PMLA, vol. 124, no 1 (janvier 2009)

PMLA is the journal of the Modern Language Association of America. Since 1884, PMLA has published members' essays judged to be of interest to scholars and teachers of language and literature. Four issues each year (January, March, May, and October) present essays on language and literature; a Directory issue (September) contains a listing of the association's members, a directory of departmental administrators, and other professional information; and the November issue is the program for the association's annual convention. Each issue of PMLA is sent directly to the nearly 30,000 college and university teachers of English and foreign languages who belong to the association and to about 3,000 libraries throughout the world.

Vol. 124, no 1 (janvier 2009)

Afghanistan Meets the Amazon: Reading The Kite Runner in America

Timothy Aubry

What's So Funny about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Paul Cefalu

Fortunes of the Occhiali Politici in Early Modern Spain: Optics, Vision, Points of View
Enrique García Santo-Tomás

“Imagination's Commonwealth”: Edmund Blunden's Hong Kong Dialogue
Elaine Yee Lin Ho

Shakespeare's Preservation Fantasy
Aaron Kunin

Hegel contra Schlegel; Kierkegaard contra de Man
Ayon Roy

THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES

The Neobaroque and the Americas

New World Baroque, Neobaroque, Brut Barroco: Latin American Postcolonialisms
Lois Parkinson Zamora

The Baroque as a Problem of Thought
William Egginton

Baroque and Neobaroque: Making Thistory
Roland Greene

“¡Vaya Papaya!”: Cuban Baroque and Visual Culture in Alejo Carpentier, Ricardo Porro, and Ramón Alejandro
Monika Kaup

Obscuritas and the Closet: Queer Neobaroque in Mexico
Salvador A. Oropesa

CRITICISM IN TRANSLATION

The Neobaroque and Popular Culture
Carlos Monsiváis. Introduction by Rosa Beltrán. Translation by James Ramey

THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES

Rethinking Simone de Beauvoir for the Twenty-First Century

What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist
Toril Moi

Simone de Beauvoir and Practical Deliberation
Emily R. Grosholz

Simone de Beauvoir, the Paradoxical Intellectual
Lawrence D. Kritzman

Ambiguity and Certitude in Simone de Beauvoir's Politics
Sonia Kruks

“A Scandalous Woman”? Beauvoir in Paris, January 2008
Susan Rubin Suleiman

CRITICISM IN TRANSLATION

Beauvoir and the Risks of Freedom
Julia Kristeva. Introduction by S. K. Keltner. Translation by Catherine Porter

Beauvoir aux risques de la liberté
Julia Kristeva

THE CHANGING PROFESSION

Hemispheric Studies
Ralph Bauer

What Comes after “Post-Soviet” in Russian Studies?
Julie A. Buckler

Second Life, Video Games, and the Social Text
Steven E. Jones

Forum: Conference Debates
Emily Apter, Bruno Bosteels, Peter Fenves, Andrew Parker, and Suzanne Guerlac

Forum
George Bellis, Hillary Chute, Lucas H. Harriman, Z. Esra Mirze, Adam Potkay, Jeffrey C. Robinson, Irving Rothman, and Ben Saunders