Del infierno al cuerpo: La otredad en la narrativa y en el cine español contemporáneo, Katarzyna Olga Beoñom

A review of Katarzyna Olga Beoñom\u27s Del infierno al cuerpo: La otredad en la narrativa y en el cine español contemporáneo

Good Intentions Aren\u27t Enough: Intellectuals and Violence in Luis Goytisolo\u27s \u3cem\u3eMzungo\u3c/em\u3e

In the 1990s Luis Goytisolo explores the possibilities of popular fiction, adapting various genres (travel, mystery, erotic, historical) to accomodate his long-term project of unpacking Western Values. Indeed, Goytisolo’s flirtation with the best-selling genre fiction constitutes a postmodern gesture of “complicitous critique.”For example, in Escalera hacia el cielo (1999) Goytisolo exploits the erotic genre to challenge the traditional paradigm of the dominant male gaze and the objectified female body and to offer instead expressions of mutuality. In Mzungo (1996), Goytisolo engages the travel novel to undermine the culturally dominant position of the white European male who “discovers” an unknown culture/geography and explains it in terms of his own, which parades as universal. However, as opposed to the hopeful theme of mutuality we see in Escalera hacia el cielo, Mzungo offers a much darker vision of humanity and our potential for peaceful coexistence

Sex, the Body, and Human Subjectivity in Luis Gotyisolo\u27s Erotic Novel Escalera Hacia el Cielo

Best known for his tetralogy Antagonía, Luis Goytisolo began his literary career under the Franco dictatorship and soon developed a reputation as an intellectual\u27s writer. His intricate and sinewy prose challenged readers to follow his narrators down labyrinthine paths of extended metaphors, embedded clauses and erudite references. Interestingly enough, the novels of Goytisolo published in the last decade lack the narrative complexity and structural experimentalism characteristic of his earlier works. These 90s novels include: Estatua con palomas (1992), Mzungo (1996), Placer licuante (1997), and Escalera hacia el cielo (1999). Some might feel that his change to a more traditional narrative style indicates a compromise of his intellectual project and wonder if he has succumbed to the pressures created by the commercialization of Spanish fiction

Luis Goytisolo’s \u3cem\u3eLa paradoja del ave migratoria\u3c/em\u3e as Postmodern Allegory: A Critique of Absolutism

Luis Goytisolo’s short work of fiction, La paradoja del ave migratoria, was published in 1987 in a Post-Franco Spain and a Postmodern world. I will investigate this unusual novel as a postmodern allegory, relying on Brian McHale’s assertion that postmodern allegory challenges the “unequivocalness of traditional allegories” by problematizing the naive assumption that abstract concepts can be communicated transparently through language (1987, 141). Luis Goytisolo populates his allegory with mythical, and historical characters that hail from a dizzying array of time periods, creating a heterotopic universe in which no one context of references serves as the key to interpretation. Characters are lifted out of familiar situations, and readers are prevented from making automatic associations and must read these characters and contexts without recourse to one absolute paradigm

From Here to In\u3cem\u3eFinnerty\u3c/em\u3e: Tony Soprano and the American Way

As fellow critics have pointed out in a myriad of published studies on the series, The Sopranos challenges the traditional gangster genre formula and brings the mob closer to all of us: Tony and his gang inhabit a recognizable world of Starbucks, suburbia, and SUVs. They discuss issues of the day, the same ones we discuss when we turn off the TV after the episode. In short, they inhabit a quotidian reality that is continuous with our own, and we are prevented from drawing the neat lines that allow us a comfortable remove from the horror of the “criminal world,” as David Simon’s book Tony Soprano’s America convincingly demonstrates. Indeed, the series is an allegory that shows how the workings of the Italian American Mafia are not so different from the latest incarnation of the American way crystallized in the contemporary, corporate, middle-class consumer culture of the baby boomers, or what David Brooks has deemed “bobo culture.

Reaching Beyond Borders Through Service Learning

When university Spanish programs integrate a service learning pedagogy into their curriculum, they establish mutually beneficial relationships with the local Latino population. Indeed, all participants benefit: College Spanish students deepen their learning experience, Latino students in public school ESL programs receive individualized tutoring, and the college professor emerges from academic isolation to do the work of a public intellectual

Still Hungover: Todd Phillips and Rape Culture

As a textual critic who came of age in the \u2790s, it is difficult for me to talk about authorial intention. Indeed, most academics today tell their students to avoid declaring The message of a text, encouraging them instead to respect the multivalence of meaning, the slipperiness of poetic discourse, and the freedom of the author to engage discursive play without being pinned down by an absolute interpretation. But I confess that, despite my training, after having watched The Hangover and read all over the Internet about it, I can\u27t help but wonder if director Todd Phillips is a misogynistic asshole. Or maybe he is just a film director trying to make money by selling a film that denigrates women and celebrates a retrograde version of masculinity. When you live in a culture of rape, either way, it doesn\u27t really matter

The development and evaluation of the paediatric index of emotional distress (PI-ED)

Purpose: Current measures of anxiety and depression for children and young people (CYP) include somatic symptoms and can be lengthy. They can inflate scores in cases where there is also physical illness, contain potentially distressing symptoms for some settings and be impractical in clinical practice. The present study aimed to develop and evaluate a new questionnaire, the paediatric index of emotional distress (PI-ED), to screen for emotional distress in CYP, modelled on the hospital anxiety and depression scale. Methods: A school-based sample (n = 1026) was employed to examine the PI-ED’s psychometric properties and a clinical sample of CYP (n = 143) was used to establish its sensitivity and specificity. Results: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a bi-factor model with a general emotional distress factor (‘cothymia’) and anxiety and depression as co-factors. The PI-ED demonstrated good psychometric properties and clinical utility with a cutoff score of 20. Conclusion: The PI-ED is a brief, valid and reliable clinical screening tool for emotional distress in CYP