Department of Humanities
Permanent link for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item What we know (to be unrelatable)(2024) Beauclair, Alain; Toth, Josh; Toth, Josh; Beauclair, AlainConsisting of contributions from a host of international scholars (in fields as diverse as literature, architecture, philosophy, and education), Alain Beauclair and Josh Toth's Nature and Its Unnatural Relations: Points of Access intercedes in ongoing debates about accessing, defining, and respecting a world humans continue to misuse and misunderstand—and that, as a result, is becoming increasingly inhospitable. The chapters shuttle between a variety of aesthetic and philosophical concerns—from theology and Biblical interpretation to colonialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, worlding, posthumanism, and speculative realism. These varied approaches are united by a single aporetic thread: efforts to surmount the problem of "human access" invariably risk repeating (ever more blindly) the violence and immorality of anthropocentrism. We seem trapped in the cul-de-sac of the Anthropocene. To discover potential new exits, the contributors consider whether it is possible or advisable to abandon so-called "correlationism"—of art, of literature, of technology. If it is, then how? If not, how might we more ethically reembrace our innately corruptive relations with a world of non-human others? How might we free "nature" (finally) from the demands of human action and human thought without mendaciously reinscribing humanity's distance from it or denying a proximity that is only traversable by artificial means?Item African temporalities: race and the Augustinian philosophy of time(2025) Hannan, Sean; Kabala, Boleslaw Z.; Harmon, Thomas P.; Menchaca-Bagnulo, AshleenA recent issue of the journal South Atlantic Quarterly, edited by Habiba Ibrahim and Badia Ahad, bore the title “Black Temporality in Times of Crisis.” Its cover featured a banner asking: “After hope, then what?” For communities seeking emancipation, the question of the future is always also the question of hope. Augustine bound future and hope together in his Confessions, too, though he never guaranteed our hopes would soon be fulfilled. That same ambivalence concerning hope can be sensed in the discourse around black temporalities. Our tendency to pluralize—to move from temporality to temporalities—is a tacit recognition that time does not have to mean the same thing to every community. Cultural pluralism goes hand in hand with chronological pluralism. Augustine acknowledged hermeneutical pluralism when he remarked that there can be multiple true interpretations of the same Biblical passage. Chronological pluralism would mean acknowledging that there can be multiple true ways of experiencing time.Item ‘Believing na evill nor injury’: Space, Place, and Crime in Sixteenth-Century Scottish Burghs(2025) Falconer, RobertOn 1 August 1582, around ‘five hours efter noone’, Margaret Cryst, Jonet Porteous, and Elizabeth Crawford violently assaulted Margaret Leggat in ‘hir own dwelling hous’ in Canongate. After entering Leggat’s home, the trio ‘cast her downe upoun the floore’, punched and kicked her ‘in the wambe’, grabbed her by the arms, pulled off her curche (cap), and proceeded to strike her repeatedly with a set of iron tongs. Afterward, the group departed the house, taking with them the iron tongs and a piece of linen broadcloth. At first glance, the account suggests that this was a simple case of theft with violence. However, the entire encounter needs to be set within a broader, ongoing dispute. The court records go on to state that after leaving the house, Cryst ‘came at the samyn tyme upoun’ Alison Leggat and her husband, Robert Bond. She began to verbally assault the couple, calling Alison a ‘comon theif, biche huir, and the said Robert a comoun theif’. Cryst added that ‘the said Alesoun wold do with the said robert as she did with hir first guid man and that all the bairnis quhilkis she buir was neuer ane of thame his bot uther mens’. But this was not the end of Cryst’s attack on the Leggat family. Later that evening, Cryst went to ‘the duelling house of Duncan Garlaw’ where Alison and Robert were at their supper ‘in maist quiet manner’. In front of Garlaw, Cryst repeated the ‘former iniurious wordis’.Item Dance as discourse: imperialism and linguistic diversity in the Spanish interlude Las lenguas (The Languages)(2025) Cowling, Erin; Magro, Tania de Miguel; Izquierdo, AdrianThis chapter will consider the inclusion of multilingual speakers in Las lenguas, a Spanish mojiganga (short burlesque play) written in the second half of the 17th century. There are at least three distinct versions of this text. In all of them, a Castilian rural mayor is planning to travel to a major Castilian city (Seville, Madrid, or Valladolid, respectively) in search of people to perform a dance for the festivities in his town. As he reaches his destination, he is told that he has not, in fact, arrived at the expected Castilian city, but rather to a “Babylonia.” There he encounters a cast of multilingual characters identified by their parodic accents who he cannot understand. In this chapter we argue that Las lenguas establishes a parallel between the building of the Spanish Empire and the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The Spanish Empire has grown so big that it can no longer be sustained. Although Castilian works as the lingua franca, subjects have difficulty communicating, which signals the impending Imperial downfall, mimicking the biblical story. Paradoxically, the Castilian mayor, as the representative of the hegemonic voice, comes across as the most ignorant of all characters. He is the one who cannot understand others, not only because they speak differently, but because he is a simple country bumpkin who cannot keep up with the ever-changing composition of the Imperial citizenry. Las lenguas is also an example of the perceived multiculturalism of early modern Spanish urban centers.Item Play and inquiry(2025) Beauclair, AlainIn this article, play is taken up as a mood that incites and mediates inquiry. As such, play is said to produce not only, following Gadamer, the “forms of our freedom,” but also the very being of human meaning, giving it both ethical and ontological import.Item History, literature, and the art of storytelling with Dr. Marla Epp (season 4, episode 8) [audio podcast episode](2025) Epp, MarlaIn today’s episode, Dr. Marla Epp talks to us about contemporary French literature and film. Sharing how her research explores the integration of historical events into narrative storytelling, from her early work on French women writers during WWII to her current focus on the novels of Christine Montalbetti. Dr. Epp discusses her unique approach of blending personal narratives with historical inquiry and reflects on how literature helps us see the world through a different lens. Find out more at https://research-recasted.pinecast.co.Item Bodies in Space in Christine Montalbetti’s La vie est faite de ces toutes petites choses(2025) Epp, MarlaIn La vie est faite de ces toutes petites choses, Christine Montalbetti recounts the NASA STS-135 mission with great precision, omitting no bodily detail or even insect. She foregoes a grandiose narrative to linger on minutiae, emphasizing that space travel, despite being an extraordinary event, continues to entail quotidian concerns. I study how Montalbetti uses the atypical setting of outer space to draw attention to common human experiences, and, in particular, the physical aspects of daily life that are perhaps overlooked on Earth. As Montalbetti reminds us, we always have a body. Even if we might not be bodies in outer space, we are always bodies in space. Earth, as she insists, is a shared space, populated not only by humans but also by numerous other living organisms. I demonstrate that, as the novel progresses, Montalbetti questions the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary. For her, the most habitual of activities, being a body interacting with other living beings in a shared space, is, itself, the most extraordinary thing. The STS-135 mission, then, exemplifies not the possibility of independence from the Earth, but rather the interconnectedness of all living beings.Item Silence and solitude in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle(2026) Epp, MarlaIn this article I examine the ways in which Michel Butor, in Les Naufragés de l’Arche (1981), and Éric Chevillard, in L’Arche Titanic (2022), describe their respective visits to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. Both authors affirm the importance of coming face to face with physical specimens of animals, and for them animal life and lexical life are inextricably linked. In these texts, engaging with animals, even taxidermy specimens, is essential, not just to encourage work towards keeping animal populations alive, but also for ensuring continued literary creativity.Item Furnishing the family: John Clerk of Penicuik and his network of interdependencies and influences(2024) Falconer, Robert; Baer-Tsarfati, Lisa; Dye, Sierra; Hudec, MariahJohn Clerk of Penicuik (1611–1674) was a Montrose-born merchant whose commercial activities in France between 1634 and 1645 placed him at the centre of an extensive network, one that connected him to a vast array of producers of art and luxury items as well as merchants and elite clients from across western Europe. His economic dealings garnered him a reputation at home and abroad for fair trade and an eye for quality goods. In turn, this helped Clerk to earn considerable wealth and to establish associations that would lay the foundation for his family’s social ascension over the next two generations. As Siobhan Talbott noted, the key to Clerk’s success in business during this early period was the trust he earned and the relationships he cultivated. Returning to Scotland and establishing himself in Edinburgh in 1645, Clerk continued to oversee the commercial network he had developed in France, travelling to wherever his involvement was crucial to his (and his clients’) business interests. In 1654, he acquired the barony of Penicuik and began building up his family’s position in the region. By the 1660s, Clerk had transformed the family home at Newbiggin into the epicentre of his extensive landholding and commercial activities such that, at his death in 1674, he was able to leave his family in a position of wealth, influence, and stature that ensured their place among Scotland’s elite.Item Cultura e interculturalidad en la creación de libros de texto para la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera en las aulas universitarias canadienses: el experimento de Coincidencias I y Coincidencias II(2025) Ruiz Serrano, Cristina; Fernández-Ulloa, Teresa; Saneleuterio, EliaEn las últimas décadas, la interculturalidad y la competencia cultural se han establecido como dimensiones indispensables en la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras, lo que ha promovido una mayor búsqueda de herramientas y estrategias didácticas innovadoras que estimulen el aprendizaje de las habilidades lingüísticas del alumnado desde la competencia comunicativa intercultural, es decir, a partir de una respuesta cognitiva positiva, respetuosa y abierta hacia las diferencias culturales (Iglesias Casal y Ramos Méndez, 2020: 102-105; García-Balsas, 2021: 2-3; Marco, 2018; Raigón-Rodríguez, 2018: 284-285). El desarrollo de dichas competencias, de hecho, se postula en numerosos documentos institucionales sobre didáctica curricular o de investigación tales como, por citar solo algunos ejemplos: The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, la guía de la asociación American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL, 2012); The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, publicada por el National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project (2015); la guía NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements for Intercultural Communication (2017); el Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas: aprendizaje, enseñanza y evaluación (MCER, 2002) del Consejo de Europa y su Companion Volume (CV), de 2020 (Iglesias Casal y Ramos Méndez, 2020; García-Balsas, 2021); o The Australian Curriculum: Languages (Scarino, Kohler y Benedetti, 2014: 5-7).Item Mi guerra de España, de Mika Etchebéhère: testimonio y memoria histórica(2021) Ruiz Serrano, CristinaEl testimonio Mi guerra de España, de la activista argentina Mika Etchebéhère, constituye un documento histórico único de una mujer combatiente y en posición de liderazgo durante la guerra civil española. Este artículo explora el texto de Etchebéhère a partir de su aportación a la recuperación de la memoria histórica española por la reivindicación que en Mi guerra de España se hace de la miliciana como figura heroica. Mediante el análisis de este testimonio y su comparación con publicaciones del bando nacionalista y de la prensa republicana popular coetáneos a los hechos narrados, se identifican los estereotipos de género y las acusaciones vertidas en el descrédito de la mujer combatiente y la manera en que Mika Etchebéhère deconstruye sutilmente dichos argumentos para imponer una imagen de la miliciana integrada en el ethos heroico de la guerra y de la lucha de la mujer por la igualdad.Item Ecofeminismo en el realismo mágico ecuatoriano: Bruna, soroche y los tíos y Más allá de las islas de Alicia Yánez Cossío(2024) Ruiz Serrano, CristinaAlicia Yánez Cossío (Quito, 1928) es una de las escritoras ecuatorianas más prominentes y en su prolífica obra ha sabido plasmar la historia y los ricos contrastes de la sociedad de su país, creando textos cargados de crítica sociopolítica, ironía, y cuestionamiento de los discursos dominantes. Puesto que las cuestiones de género y la naturaleza juegan un papel primordial en las novelas mágicorrealistas Bruna, soroche y los tíos (1973) y Más allá de las islas (1980) de Yánez Cossío, en este artículo se analizan ambas obras a partir de las claves ecofeministas. El ecofeminismo, que ha surgido del acercamiento de las teorías feministas y ecologistas, arguye que la transformación social y la sostenibilidad medioambiental son imperativas para el futuro del planeta, pero solo serán posibles mediante la igualdad de género, la justicia y la empatía universal. A partir de este marco teórico, en Bruna, soroche y los tíos y Más allá de las islas se examinan los personajes femeninos y sus conflictos, la recreación de la naturaleza y los espacios, los cuidados y la sexualidad.Item The account of Perseus in Orosius: sources and precedents(2023) Garstad, BenjaminOrosius includes a note on the hero Perseus that neglects the usually prominent features of his myth, saying little more than that Perseus led an expedition into Asia and, once victorious, named the people he conquered there Persians after himself. He is the earliest of the surviving Latin authors to say either of these things about Perseus. And he is apparently the first author to combine these pieces of information – until, that is, John Malalas, who says much the same things about Perseus not once, but twice. This paper will survey Orosius’ usual sources for possible influences, trace the development of the notions that Perseus invaded Asia and that the Persians were named for him, and explore the possibility that Orosius and Malalas might have shared a source on Perseus and the history of Assyria.Item Through a clock darkly: the time of the eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei(2023) Hannan, Sean; Aleksander, Jason; Hannan, Sean; Hollmann, Joshua; Moore, MichaelAt 5:15 p.m. (Central Daylight Time) on Friday, May 15, 2015, Jean-Luc Marion delivered the Morimichi Watanabe Lecture in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Before the audience, which included many members of the American Cusanus Society, Marion presented a phenomenological reading of the icon in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. When, in 1453, Cusanus sent this treatise to some monks at Tegernsee who were interested in the theory and practice of mystical theology, he included a ‘Veronica’ painting of the face of Jesus with all-seeing eyes. This was a fateful inclusion, insofar as the icon has become an object of such fascination that it risks eclipsing the text it was meant to supplement. As David Albertson has demonstrated, the debate surrounding this icon animates philosophical disputation even today. Marion’s phenomenological interpretation of iconicity can itself be framed in response to Emmanuel Falque’s claim that what is at stake in De visione Dei is not the theological category of the icon, but the much broader aesthetic field of painting.Item Ordering empire: visions of imperial space in Herodotus’ Histories(2024) Romney, Jessica; de Oliveira Silva, Maria Aparecida; de Fátima Silva, MariaIn Aeschylus’ Persians, the Messenger’s account of the battle of Salamis presents a chaotic list of the subject peoples of the Persian King: over approximately thirty lines (302‑330), the Messenger crisscrosses the expanse of the Persian Empire, doubling back and pivoting, to create the sense of a conglomerate behemoth of an army confronting the small alliance of Greek poleis. Not a generation later, Herodotus would take on the same task of detailing the peoples subject to the Great King of Persia, but unlike Aeschylus, the historian proceeds in an orderly fashion, moving from the Persian centre outwards in, sweeping from north to east, south to west, in ever increasing distance from the Persian heartland (Hdt. 7.61‑100). This progression through the ethnē in Xerxes’ army and fleet functions similarly to the description of the map of the oikoumenē given in 4.36‑45, where Herodotus likewise begins at a Persian centre to move north and east, then south and west, in his description of the continents of Asia and Libya. The map of the oikoumenē in book 4 destablizes a Helleno‑centric geographic consciousness centred on Delphi; the detailing of the ethnē serving under Xerxes fills the geographical void that, on earlier Greek maps, hugged the edges of the oikoumenē. The result of these geographical exercises is that Herodotus presents his audience with an image of imperial space that is vast and overwhelming, in this case due to the level of detail and the orderly progression from point to point. By combining this effect with the new geographical consciousness that the Histories offers, Herodotus turns the idea and space of the Persian Empire into a thōma, something wondrous and terrible to behold in its totality.Item One nation under David: an ideological innovation in chronicles(2024) Ristau, Kenneth A.; Fulton, Deirdre N.; Ristau, Kenneth A.; Greer, Jonathan S.; Cohen, Margaret E.What was the relationship between the Pentateuch and the (so-called) Deuteronomistic History and how did these texts function as a corpus? What were the interconnections among these texts and those of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah? In this volume, leading voices come together to tackle questions about the composition and formation of the Hebrew Bible and the future directions of such studies in honor of Gary N. Knoppers.Item Bringing the violence into the light: #YoTeCreo, 'El caso manada' and La vida es sueño(2023) Cowling, ErinIñigo Rodríguez-Claro and Carlota Gaviño of Grumelot Compañía Teatral staged a version of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño. Their version, conceived as "una reflexión sobre nuestra convivencia con el mundo de lo virtual. Mundo que, a pesar de ser cada vez más relevante para nuestra existencia, interpretamos como ilusión, como irrealidad, como engaño de los sentidos (o no)," closely follows Segismundo's own journey of discovery of what is real, and what is not.Item Intimacy and imagination(2024) Beauclair, AlainThis article offers an analysis of the concept of intimacy, arguing that it concerns moments of mutual imaginings generative of desire. As a peculiar mode of shared conduct, it is difficult to categorize the value of such actions insofar as they fall outside our ordinary conception of the public and private spheres. Nonetheless, when achieved, intimacy is not only an expansion of the private and a realization of a good-in-itself, but also has a bearing on our orientation to the broader world.Item Fugitives from France: Huguenot refugees, revolutionary émigrés, and the origins of modern exile(2023) Summers, Kelly; Andress, DavidAttempts to ban emigration from France in the 1680s, and again in the 1790s, failed, spawning two categories of exile that have more in common than is typically acknowledged. Huguenot refugees who fled Louis XIV’s Catholicization campaign tend to be viewed as the last religious exiles of the early modern era, whereas émigrés who left in the wake of 1789 are seen as exemplars of a new type of political exile born of revolution. In fact, a comparison reveals their shared origins in the conflict between a centralizing state intent on policing its populace’s beliefs and movements and the global reverberations of the Protestant Reformation and French Revolution, respectively. Both diasporas included a conspicuous subset who fought France in league with its foreign enemies, as well as an unarmed majority fleeing threats to their freedom of conscience, property, and at times, very lives. After tracing the evolution of such freighted terms as fugitive, refugee, rebel, deserter, and émigré, the chapter concludes by examining how France’s two great migrations were juxtaposed in revolutionary debates over the right to leave and return to one’s country, which partially explains their divergent treatment by historians.Item My land or hinterland: British Columbia, Vancouver, and the Peace River country(2024) Irwin, RobertThe history of Peace River region and its relationship with British Columbia, 1910-1945, is discussed.