Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies
Not a member yet
498 research outputs found
Sort by
Embodying Histories of Violence: Representations of Scarred Bodies of Sri Lankan Tamil Women in Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Women’s Writing in English
Full text linkThe paper seeks to explore embodied histories of violence through an insightful discussion on the representations of scarred bodies of Sri Lankan Tamil women in Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic women’s writing in English. The study employs a qualitative approach and conducts a content analysis of selected narratives in the primary texts: Shankari Chandran’s Song of the Sun God (2017), V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Love Marriage (2008), and Mary Anne Mohanraj’s Bodies in Motion (2005). The narratives selected for the study are approached as a body of literary work that portrays scarred bodies of Sri Lankan Tamil women both within and outside Sri Lanka against the backdrop of ethnic and communal violence. It posits that in a context of war, bodies of Sri Lankan Tamil women, as represented in the novels, are perceived as battle sites on which warring factions inscribe their authority. The study then examines the legacy of violence as a shared communal trait among Sri Lankan Tamils and argues for the alternative presented through the narratives of approaching the scarred bodies of Sri Lankan Tamil women as spaces of empowerment, as opposed to impure or sullied bodies that are incapable of representing their Sri Lankan Tamil families and communities
“Mapping Vietnamese Identities in Tran Anh Hung’s and Tony Bui’s Films: Femininity and Love”
Full text linkMany Vietnamese diasporic film directors have presented women as conveyors of Vietnamese culture, with their love symbolizing Vietnamese identity. This identity has been characterized by the virtues of sacrifice, endurance, and cohesion within a patriarchal family. On one hand, their femininity, as well as their female beauty, can be fully realized only when they are viewed through the perspective of a man and connected to his love. This remains true even if female love sometimes becomes overly patient or rebellious. On the other hand, women in diasporic films possess characteristics that resemble the image of a woman in a traditional environment, or more specifically, a Confucian space. Love keeps them alive. However, they sometimes break out, their love causing them to rebel. Inevitably, they will return to the original, traditional space. This paper argues that this interaction between love, femininity and tradition creates a mechanism for the resistance of violence. In particular, it examines two Vietnamese diasporic directors’ perspective on violence in Vietnam, a place where maintaining a state of harmony and non-violence lays at the core of Vietnamese identity. The two films examined are The Scent of Green Papaya (dir. Tran Anh Hung, 1993) and Three Seasons (dir. Tony Bui, 1999)
Solmaz Sharif’s ‘Exquisite Face’ of the Other: Creating Grievable Lives through the Lyric
Full text linkLyric poetry is a genre constantly being renegotiated and redefined. From the fragmented parchments of Sappho’s ancient sung texts to the “American Lyrics” of Claudia Rankine, part of the thrill of the lyric form is its mutating nature. Solmaz Sharif’s poetry book, Look, is a masterful adaptation of the lyric form. Her poems combine erasure, Department of Defense terms, Wikipedia entries, and references to the Iran-Iraq and US wars of imperialism, collaging experiences of soldiers, immigrants, and citizens on both sides of the United States’ so-called War on Terror. In a world of political extremes, “cancel culture,” and reactionary social media platforms, Sharif’s political lyrics question representation itself. She calls upon her western reader: “It matters what you call a thing: Exquisite a lover called me. / Exquisite” (3), acknowledging the lyric’s traditional apostrophe—the fragile woman. Look's opening lines juxtapose the speaker’s exquisite body with the objectified targets of the Iraq war detailed throughout the poem: “Whereas the lover made my heat rise, rise so that if heat sensors were trained on me, they could read my THERMAL SHADOW through the roof and through the wardrobe” (3). The speaker is both the Petrarchan beloved and the military target, a target that refuses to remain outside the frame of war: “Whereas I thought if he would LOOK at my exquisite face or my father’s, he would reconsider” (4). While beautiful, Look is not a fragile collection of poems: her work is emotionally haunting, filled with raw, violent images. Particularly when viewed against the backdrop of the white, masculine lyric, Sharif’s work enacts social renegotiations of the lyric
Quotidian Science Fiction: Posthuman Dreams of Emancipation
Full text linkThis article argues that Science Fiction is a posthuman art form, whose texts posit a utopian dream which emphasises that the process of becoming posthuman is both incremental, and conditional upon the equitable cultural, social, and environmental evolution of our societies. The genre provides a transient dreamscape for visitation by the (post)human mind, by which the reader gains an expanded perception of not only their own empirical environment, but also of posthuman possibility. This posthuman dream however, is not a simply literalised by SF’s estranging narrative strategy, but rather is located in the intersection between the SF narrative and its generic form. Through the decay of their initially defamiliarizing nova into data which are cognitively explicable by their (post)human audience, SF texts dramatize our species’ continuous journey of becoming posthuman. This fundamentally posthuman model of the SF genre therefore challenges the model of cognitive estrangement proposed by Darko Suvin, and so proposes that SF exerts a pragmatic utopian dream that avoids being deterministic or teleological
Jane Austen’s Appetite for Stewardship, Hospitality, and Paternalism: Food in Pride and Prejudice
No full textA consideration of food and the appetite it satiates in Jane Austen’s most popular novel Pride and Prejudice must combine two hegemonies of her time: clerical teachings on biblical dominion and hospitality combined in the idealistic country estate of Pemberley. This paper examines Christian stewardship and biblical hospitality as disseminated by clergy when Austen was writing and applies them to demonstrate Austen’s ideal position on the appetite for food as embodied in Darcy, Elizabeth, and Pemberley, contrasted with the flawed appetites demonstrated by Mr. Hurst, Mrs. Bennet, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh