Carrie Bekerman
Montaigne among the moderns : receptions of the Essais
Montaigne is one of the most cross-cultural writers ever - both in the assimilation of writings from other cultures into his own work and in the subsequent translations, critical receptions, and creative adaptations of the Essais by other writers throughout the world for the last four hundred years. His work is generally considered as exemplary of the European Renaissance, yet also demonstrates a remarkable relevance to the literary and intellectual activity at the present time.
Verses against the darkness : Pablo Neruda’s poetry and politics
Dawes (Latin American and world literature, North Carolina State U.) offers a new assessment of Neruda's poetry by examining the intersection of his aesthetic views, methods and political radicalism from 1925 to 1954.
New World gold : cultural anxiety and monetary disorder in early modern Spain
The discovery of the New World was initially a cause for celebration. But the vast amounts of gold that Columbus and other explorers claimed from these lands altered Spanish society. The influx of such wealth contributed to the expansion of the Spanish empire, but also it raised doubts and insecurities about the meaning and function of money, the ideals of court and civility, and the structure of commerce and credit.
Baudelaire, Emerson and the French-American connection : contrary affinities
Baudelaire and Emerson, as socially-conscious individualists par excellence, lend themselves remarkably to Marchi's (French and comparative literature, North Carolina State U.) study of how France and the United States have warily borrowed from and dismissed one another in their modern projects of democracy and reconciling the individual with the collective.
CHASS Student of the Month – November 2011
Maria Spivey, November 2011 CHASS Student of the Month.