Literature

Tentative working title: From Bracero to Chicano: The Biopolitical Implications of Racializing the Working Poor Mexicanos and descendants of Mexicanos have been active in many sectors of the U.S. workforce since 1848. Today, many of these self-identifying Chicanos and Mexicanos fulfill varied roles within the service industry, factory settings, agricultural settings, professional areas, etc. in the Southwest and beyond. In other parts of the U.S., Latinos from other countries also fulfill such roles. However, my study suggests that the Bracero Program 1 is a key labor moment for understanding subsequent issues of immigration, wage-labor struggles and the hegemonic practices that continue to attract Mexican workers even as they deport them and perpetuate poverty among them. Beyond the effects suffered by the Mexican men who participated in the Bracero Program, my work will investigate the outcomes of this program for both genders in various sectors of the workforce and for Latinos working with and without legal documentation in both the Eastern and Western regions of the U.S. I argue that the Bracero Program acted as an accelerator for the growth of a Chicano and Mexicano population working in the U.S. Braceros were attracted by inviting ads; but the benign and even pleasant image of the program promoted in 1 The Bracero Program lasted from . This program allowed U.S. agricultural corporations to recruit men from various regions of Mexico. Then they were taken to processing centers in Mexico D.F. and then to various agricultural sites in the U.S. It was first intended to supply farm labor during World War II, but was renewed various times through legislative means even after the war ended.

In September of 1746, a quack doctor by the name of Charles Hamilton was tried at the Somerset quarter-sessions for vagrancy. In the eyes of the law, Hamilton was a woman with the birth name of Mary Hamilton, and it was Hamilton's marriage to a young woman named Mary Price that precipitated the arrest. 1 This was not an ordinary case of vagrancy. "Vagrancy," in the press surrounding this case, alluded to a sensational tale of fraudulent marriage, gender transgression, and sexual deception-a story picked up first by a local gossip paper and then by periodicals throughout the country. Hamilton was not simply arrested on the authority of a local Justice of the Peace responding to a complaint of an unknown beggar or suspected thief; instead, a group called the Corporation of Glastonbury (which included many of the town's wealthiest and most powerful inhabitants) conducted the prosecution on behalf of Mary Price, who likely had neither the financial means nor social influence required to bring such a prosecution herself. 2 It is difficult to tell, from the sources that remain, exactly what role Mary Price had in the prosecution and what motivated her involvement.

In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Master and Margarita, most of the female characters are portrayed as hysterical, gluttonous, and shallow. In their midst, Margarita appears as the shining antithesis to their behavior, with her tenacious, driven mentality and undying loyalty to the Master. The women characters are indispensible to the novel's plot as enablers of men, and their actions reveal a great deal about gender relationships in the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century. The struggles of the novel's central female character, Margarita, underline the difficulties women faced in attaining spiritual, sexual, and social fulfilment in a society devoid of any kind of spiritual life, equality, or truthfulness.

This essay focuses on probing the complexities of Dostoevsky’s influence on Nabokov through the consideration of female characters in Laughter in the Dark and Lolita. The discussion centers on the development of characters and on the issue of the apotheosis of the Russian woman, which Nabokov inherits from Dostoevsky, as both are members of the ‘lesser tradition’ in Russian literature. Through the discussion of key concepts such as poshlost and the figure of pravednisa, the essay articulates the main intertextual similarities and differences between the writers, positing that Nabokov developed the stock female characters through adding dimensionality through them and giving them status as people in their own right, something that Dostoevsky did not aspire to in his Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, despite his focus on morality. The discussion is focused mainly on mothers and children by way of exploring the central issue of cancelled children and mothers in both Laughter in the Dark and Lolita. I argue that despite Nabokov’s protestations against his precursor, Dostoevsky had a tangible impact on his works that informed the former’s portrayal of his heroines. Nabokov took the tradition further, however, by transporting and transplanting these figures into an American milieu, which imbues the notion of poshlost and the pravednitsa figure with new meanings, as the women have the possibility to encounter American consumerism of the mid-20th century.

My aim is to elucidate the disability studies connection to The Sound and the Fury with particular regard to history and memory, and the ways in which such a focus can shift our critical understanding of Faulkner’s work, deepen our engagement with his characters as well as the ways in which it can reshape our understanding of the South. I argue that it is not only significant to view Benjy from the point of view of a disabled person with autism, rather than an ‘idiot’, but also that such a view can enrich our understanding of the human experience overall, given his unique experience of temporality, which affords him access to a non-traditional view of the world, and which has affinities with a Bergsonian conception of time.

... can relate to: what it's like to grow up in a perfect world and then come to terms with reality,” 2 Yiddish with George and Laura satirizes the ... The popularization of Yiddish books for a non-Yiddish-speaking audience began in 1968 with Leo Rosten's bestselling The Joys of Yiddish ...

Ðàøåëü Ìèðîíîâíà Õèí è áåãñòâî îò «òîðãîâêè» Ðàøåëü Ìèðîíîâíà Õèí è áåãñòâî îò «òîðãîâêè» Àìåëèÿ Ãëåéçåð  1884 ãîäó ðóññêèé åâðåéñêèé aeóðíàë «Âîñõîä» îïóáëèêîâàë ðàññêàç ìîëîäîé ïèñàòåëüíèöû Ðàøåëü Ìèðîíîâíû Õèí «Íå êî äâîðó» î ìîëîäîé åâðåéñêîé aeåíùèíå, êîòîðàÿ ðàçðûâàåòñÿ ìåaeäó òùàòåëüíî âçëåëåÿííîé ðóññêîé âåëèêîñâåòñêîé èäåíòè÷íîñòüþ è ñìóòíî îñîçíàâàåìûì åâðåéñêèì ïðîèñõîaeäåíèåì. ßâëÿÿñü ñðàâíèòåëüíî íîâûì èìåíåì â ëèòåðàòóðå, Õèí íå áûëà ñîâñåì óae íåèçâåñòíîé â ñðåäå ìîñêîâñêîé ðóññêîé èíòåëëèãåíöèè. Áóäó÷è äî-÷åðüþ åâðåéñêîãî êóïöà, Õèí âûðîñëà â Ìîñêâå, è â ñîöèàëüíîé èåðàðõèè òîãî âðåìåíè îíà íàõîäèëàñü íà îäíîì óðîâíå ñ òàêèìè èçâåñòíûìè ëè÷íîñòÿìè, êàê, íàïðèìåð, Âëàäèìèð Ñîëîâüåâ, Ìàêñèì Ãîðüêèé, Ëåîíèä Àíäðååâ, Èâàí Òóðãåíåâ. Ìîëîäàÿ ïèñàòåëüíèöà áûëà ðåäêîé åâðåéñêîé ïðåäñòàâèòåëüíèöåé ðóññêîé èíòåëëèãåíöèè, ñóùåñòâîâàâøåé, ïî ñëîâàì Êýðîë Áåéëèí, â ïðîìåaeóòêå ìåaeäó 1880-ìè ãîäàìè è 1917-ì ãîäîì 1 .

This article examines shared metaphors in Yiddish poems about lynchings and pogroms in 1930s. Leftist Yiddish poets in particular often equated lynching victims, as well as pogrom victims, to Jesus. The poet Berish Weinstein serves as case, for he used strikingly similar motifs in his poems about anti-Semitic and anti-Black violence. It is no coincidence that a rise in poems about race violence occurred during the most heated years of the Scottsboro trial, an event that became a symbol of American racism for the Communist Party. Yiddish writing about violence against African Americans reveals the commitment of many Jews in the 1930s to move from ethnic particularism toward leftist universalism. However, this examination of shared poetic motifs shows that in writing about racism in America, many Jews were also implicitly responding to the rise of Nazism in Europe.

The Soviet Yiddish poet Dovid Hofshteyn (1889-1952) is one of the best-known Yiddish-language modernist writers. During the 1930s, however, Hofshteyn's primary literary genre was translation, particularly from Russian and Ukrainian—languages he knew well enough to have written poetry in himself. This article addresses Hofshteyn's translations of the Ukrainian Romantic poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) into Yiddish. Hofshteyn's translations of Shevchenko appeared primarily in the 1930s, years of increased strictures on Soviet original poetry—especially the poetry of Soviet minorities. These translations, however, exemplify a creative appropriation of a neighboring culture in order to express contemporary concerns about Jewish culture. As this article shall demonstrate, translation from Ukrainian allowed Hofshteyn to express modern Jewish themes of alienation in terms acceptable to the increasingly Russo-centric world of Soviet internationalism.

Nonna Mendelevna Slepakova (1936-1998) spent her life in the Petrograd region of the city she saw transform from Leningrad to St. Petersburg. These three poems, "Things," "To the Memory of a Lampshade," and "The Plain" capture her fascination with the transcendental possibilities of everyday objects.