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How to Survive Totalitarianism. Lessons from Hannah Arendt (2023)
Journal Article
Roth, Z. (2023). How to Survive Totalitarianism. Lessons from Hannah Arendt. New Literary History, 54(2), 1059-1083

In the wake of the Trump election, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism garnered renewed attention. In it, she argues that totalitarian ideology "is severed from the world individuals perceive through the five senses "and insists on a 'truer' r... Read More about How to Survive Totalitarianism. Lessons from Hannah Arendt.

“You can change your noses, but you can’t change your Moses”: Olfactory Aesthetics and the Jewish “Race” (2019)
Journal Article
Roth, Z. (2019). “You can change your noses, but you can’t change your Moses”: Olfactory Aesthetics and the Jewish “Race”. Esprit Créateur, 59(2), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.2019.0017

This article shifts the analysis of the ‘Jewish’ nose away from its visual significance to its olfactory capacity. It develops the notion of an olfactory aesthetics as a way of becoming attuned to the role smell plays in the interpretation of racial... Read More about “You can change your noses, but you can’t change your Moses”: Olfactory Aesthetics and the Jewish “Race”.

War of Images or Images of War? Visualizing History in Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (2017)
Journal Article
Roth, Z. (2017). War of Images or Images of War? Visualizing History in Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. Journal of modern literature, 41(1), 81-99. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.41.1.06

The Kindly Ones (2006), a French novel written by the American author Jonathan Littell, explores the Holocaust from a perpetrator's point of view. The novel is replete with detailed historical analysis and intertextual references, but its narrative i... Read More about War of Images or Images of War? Visualizing History in Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones.

Negating the Family: Ritual and Dionysus in modernist utopia (2016)
Journal Article
Ní Dhúill, C. (2016). Negating the Family: Ritual and Dionysus in modernist utopia. Cultural Dynamics, 28(1), 55-68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0921374015623389

Formations such as gangs stand in a complex relationship to other, more conventional or socially normative groupings and collectives, such as the family. This article probes the gang’s function as a kind of alternative family and as a lens through wh... Read More about Negating the Family: Ritual and Dionysus in modernist utopia.

Refusing the Child: Weininger, Edelman, Kertész (2016)
Journal Article
Ní Dhúill, C. (2016). Refusing the Child: Weininger, Edelman, Kertész. Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication, 37(3), 369-385. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-3599315

If human reproduction is a realm of future-making practice, its refusal or absence effects a reconceptualization of the future. The article examines three very different refusals of the child: the idealist antinatalism of Otto Weininger's Sex and Cha... Read More about Refusing the Child: Weininger, Edelman, Kertész.

Bodily Dis-Ease in Contemporary French Women’s Writing: Two Case Studies (2015)
Journal Article
Cairns, L. (2015). Bodily Dis-Ease in Contemporary French Women’s Writing: Two Case Studies. French Studies, 69(4), 494-508. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knv150

This article examines two twenty-first-century autobiographical accounts of the intense — and ultimately life-threatening — mental and bodily dis-ease endured by two young French women from adolescence into early adulthood. Annick Loupias's La Tortue... Read More about Bodily Dis-Ease in Contemporary French Women’s Writing: Two Case Studies.

Righteous Realism Versus Postmodern Play: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in Female-Authored French Fiction (2014)
Journal Article
Cairns, L. (2014). Righteous Realism Versus Postmodern Play: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in Female-Authored French Fiction. Modern and Contemporary France, 22(1), 71-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.867151

This article analyses literary mediations of francophone Jewish attitudes towards Israel, and particularly towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its primary corpus comprises two female-authored novels published during the Second Intifada: Olivia... Read More about Righteous Realism Versus Postmodern Play: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in Female-Authored French Fiction.

Vita brevis, ars longa: ekphrasis, the art object, and the consumption of the subject in Henry James and Michel Houellebecq (2013)
Journal Article
Roth, Z. (2013). Vita brevis, ars longa: ekphrasis, the art object, and the consumption of the subject in Henry James and Michel Houellebecq. Word and Image, 29(2), 139-156. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2013.774982

In Henry James's The Wings of the Dove and Michel Houellebecq's La Carte et le territoire, the art object serves a double function: it encapsulates the materiality of the object and the signification of art, referring to both its aesthetic existence... Read More about Vita brevis, ars longa: ekphrasis, the art object, and the consumption of the subject in Henry James and Michel Houellebecq.

Against Representation: Death, Desire, and Art in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal (2012)
Journal Article
Roth, Z. (2012). Against Representation: Death, Desire, and Art in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. Philip Roth studies, 8(1), 95-100

In Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal (2001), desire is figured as the revenge of death for the aging libertine David Kepesh. Embodying the object of his desire as a work of art allows him to harmlessly enjoy the volupté of death. The mimesis of art, how... Read More about Against Representation: Death, Desire, and Art in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.

Calibrating Queer in the work of Didier Eribon. (2012)
Journal Article
Cairns, L. (2012). Calibrating Queer in the work of Didier Eribon. French Cultural Studies, 23(2), 104-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155812436530

The first aim of this article is to provide an overview of Didier Eribon’s unique input to lesbian and gay politics and studies in France. The second aim is to examine the contours of his engagement with and critique of queer, bearing in mind that qu... Read More about Calibrating Queer in the work of Didier Eribon..

'La Mémoire de la Shoah': the Contentious Case of Soazig Aaron's 'Le Non de Klara'. (2010)
Journal Article
Cairns, L. (2010). 'La Mémoire de la Shoah': the Contentious Case of Soazig Aaron's 'Le Non de Klara'. French Studies, 64(4), 438-450. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knq104

Soazig Aaron's Le Non de Klara (2002) is a prize-winning novel about an Auschwitz survivor and has been greatly lauded, by Jorge Semprún among others. This article attempts to convey the novel's status as a literary artefact of high aesthetic quality... Read More about 'La Mémoire de la Shoah': the Contentious Case of Soazig Aaron's 'Le Non de Klara'..