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Dr Zoe Roth's Outputs (11)

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.

Formal Matters: Embodied Experience in Modern Literature (2022)
Book
Roth, Z. (2022). Formal Matters: Embodied Experience in Modern Literature. Edinburgh University Press

Formal Matters re-examines the postmodernist insistence that the body escapes signification by turning to an unexpected source: early and mid-century formalisms. Bringing together formalism’s endeavour to give shape to the ineffable with postmodernis... Read More about Formal Matters: Embodied Experience in Modern Literature.

“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.

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.