 |
2009 | |
 |
semiannually | |
 |
English | |
|
Literature, Film |
|
 |
1803-7720 | |
 |
||
Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Editorial Board |
||
 |
||
The Moravian Journal of Literature and Film welcomes contributions in literary, film, and cultural studies exploring all aspects of the disciplines. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. Send essays electronically to moravianjournal@upol.cz, or, mail printed essays accompanied by a compact disc with the electronic version to Moravian Journal of Literature and Film, Department of English and American Studies, Philosophical Faculty, Palack� University, Olomouc, Kř��kovsk�ho 10, 771 47 Olomouc, Czech Republic. Essays should conform to the humanities style (notes and bibliography), as defined in the current edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. A stylesheet is available on the journal’s website. The editors can assume no responsibility for loss of manuscripts. Manuscripts shall not be submitted simultaneously elsewhere. |
||
 |
||
Moravian Journal of Literature and Film moravianjournal@upol.cz |
||
Moravian Journal of Literature and Film
|
The Moravian Journal of Literature and Film, founded in 2009, is a Czech scholarly journal whose objective is to be a platform for an intersection of literary and film history, criticism, and theory. The journal examines literatures and films in any language, thus merging both regional and universal themes. The journal is published in English, has been peer-reviewed since its foundation, and has two issues a year. |
Fall 2010, Volume 2, Number 1
Polk County: Zora Neale Hurston's Black South and the Quest for a "real Negro theater"
The article investigates the ways in which the African American author Zora Neale Hurston draws a texturally rich image of the black South that is shaped by tensions between minstrel stereotypes of black American communities and what she perceives to be authentic Negro folklore. The analysis focuses on Hurston's play Polk County (1944) because of its setting and its concern with the performance of southern black vernacular -- an element Hurston believes to be characteristic of "Negro expression."
The Quest for Roots and Belonging in Contemporary American Biography
This essay deals with a fairly recent development in American literature and culture, which plays a part in the ongoing debate around a possible apology for slavery: the emergence of autobiographical narratives dealing with the attempt to find one's roots and, possibly, those family members who have not usually been acknowledged by the family because of their existence on the other, opposite side of the "color line." After a brief introduction to the importance of biracial heritage in contemporary America, the article focuses on factors that may have contributed to the emergence of these biographies before providing a short comparison of the narratives through the common motif of the family secret. In the conclusion, it outlines the importance of these narratives in the context of passing on American history to the younger generations.
Putting the Dynamic Past to Everyday Use in the Fiction of Southern Women Writers
From its beginnings American literature has displayed an ambivalent coexistence of the idealistic impulse to eradicate the past and a conservative reverence for it as a sacred guide for the present and the future. Southern writers have traditionally stood out for their love-hate relationship with their region's past. This essay traces some of the ambivalences with respect to the past in southern women writers. Both Ellen Glasgow and Bobbie Ann Mason, from different periods and backgrounds, initially made their break with the past and tradition central to their identity as writers. Glasgow came to reject modern values later in her career, whereas Mason has recently become much tamer in her rejection of the past and has come to cherish the family tradition as a source of personal renewal and as a guide for the present. Other contemporary southern women writers, like Lee Smith or Alice Walker, also see the past not as an altar on which to expiate the guilt of their region's history but as something directly related to them and as a useful source of renewal for their present lives and those of their characters.
Black and White Identity in Today's Southern Novel
The essay deals with race, prejudice, and identity in two 2009 novels: Percival Everett's I Am Not Sidney Poitier and Madison Smartt Bell's Devil's Dream. Both novelists attach importance to skin color; they make ready use of the ethnic reality in past and present lives and its presence in fiction, TV, movies, and history. The novelists' common goal is to irritate everybody with preconceived racial notions into thought.
Memories of Child Abuse in Jim Grimsley's Dan Crell Trilogy
The essay explores the theme of child abuse in Jim Grimsley's early fiction, namely in the three novels sometimes known as the Dan Crell trilogy: Winter Birds, My Drowning, and Comfort & Joy. Four forms of abuse can be identified in the trilogy: sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and abuse by neglect. Important themes of the novels include the role of memory in coping with the trauma of child abuse later in adulthood as well as the influence of past abuse on family dynamics. In the individual novels, the author uses various narrative situations and techniques in order to explore the way memory works.
Theater of Identity: The Buddha of Suburbia
This essay studies the issues of subjectivity and identity in The Buddha of Suburbia, the debut novel by the British Asian writer Hanif Kureishi. The categories of subjectivity and identity are analyzed as power effects of the predominant discourses of ethnicity, race, class and gender. The analysis is primarily focused on the novel's main character Karim Amir, whose life trajectory it traces and demonstrates how Karim's self-perception is shaped by forces outside the grasp of his will, yet malleable by his extraordinary skill of mimicry, which he practices consciously as a way of finding his place in the white English mainstream society, and unconsciously as a political gesture against the forces of colonialism, neocolonialism and capitalism. Theoretical standpoints from the work of Homi K. Bhabha and Judith Butler are used to reveal Karim and other members of his family as hybrid characters who challenge Cartesian notions of identity and subjectivity.
Showing Faith: Catholicism in American TV Series
According to Colleen McDannell, Catholicism stands above all other religions for the film and TV audience because it seems to be the most mystical and the most easily recognizable of all religious creeds; however, it is also the most criticized and suspicious denomination. Since Catholics star on the big screen, as well as on the flat screen in American homes, it is useful to have a close look at the different depictions of Catholicism and their criticism by institutions. Using examples from movies such as Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino as well as TV series such as Ally McBeal, Bones, The West Wing and The Simpsons, this article discusses the fascination with Catholicism on the screen and argues that even depictions seen as negative by the Catholic League do not necessarily harm Catholicism.
Review of Franke, Astrid. Pursue the Illusion: Problems of Public Poetry in America. European Views of the United States 2. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag WINTER, 2010. 281 p. ISBN 978-3-8253-5751-1.
Review of Literary Childhoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature, edited by Šárka Bubíková. Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice; Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008. 176 p. ISBN 978-80-7395-091-0.
Other Issues
Fall 2014, Volume 5, Number 2
Spring 2012, Volume 3, Number 2
Fall 2011, Volume 3,, Number 1
Spring 2011, Volume 2, Number 2
Spring 2010, Volume 1, Number 2
Fall 2009, Volume 1, Number 1