In October of 1990, we wrote to CTR, proposing an article that examined new performance in Edmont... more In October of 1990, we wrote to CTR, proposing an article that examined new performance in Edmonton outside of both the professional theatre and the Fringe. Personal aesthetic, informed by our shared academic background, led us to search out performance within a context unclaimed by the theatre community. Alan Filewod responded to our proposal, “I would love something from Edmonton that doesn’t talk about the Fringe.” We agreed.
Jason Sherman's anthology of monodrama is an important collection because it commits to print... more Jason Sherman's anthology of monodrama is an important collection because it commits to print and therefore to history an important form of theatrical production in Canada. In a climate where budget cuts are eating away at the fabric of alternative theatre, one increasingly viable way to continue producing has always been to stage a one-person show. Moreover, acting solo has become a medium through which performers and playwrights can act up against the clamour of the mega-musical and of mainstream repertory theatre by recharging the stage with an intimacy that has the potential to be captivating and disruptive.
This article analyses the performer/spectator dynamic present in the text and performance of some... more This article analyses the performer/spectator dynamic present in the text and performance of some Canadian one-woman plays, and considers the re-positioning of the female as subject and the possible construction of an ideal female spectator. The article looks at both English- and French-language monologues in an attempt to understand the effects of cultural difference on performer/spectator relationships, focusing on Jovette Marchessault's Les Vaches de nuit, Marie Savard's Bien A moi, Sharon Pollack's Getting it Straight, Pamela Boyd's Inside Out, Beverly Simon's Preparing, and Janet Feindel's A Particular Class of Women.
TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS posed to us by the editors of this collection, we undertook a survey of s... more TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS posed to us by the editors of this collection, we undertook a survey of similar efforts at reassessing the state of the discipline. Along with the Guillory and Butler collection upon which this volume is modeled, we took a look at leading theoretical journals--Critical Inquiry, Poetics Today and New Literary History--that have been engaged in efforts similar to our own. What's in, what's out, what's left of literary studies? We thought we'd lay it all out in an academic fashionista's "style file." The contents of this handy guide to scholarly chic, not to mention the decision to produce it in the first place, suggest that if there is anything left of English Studies, it certainly isn't the Left. The modes of critical analysis associated with the New Historicism and with Cultural Studies are, it seems, going the way of the power suit. And for those of us schooled in the 1990s by the acolytes of Derrida and Foucault, perusing the landscape of the new and the noteworthy can have the same effect on the scholarly self-image as the glossy pages of Wallpaper and InStyle have on the ward-robe. We found ourselves feeling a bit like Reese Witherspoon's character in Legally Blonde. "Don't stomp your little last season's Prada shoes at me, honey," says the cheekily hip antagonist. And like Witherspoon's Elle, we are tempted to gasp in defiant horror: "My shoes are NOT last season's!" Our first response to this whole enterprise was thus predictable. Presented with the task of looking at cutting edge scholarship, we prepared to launch into a discussion of the infection of literary academia by postmodern commodity culture's ceaseless thirst for the cutting edge--a discussion made all the more cogent, we felt, by the university infrastructure's recent imperatives: the humanities, we keep getting told, must "change." We must embrace "innovation." But this first impulse to embrace "left" critique led to some questions: What guise are we wearing that makes us look so desperately in need of a change? Whose "innovative" fashions are we being asked to follow instead? The answers are not as straightforward as our "Out" modes of analysis would lead us to expect. If the rhetoric of SSHRC administrators is to be believed we really are looking quite frumpy these days, like people who hang around the house in track pants. SSHRC President Marc Renaud, in his address given to the 2002 Canadian Association of Graduate Studies conference ("The Human Sciences: The Challenge of Innovation"), notes that "[s]ince the Second World War, disciplinary specialization and peer-reviewed publications have framed the academic world" and as a result "scholars have come to be perceived as being lodged in ivory tower silos, driven more by their abstract interests than by a will to contribute to the larger public good. Add to this perception the massive increase in student enrolment and the drastic budgetary cutbacks of the 1980s and the 1990s, and inevitably you get a research community in which several participants feel defensive, unfamiliar with how to operate outside their disciplinary traditions and unwilling to change." Renaud goes on to recommend a drastic makeover. The plan is to "open up the research agenda" to inspire us to "reach beyond [our] disciplines" in order to "solve problems" and eventually "create international research teams" that will take us "beyond academia" and will make "better use of leading-edge technologies" while training "more students at advanced levels and more quickly" (Renaud 7-9). If the university of the twenty-first century has defined itself almost exclusively by its ability to be "leading edge; we in the humanities apparently fall short. Nor would we necessarily disagree that we fall short. Despite our penchant for radically rethinking our discipline every ten years or so, we have pretty much assumed that the rhetoric of newness is either the domain of graduate students or evidence of administrative pandering to the government and corporate interests already driving research agendas in the sciences and the social sciences. …
promoted Morison’s evangelical agenda as much as they promoted Henry VIII’s royal supremacy, yet ... more promoted Morison’s evangelical agenda as much as they promoted Henry VIII’s royal supremacy, yet the supposedly tyrannical king did not put a stop to his activities. Morison was no mercenary scribbler and Henry VIII was no Stalin or Hitler, which is not to say that the king was a paragon of virtue. Sowerby’s study of Morison is a welcome and useful addition and complement to the work of Ethan Shagan, Alec Ryrie, Rory McEntegart and the post-revision interpretation of the English Reformation.
The importance of the collage Bible Harmonies produced by the members of the religious community ... more The importance of the collage Bible Harmonies produced by the members of the religious community at Little Gidding has been articulated in terms of the creativity and intricacy of handiwork the books showcase in relation to the community’s unique devotional practices. My purpose here, in concert with this more recent work, is to consider the particularly affecting relationship between sensual experience and holiness embedded in the pages of these books. However, instead of looking solely at the material components of the books as artisanal objects, I want to extend the discussion of the harmonies’ incarnational materiality to include the curious narrative that lies at the heart of what we know about the books’ making. Our principal source of information about how the harmonies were compiled is the never-completed biography of the community’s leader Nicholas Ferrar. The biography was assembled by his brother John, probably in the 1650s, and certainly after Nicholas’ death in 1637. This strange account of Nicholas’ life and of the community established at Little Gidding is often cited in studies of the harmonies but is rarely considered as an intricate act of figuration in its own right, deserving a place in the compendium of the community’s creative output. [P.B.]
In 1967, a survey of York Minster revealed that parts of the cathedral, in particular the central... more In 1967, a survey of York Minster revealed that parts of the cathedral, in particular the central tower, were on the verge of collapse. A major restoration project, lasting five years and costing over £2,000,000, was undertaken. A serendipitous result of the refortification of the central tower was the discovery of Roman ruins beneath the cathedral’s Norman foundations. Today visitors ‘journey through time from the first to the twentieth century’ as they descend from the south transept of the Minster into the undercroft, where the archaeological results of the restoration are on display.1 In one space, visitors see the substantial remains of the Roman fortress (second century); part of the west wall of the Norman transept (c. 1070) made of reused Roman stone; the foundations of the west wall of the Gothic south transept (c. 1220) as well as the modern concrete collar (c. 1970). Above them, of course, is the magnificent structure of the Gothic cathedral — itself a polychronic construction with features representing three distinct architectural styles.2
The story of Doubting Thomas, as told by the gospel of John, tells us that sometimes we need the ... more The story of Doubting Thomas, as told by the gospel of John, tells us that sometimes we need the experience of our senses to believe. When the disciples bring news of the resurrection to Thomas, he famously doubts them: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of thenails, and putmy hand into his side,”he says, “I will not believe.” A week passes and the disciples gather again. Jesus appears among them and to Thomas he says: “Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands, and bring hither thy hand and put it into my side: and be not incredulous but faithful.” Thomas’s doubt vanishes and Christ responds: “Because though hast seen me, Thomas, though hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed” ( John 20:25, 29). The message is clear: you shouldn’t need the experience of your physical senses to believe. And yet the whole point of the story is that many of us actually need to behold— or even to hold—to be convinced. As Glenn Most has lucidly pointed out, Thomas’s demand to touch is “a demand for incontrovertible proof of Christ’s materiality,” and John, in positioning the passage directly after the noli me tangere sequence in which Christ explicitly prohibits the touch of Mary Magdalene, goes further than the other gospel writers, initiating one of the greatest theological controversies of all time: How can we know God is real if we can’t see him or feel him?
... In the third section, 'Interrogating the Nation from the Margins', ... more ... In the third section, 'Interrogating the Nation from the Margins', Nilufer E. Bharucha analyzes the role of 'ethno-religious self-esteem' in the ... introduction, the editors propose that this diversity of approaches and topics is a strategy designed to confront the 'totalizing bent' of New ...
In October of 1990, we wrote to CTR, proposing an article that examined new performance in Edmont... more In October of 1990, we wrote to CTR, proposing an article that examined new performance in Edmonton outside of both the professional theatre and the Fringe. Personal aesthetic, informed by our shared academic background, led us to search out performance within a context unclaimed by the theatre community. Alan Filewod responded to our proposal, “I would love something from Edmonton that doesn’t talk about the Fringe.” We agreed.
Jason Sherman's anthology of monodrama is an important collection because it commits to print... more Jason Sherman's anthology of monodrama is an important collection because it commits to print and therefore to history an important form of theatrical production in Canada. In a climate where budget cuts are eating away at the fabric of alternative theatre, one increasingly viable way to continue producing has always been to stage a one-person show. Moreover, acting solo has become a medium through which performers and playwrights can act up against the clamour of the mega-musical and of mainstream repertory theatre by recharging the stage with an intimacy that has the potential to be captivating and disruptive.
This article analyses the performer/spectator dynamic present in the text and performance of some... more This article analyses the performer/spectator dynamic present in the text and performance of some Canadian one-woman plays, and considers the re-positioning of the female as subject and the possible construction of an ideal female spectator. The article looks at both English- and French-language monologues in an attempt to understand the effects of cultural difference on performer/spectator relationships, focusing on Jovette Marchessault's Les Vaches de nuit, Marie Savard's Bien A moi, Sharon Pollack's Getting it Straight, Pamela Boyd's Inside Out, Beverly Simon's Preparing, and Janet Feindel's A Particular Class of Women.
TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS posed to us by the editors of this collection, we undertook a survey of s... more TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS posed to us by the editors of this collection, we undertook a survey of similar efforts at reassessing the state of the discipline. Along with the Guillory and Butler collection upon which this volume is modeled, we took a look at leading theoretical journals--Critical Inquiry, Poetics Today and New Literary History--that have been engaged in efforts similar to our own. What's in, what's out, what's left of literary studies? We thought we'd lay it all out in an academic fashionista's "style file." The contents of this handy guide to scholarly chic, not to mention the decision to produce it in the first place, suggest that if there is anything left of English Studies, it certainly isn't the Left. The modes of critical analysis associated with the New Historicism and with Cultural Studies are, it seems, going the way of the power suit. And for those of us schooled in the 1990s by the acolytes of Derrida and Foucault, perusing the landscape of the new and the noteworthy can have the same effect on the scholarly self-image as the glossy pages of Wallpaper and InStyle have on the ward-robe. We found ourselves feeling a bit like Reese Witherspoon's character in Legally Blonde. "Don't stomp your little last season's Prada shoes at me, honey," says the cheekily hip antagonist. And like Witherspoon's Elle, we are tempted to gasp in defiant horror: "My shoes are NOT last season's!" Our first response to this whole enterprise was thus predictable. Presented with the task of looking at cutting edge scholarship, we prepared to launch into a discussion of the infection of literary academia by postmodern commodity culture's ceaseless thirst for the cutting edge--a discussion made all the more cogent, we felt, by the university infrastructure's recent imperatives: the humanities, we keep getting told, must "change." We must embrace "innovation." But this first impulse to embrace "left" critique led to some questions: What guise are we wearing that makes us look so desperately in need of a change? Whose "innovative" fashions are we being asked to follow instead? The answers are not as straightforward as our "Out" modes of analysis would lead us to expect. If the rhetoric of SSHRC administrators is to be believed we really are looking quite frumpy these days, like people who hang around the house in track pants. SSHRC President Marc Renaud, in his address given to the 2002 Canadian Association of Graduate Studies conference ("The Human Sciences: The Challenge of Innovation"), notes that "[s]ince the Second World War, disciplinary specialization and peer-reviewed publications have framed the academic world" and as a result "scholars have come to be perceived as being lodged in ivory tower silos, driven more by their abstract interests than by a will to contribute to the larger public good. Add to this perception the massive increase in student enrolment and the drastic budgetary cutbacks of the 1980s and the 1990s, and inevitably you get a research community in which several participants feel defensive, unfamiliar with how to operate outside their disciplinary traditions and unwilling to change." Renaud goes on to recommend a drastic makeover. The plan is to "open up the research agenda" to inspire us to "reach beyond [our] disciplines" in order to "solve problems" and eventually "create international research teams" that will take us "beyond academia" and will make "better use of leading-edge technologies" while training "more students at advanced levels and more quickly" (Renaud 7-9). If the university of the twenty-first century has defined itself almost exclusively by its ability to be "leading edge; we in the humanities apparently fall short. Nor would we necessarily disagree that we fall short. Despite our penchant for radically rethinking our discipline every ten years or so, we have pretty much assumed that the rhetoric of newness is either the domain of graduate students or evidence of administrative pandering to the government and corporate interests already driving research agendas in the sciences and the social sciences. …
promoted Morison’s evangelical agenda as much as they promoted Henry VIII’s royal supremacy, yet ... more promoted Morison’s evangelical agenda as much as they promoted Henry VIII’s royal supremacy, yet the supposedly tyrannical king did not put a stop to his activities. Morison was no mercenary scribbler and Henry VIII was no Stalin or Hitler, which is not to say that the king was a paragon of virtue. Sowerby’s study of Morison is a welcome and useful addition and complement to the work of Ethan Shagan, Alec Ryrie, Rory McEntegart and the post-revision interpretation of the English Reformation.
The importance of the collage Bible Harmonies produced by the members of the religious community ... more The importance of the collage Bible Harmonies produced by the members of the religious community at Little Gidding has been articulated in terms of the creativity and intricacy of handiwork the books showcase in relation to the community’s unique devotional practices. My purpose here, in concert with this more recent work, is to consider the particularly affecting relationship between sensual experience and holiness embedded in the pages of these books. However, instead of looking solely at the material components of the books as artisanal objects, I want to extend the discussion of the harmonies’ incarnational materiality to include the curious narrative that lies at the heart of what we know about the books’ making. Our principal source of information about how the harmonies were compiled is the never-completed biography of the community’s leader Nicholas Ferrar. The biography was assembled by his brother John, probably in the 1650s, and certainly after Nicholas’ death in 1637. This strange account of Nicholas’ life and of the community established at Little Gidding is often cited in studies of the harmonies but is rarely considered as an intricate act of figuration in its own right, deserving a place in the compendium of the community’s creative output. [P.B.]
In 1967, a survey of York Minster revealed that parts of the cathedral, in particular the central... more In 1967, a survey of York Minster revealed that parts of the cathedral, in particular the central tower, were on the verge of collapse. A major restoration project, lasting five years and costing over £2,000,000, was undertaken. A serendipitous result of the refortification of the central tower was the discovery of Roman ruins beneath the cathedral’s Norman foundations. Today visitors ‘journey through time from the first to the twentieth century’ as they descend from the south transept of the Minster into the undercroft, where the archaeological results of the restoration are on display.1 In one space, visitors see the substantial remains of the Roman fortress (second century); part of the west wall of the Norman transept (c. 1070) made of reused Roman stone; the foundations of the west wall of the Gothic south transept (c. 1220) as well as the modern concrete collar (c. 1970). Above them, of course, is the magnificent structure of the Gothic cathedral — itself a polychronic construction with features representing three distinct architectural styles.2
The story of Doubting Thomas, as told by the gospel of John, tells us that sometimes we need the ... more The story of Doubting Thomas, as told by the gospel of John, tells us that sometimes we need the experience of our senses to believe. When the disciples bring news of the resurrection to Thomas, he famously doubts them: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of thenails, and putmy hand into his side,”he says, “I will not believe.” A week passes and the disciples gather again. Jesus appears among them and to Thomas he says: “Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands, and bring hither thy hand and put it into my side: and be not incredulous but faithful.” Thomas’s doubt vanishes and Christ responds: “Because though hast seen me, Thomas, though hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed” ( John 20:25, 29). The message is clear: you shouldn’t need the experience of your physical senses to believe. And yet the whole point of the story is that many of us actually need to behold— or even to hold—to be convinced. As Glenn Most has lucidly pointed out, Thomas’s demand to touch is “a demand for incontrovertible proof of Christ’s materiality,” and John, in positioning the passage directly after the noli me tangere sequence in which Christ explicitly prohibits the touch of Mary Magdalene, goes further than the other gospel writers, initiating one of the greatest theological controversies of all time: How can we know God is real if we can’t see him or feel him?
... In the third section, 'Interrogating the Nation from the Margins', ... more ... In the third section, 'Interrogating the Nation from the Margins', Nilufer E. Bharucha analyzes the role of 'ethno-religious self-esteem' in the ... introduction, the editors propose that this diversity of approaches and topics is a strategy designed to confront the 'totalizing bent' of New ...
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