Paul Muldoon

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Karhio
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
21St Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Paul Muldoon ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Irish Poetry

Paul Muldoon was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, in 1951 and spent his childhood in the village of Moy at the border of County Armagh and County Tyrone—a setting for several of his poems. He studied at Queen’s University Belfast and published his first collections of poetry in the early 1970s. At the time of the publication of his first volumes, Muldoon famously enjoyed the mentorship of Seamus Heaney, and this biographical and literary connection has been a constant reference point in criticism, to an extent that other significant literary exchanges and influences initially remained underexplored. After working for the BBC in Belfast until the mid-1980s, Muldoon moved to the United States in 1987. Now a US citizen, he currently lives in New York and works at Princeton University, where he holds the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 chair in the humanities. Muldoon has published twenty-two major collections of poetry, nineteen chapbooks and interim collections, two volumes of critical essays, three opera libretti, song lyrics, translations, and children’s literature. He has been repeatedly characterized as a shapeshifting figure, whose work simultaneously reaffirms and undermines preheld conceptions of what we mean by “Irish poetry.” Thus, to propose that his idiosyncratic style and the remarkable complexity of his verse resists critical categorization is a case of stating the obvious. A reverse claim, however, might be more appropriate: that his writing embraces such a variety of categories that attempts at classification lose their purpose. Muldoon’s densely referential writing and his technical mastery of poetic language are matched by few poets of his generation, and the issue of how successfully his undeniable dexterity translates into poetic efficacy has been a persistent tendency in his critical reception. Muldoon has been, in turns, praised for his unrivaled skill and technical virtuosity or accused of his poetry’s evasiveness, perceived as a lack of social or political commitment. Yet, few would question that his verse has a place in any overview of modern Irish writing, modern English-language poetry, or experimental 20th- and 21st-century poetics. In the early 21st century, Muldoon’s perceived obliquity, or his distaste for direct political engagement with the crises of late-20th-century Northern Ireland, has made way to a more outspoken approach, in poetry as well as in public life. His work has been highly critical of the US invasion of Iraq, for example, and also tackled problematic aspects of Irish culture and history in an increasingly direct manner.

Medbh McGuckian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Medbh Mcguckian ◽  
Paul Muldoon ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Queen's University ◽  
Ciaran Carson

Medbh McGuckian (born Maeve McCaughan on 12 August 1950) is one of the most prominent members of the second generation of poets who emerged from Northern Ireland during the course of the Troubles (an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century). Her work is often considered alongside that of her Northern Irish contemporaries Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, and Tom Paulin. After receiving her secondary education at a Dominican convent, she studied for an English degree at Queen’s University Belfast (1968–1972). She was taught, along with fellow students Paul Muldoon and Frank Ormsby, by Seamus Heaney. She received her Master of Arts (MA) degree from the same university in 1974. Her first poem, “Marriage,” was published in The Honest Ulsterman in 1975 and, under the pseudonym “Jean Fisher,” she won the National Poetry Competition in 1979 for her poem “The Flitting.” She published two chapbooks in 1980, Portrait of Joanna and Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems, and she received an Eric Gregory Award in the same year. Her first full collection, The Flower Master, was published by Oxford University Press in 1982. Since then she has produced over a dozen single-authored collections of poetry, as well as chapbooks, anthologies, collaborations, translations, and prose works. Her collections of poetry include Venus and The Rain (1984), Marconi’s Cottage (1991), Captain Lavender (1994) and, most recently, Love, The Magician (2018). She was the first woman to hold the post of writer in residence at Queen’s University Belfast (1985–1988) and she has also held a visiting writer position at the University of California, Berkeley (1991). Her early work is notable for its focus on the female body and femininity and, while not relinquishing these, she has turned toward increasingly explicitly political themes since the mid-1990s. The reception of her work has been complicated by two distinguishing divergences from typical practice. The first is the variance of her compositional techniques from that of most of her contemporaries. She frequently employs a collagistic approach, often constructing her poems by combining lines from source material. Several critics (notably Clair Wills and Shane Alcobia-Murphy) have strenuously defended her from the potential accusations of plagiarism that might arise from this practice, focusing instead on the alchemical potential of her techniques of selection and combination. McGuckian’s admirers have drawn attention to the ways in which the words of others are reborn and given new identities and meanings in her poetry. McGuckian has also joined defenders of her work, notably Shane Alcobia-Murphy, in asking why male authors who have engaged in similar practices have not been subjected to the same scrutiny as she has. The sometimes divergent answers that she has given in her many interviews with critics have conditioned the reception of her work. Unsympathetic responses to her strange, discontinuous poems started to appear in the early 1980s and continue in the early 21st century. However, despite the necessity of, at times, challenging routes to its appreciation, her poetry has been widely praised and recognized as well, with several critics hailing her as a major contemporary voice in Irish poetry.

Wonder, Horror, Mystery: Letters on Cinema and Religion in Malick, Von Trier, and Kieślowski

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Meis ◽  
J.M. Tyree
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Life Meaning ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Lars Von Trier ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
Film Critic

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride.

scholarly journals War in the 21st century as a tool of the imperial control of planetary “periphery”

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-431
Author(s):  
Srdjan Korac
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Defensive Role ◽  
State Actors

The paper analyses how the (mis)use of the concept of international society in the context of the US and other Western countries` foreign policies legitimises an alleged defensive role of the interventionist imperial policy towards rogue, weak and failed states, as well as towards various non-state actors who contest the universality of liberal order. The starting assumption is that the asymmetric character of armed conflicts in the late 20th and early 21st century - combined with notions of international society, democratic peace, and world division into the ?civilised? (liberal) centre and ?uncivilised? periphery - has conditioned the planning and waging wars as disciplinary tools of the Western imperial control policy which is asserted over planetary periphery. The analysis focuses on several indicators which reveal how the methodology of the policing, the criminal justice system and the penalty system is embedded into the ontology of military interventions pursued by the United States, alone or within ad hoc coalitions with other Western and/or regional powers. The author concludes that war as a social practice lost in the early 21st century its traditional ontological features by assuming the structural characteristics of crime control policy, which caused the disruption of the ethical framework in the discursive and practical treatment of hostile states and their soldiers and non-state actors.

scholarly journals Accounting for Student Success: Academic and Stakeholder Perspectives That Have Shaped the Discourse on Student Success in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor M. H. Borden ◽  
Gretchen C. Holthaus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Student Success ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
College Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Time To Degree ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Stakeholder Perspectives

Abstract The meaning of student success differs according to the goals, interests and roles among prospective students, their parents and extended family, educators, scholars, employers, legislators and other stakeholders. Despite this wide variation, accountability for student success has been mostly equated with readily available measures like degree completion rates, time to degree and credit accumulation. Recently, especially in the United States, where the student assumes a large cost burden for attending college, interest has increased regarding the amount of debt incurred and the employment and wages obtained post-graduation to enable students to pay off that debt. There are many from within and outside the academy who criticize these simplistic measures of student success and seek evidence about how a college education develops students intellectually and morally, preparing them to lead lives as productive citizens and members of the 21st Century workforce. In this article, we review the key concepts of student success that have emerged from the U.S. higher education research literature, as well as major U.S. policy initiatives related to improving student success. The purpose of this analysis is to develop an organizing framework that enables scholars and policy makers to place their work within a broader context as related to the discourse on student success in the early 21st Century, especially within the United States, but with increasingly common elements internationally.

What is “Toxic Masculinity” and Why Does it Matter?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2094325
Author(s):  
Dr. Carol Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Gender Hierarchies ◽  
The Early 21St Century ◽  
Men's Movements

Coined in late 20th-century men’s movements, “toxic masculinity” spread to therapeutic and social policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia, and men’s violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context. However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term’s origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualizing discourses that have historically targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender hierarchies and individualize responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.

Researcher Development and Skills Training within the Context of Postgraduate Programs

Education ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Denicolo ◽  
Dawn C. Duke ◽  
Julie Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Doctoral Education ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Research Report ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Researcher Development

Rapid, unprecedented transformation in the policy and procedures of doctoral education since the turn of the millennium has resulted in considerable global debate in the higher-education sector about the nature and purpose of researcher development. Previously, despite differences among national groups (e.g., European, the UK and North American models of preparation for research and the examination procedures), general researcher development was firmly under the guidance of the research supervisor/advisor (“supervisor” used henceforth). Although opportunities for methods training or thesis compilation advice, for example, might be available within the department or institution, the basic apprenticeship model was pervasive with acknowledgement, particularly in the United States, of doctoral students being the future stewards of the discipline. Literature providing this historical background (Historical Context) and delineating policy initiatives (Policy) that emerged since the start of the 21st century provides the context for the debate. These developments are portrayed variously to postgraduate researchers through handbooks and reviews (Guidance Handbooks for Postgraduate Researchers). The current debate about the purpose of the doctorate and the nature of “doctorateness” has been fueled by how that policy has been interpreted into practice within the section Debate. The challenge to traditional pedagogical protocols resulted in the incorporation into research education of models of learning/teaching from other education spheres (Pedagogical Models), while the expansion both of the number and diversity of doctoral candidates resulted in the emergence of different forms of doctorate, each with its own procedural variances: see Professional Doctorates (also known as industrial doctorates) and Interdisciplinary Doctorates. One significant modification has been the emphasis shift from the production of a scholarly research report (thesis or dissertation as a monograph or coherent collection of publications with an overview)—a defense of process and results—to one giving equal prominence to the development of the researcher’s attributes and skills for the completion of the doctorate and for future employment (Skills Development). The concept of employability, both within and outside the sector, has in the early 21st century become increasingly prominent in debate and praxis (Employability Skills). The effect on researchers’ program experience and their identity and cultural perceptions (Postgraduate Researcher Experience, Identity and Culture) has evolved as a major source of interest for policymakers and education researchers, while both groups are required to evaluate the structure, functions, outputs, and outcomes of doctoral education (Evaluation). Researcher development as a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the doctorate continues to generate pertinent issues (Emergent Topics). Publications have been selected, as much as possible, from a variety of sources and include a range of disciplinary perspectives and international standpoints as well as leading research and key contributions. Where authors have more than one relevant publication in a section, only a representative one is provided while acknowledging that other work is available. Generally, the review spans the period since the late 20th century, with the subsections emerging from the literature. Each selected reference provides a conduit to further salient literature.

Washington Irving

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Scraba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Hudson Valley ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
History Of

Washington Irving (b. 1783–d. 1859) had a long and diverse career as an author and public figure. Irving first published satirical essays (as “Jonathan Oldstyle”) for his brother Peter’s newspaper in 1802–1803. He collaborated with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding on the 1807–1808 satirical periodical Salmagundi, which was wildly popular in New York. A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), narrated by the fictitious xenophobic historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, was at once an accurate history of New Amsterdam, a satire on Thomas Jefferson’s administration, and a meditation on the writing of history. Irving moved to Europe in 1815 as an agent for his brothers’ business, but after the business went bankrupt in 1818, Irving set about making a living through his writing. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820) was published nearly simultaneously in installments in the United States and the United Kingdom to secure copyright in both; it was an immediate success and was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic. His attempts to follow up this initial success with similar collections of tales and sketches (Bracebridge Hall [1822] and Tales of a Traveller [1824]) met with considerably less commercial and critical success. Invited to Spain in 1824 to translate newly available documents from Columbus’ expeditions, Irving instead produced The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), which became the standard English-language account of Columbus and went through 175 editions in the United States and Europe. Irving’s subsequent travels in southern Spain produced A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and the immensely popular “Spanish Sketch-Book,” The Alhambra (1832). During this period Irving also produced a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, which was eventually published in 1849 as Mahomet and His Successors. Irving finally returned to the United States in 1832, almost immediately participating in an expedition preparing for Indian removal, which was recounted in A Tour on the Prairies (1835). John Jacob Astor then commissioned him to write Astoria (1836), a history of the fur-trading colony, while he also collected materials for another Western narrative, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). Apart from a period as American Minister to Spain (1842–1846), during which he mediated on behalf of Isabella II during the Carlist Wars, Irving spent much of the rest of his life building his Hudson Valley home called Sunnyside. His final work was the monumental five-volume Life of George Washington (1855–1859). Not only was Irving the first American writer to achieve international celebrity, but he served as a US ambassador; revived tourist interest in Andalusia; shaped the profession of authorship in America and Europe; produced the first comprehensive histories of New Amsterdam/New York, Columbus, and the founder of Islam in English; and wrote the first and perhaps best-known American short stories.

The Posthuman Subject in/of Asian American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle N. Huang
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Early 21St Century

Is the posthuman postracial? Posthumanism, an interpretive paradigm that unseats the human individual as the de facto unit of literary analysis, can be a powerful tool for Asian American literary studies when deployed with attention to critical race theory and literary form. Throughout American literature, Asian Americans have frequently been figured as inhuman—alien, inscrutable, and inassimilable. Representations of Asian Americans as either sub- or superhuman populate many genres, including adventure literature, domestic realism, comics, and science fiction. This trope, which combines yellow peril and model minority stereotypes, forms a through line that runs from depictions of Asian Americans as nerveless 19th-century coolies to 21st-century robotic office workers. Manifesting both threat and promise for America, posthuman representations of Asian Americans refract national and racial anxieties about the fading of the United States’ global influence as Asian nations, especially China, become political and economic superpowers. Rather than directly refuting these characterizations, Asian American writers have creatively engaged these same thematics to contemplate how developments in science and technology produce different ways of understanding the human and, concomitantly, engender changes in racial formation. Novelists, dramatists, poets, and artists have all deployed posthumanism in order to conduct imaginative experiments that challenge expectations regarding the typical purview of Asian American literature. Several nodes of inquiry that demonstrate the importance of posthumanist critique for Asian American literary studies include race as an index of humanity, the mutability of race through biotechnology, the amplification of racial inequality through infrastructure, and the reproduction of race through algorithmic culture. In the wake of early 21st-century ecological disaster and biotechnological fragmentation, examining the evolving relationship between Asian American racialization and posthumanism continues to provide important insights into how race is structured by the changing boundaries of the human and, in turn, demonstrates that the posthuman subject is never “beyond” race. In addition to offering an overview, this article provides a case study regarding the stereotyping of Asian Americans as robotic.

The Contemporary Anglophone Romance Genre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsu-Ming Teo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Niche Markets ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Publishing Firm ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Romance Genre ◽  
Romance Novel

The romance genre is geared financially to a female readership worldwide: a genre written and consumed overwhelmingly by women, and with a male readership of around 14 percent. Since the 21st century, romance novels have generated over $1.3 billion dollars in sales per annum in the United States, where one out of four books sold and one out of two mass-market books sold are romance novels. According to romance publishing behemoth Harlequin Mills & Boon, the company publishes 120 new titles each month, drawing from a stable of 200 authors within the UK and a further 1,300 worldwide. A Mills & Boon volume is sold every four seconds in more than one hundred countries, translated into twenty-six languages. But the romance genre consists of more than Harlequin Mills & Boon novels. According to industry definitions in the United States and Australia, a romance novel consists of “a central love story” and “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending” (Romance Writers of America website). As long as these two basic requirements are met, romance novels can have any tone or style (barring a mocking or derisive one) and be set in any time (past, present, or future) or place (in the real world or in a fantasyland). They may include varying degrees of sensuality, from the modest discretion of Christian “inspirationals” to highly explicit descriptions of sexual acts in romantic erotica. They may also overlap with any other genre, such as chick lit, historical, crime, suspense, or thriller. The roots of the romance novel can be traced back to Shakespearean comedies, with the celebratory betrothal of the romantic couple forming the happy ending of such plays as Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or As You Like It. In prose fiction, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) are considered literary forebearers. The modern romance was shaped by British publishing firm Mills & Boon, which became a market leader in the genre by the 1930s with a distribution network in all British Commonwealth countries and colonies in the first half of the 20th century. During the 1950s, Mills & Boon novels began to be distributed in North America by Canadian firm Harlequin, and the two companies merged in 1971 to form the romance publishing powerhouse Harlequin Mills & Boon, which had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when it became the world’s largest publisher of romances, having 80 percent of the world’s market share of fiction. Over time, the genre changed its representations of gender and attitudes toward women’s work and domestic life. The 1970s and 1980s saw a gradual Americanization of the genre as New York firms muscled in on Harlequin Mills & Boon’s territory, publishing historical romances and diversifying contemporary romances to include American romantic protagonists, settings, and themes. The genre also became increasingly sexualized during this period through its depiction of sexual activity. The turn of the 21st century witnessed an increasing fragmentation of the genre as the rise of independent publishers afforded writers and readers the opportunity to explore niche markets: erotica, African American stories, paranormal romances featuring vampires, phoenixes, and werewolves, among other shapeshifting romantic protagonists, and many others.

Drama and Learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Franks
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Societal Level

As ways of making meaning in drama strongly resemble the ways that meanings are made in everyday social life, forms of drama learn from everyday life and, at a societal level, people in everyday life learn from drama. Through history, from the emergence of drama in Western culture, the learning that results at a societal level from the interactions of everyday social life and drama have been noted by scholars. In contemporary culture, electronic and digitized forms of mediation and communication have diversified its content and massively expanded its audiences. Although there are reciprocal relations between everyday life and drama, aspects of everyday life are selected and shaped into the various cultural forms of drama. Processes of selection and shaping crystallize significant aspects of everyday social relations, allowing audiences of and participants in drama to learn and to reflect critically on particular facets of social life. In the 20th century, psychological theories of learning have been developed, taking note of the sociocultural relationships between drama, play, and learning. Learning in and through drama is seen as being socially organized, whole person learning that mobilizes and integrates the bodies and minds of learners. Making signs and meanings through various forms of drama, it is interactive, experiential learning that is semiotically mediated via physical activity. Alongside the various forms of drama that circulate in wider culture, sociocultural theories of learning have also influenced drama pedagogies in schools. In the later part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, drama practices have diversified and been applied as a means of learning in a range of community- and theater-based contexts outside of schooling. Practices in drama education and applied drama and theater, particularly since the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, have been increasingly supported by research employing a range of methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental.

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