M. Moe, Washington State University

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Abstract

Cummings shattered language, but he did so with precision. The result is a visual poem marked by extreme linguistic upheaval permeated with mathematical and pictorial order—a poem, in other words, that epitomizes linguistic chaos.  One such poem explores the acrobatics of a falling cat, “(im)c-a-t(mo).”  Because of the tension between order and disorder in the poem, the concepts of autopoiesis and fractals from chaos theory provide helpful language to illuminate the poem’s textual dynamics, which then provides a foundation to look deeper into the ideas Cummings explores.  Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Charles Olson and the Quest for a Quantum Poetics

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Douglas Duhaime, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Abstract

This paper investigates the ways the American poet Charles Olson helped twentieth-century writers create a “quantum poetics” that could reflect the discoveries of modern relativity theories and particle physics. In the first third of my paper, I show how Olson’s seminal essay “Projective Verse” advances a method of reading poetry which draws from Einstein’s special theory of relativity. In the second third of my paper, I discuss the ways Olson drew from quantum mechanics in his poetry and prose. There I also show how Olson’s writing invites readers to construct a method of reading rooted in physicist Niels Bohr’s principle of “complementarity.” In the final third of my paper, I show how Olson used Einstein’s theory of a unified field model to theorize poetry as a unified field of action. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Poetry and Technology in Marinetti’s Futurist Manifestos

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Daniela Petro?el, University of Suceava, Romania

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Abstract

The Avant-garde literary movements accomplished a wide combination of artistic and scientific principles, exploiting aesthetically the aspects of technological world. Thus, the Futurist manifestos are landmarks for a new model of technophilic sensibility. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the way in which elements of the technological universe are comprised in the discourse of Marinetti’s futurist manifestos, implicitly giving rise to a new aesthetics. The new means of transportations (the automobile, the dirigible, the airplane) and the means for transmitting information (the telegraph, the radio) radically modify the perception of time and space, creating an aesthetics of simultaneity.     Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Forking Paths of Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky

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Carolina Ferrer, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada

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Abstract

In March 1992, researchers from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean inaugurated in Paris the conference Épistémocritique et Cognition, thus giving official birth to epistemocriticism. This new branch of literary criticism incites us to make a re-appropriation of culture as a whole. Essentially, this perspective calls on us to explore the relations between literature and science. The purpose of my paper is to extend epistemocriticism to film studies. Thus, I analyse how bifurcation theory and Borges’s story “The Garden of Forking Paths” operate as main interdiscoursive artefacts in Alejandro Amenábar’s Open Your Eyes and in Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky. Accordingly, I believe that extending this perspective to film studies, we can achieve a better understanding of what happens in these forking-paths films. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Aesthetics of Race and Relativity in A. Van Jordan’s Quantum Lyrics

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Paula Hayes, Strayer University, Tennessee, USA

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Abstract

Van Jordan uses physics in his poetry to explore many sub-texts—such as, race in American society, gender, autobiographical memories of youth,as well as the story of Albert Einstein’s marriage to his first wife.  Van Jordan examines the possibility that Einstein’s wife may have helped in discovering the theory of relativity despite the fact that Einstein failed to give her any credit for doing so. The poet’s stories of his personal memories of experiencing youthful love and disillusionment, along with the poet’s unfortunate encounters with racism in America, are juxtaposed in the Quantum Lyrics beside the story of Albert Einstein’s personal life.  The poet moves back and forth in the volume between the language of music and the language of science as a means of exploring how far either one can penetrate to the core of the human experience.  Keep Reading

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A Feminist Aesthetics of Nature

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Tegan Zimmerman, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

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Abstract

This article examines the relatively unstudied field of the aesthetics of nature from a feminist perspective. Currently a feminist aesthetics of nature does not exist in scholarship, though I argue in our age of eco-crisis this is necessary. I explore what this feminist approach might entail by discussing three essential elements to the current masculinist study of nature: 1) the role of the subject or observer, 2) method of appreciation, and 3) appropriate object for appreciation. By focusing on the recent impasse in feminism, between essentialism and non-essentialism, this paper looks at how each side of the debate would approach these above three topics, and what future paths feminism might take in creating an adequate study of the aesthetics of nature.  Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Causation as Metaphor–a Catachresis

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Robert C Robinson, University of Georgia, USA

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Abstract

The thesis of this paper is that causation, when described and treated as a metaphor, increases in explanatory power, while diminishing the problems associated with standard analysis of it. I  first present a description of the uses of metaphor in scientific and literary language. This is drawn primarily from Max Black’s interaction view of metaphor, as well as the view forwarded by Donald Davidson in his What Metaphors Mean. I then outline some of the standard analyses in the field of causation, followed by some of the standard replies to those analyses. Finally, I show how describing causation in terms of a metaphor will bypass many of these objections, while maintaining or increasing its explanatory power. Keep Reading

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In Search of… a Third Culture: Towards an Experimental Science and Nature Cinema

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 Walter C. Metz, Southern Illinois University

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Abstract

This essay attempts to move beyond C.P. Snow’s reductive formulation of the two cultures, positing a third culture forged out of the collision of science documentary television with the avant-garde traditions of the cinema. In particular, I use both scientific and humanistic understandings of memory to compare and contrast a science television program, “Understanding the Mysteries of Memory” (Science Channel, 2002) with an avant-garde film, Report (Bruce Conner, 1967). Keep Reading

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Carbon Footprint –A Model Structure for our Future

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Michael Dan Archer, School of Art and Design, Loughborough University

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 Introduction

Michael Dan Archer, British Sculptor and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Loughborough University School of the Arts in the UK is currently working on a project with Ray Leslie, Professor of Chemistry at Nottingham University, James Davis, Nottingham Trent University, Simon Austin, Professor of Structural Engineering at Loughborough University, Tony Thorpe, Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University on a project to illustrate the volume of the Carbon Footprint of an average British family through a large sculptural tower partly based on the form of a carbon nanotube and partly on the shape of a power station cooling tower. Keep Reading

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