Project MUSE®: Interdisciplinary Literary Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies.daily12026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 14 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Interdisciplinary Literary StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Interdisciplinary Literary Studies2161-427X1524-8429Latest articles in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Poetics and Politics of Coffee and Tea in Mahmoud Darwish's Works
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988734
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Coffee has long occupied a venerable status within Arab culture, deeply intertwined with anthropological constructs of hospitality, generosity, and social connection. In terms of its linguistic genealogy, Arab consciousness has been cognizant of the signifier coffee since the pre-Islamic era. Ancient linguistic archives suggest its initial usage as a descriptor for wine, indicating an early semantic shift that endowed the term with polyvalent connotations. This semantic lineage is illuminated by Ibn Manzur (2016, 721) in his Lisan al-Arab, where he elaborates that "Al-Qahwa (coffee) is tantamount to wine, so named because it incites the consumer to abstain from food, suggesting an appetite-suppressing effect." The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallThe Poetics and Politics of Coffee and Tea in Mahmoud Darwish's Works2026-04-29text/htmlen-USThe Poetics and Politics of Coffee and Tea in Mahmoud Darwish's Works2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®833392026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29Narrative Desecration: The Satanic Verses and the Aesthetic Logic of Islamophobia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988735
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Since its emergence in 1988, The Satanic Verses has remained lodged in the global semiotics of censure, sacrilege, and Islamic indignation. The dominant framing persists in its symmetry: liberal secularity against religious fundamentalism, expressive freedom against theological outrage. Within this schema, the novel is refigured as secular martyrdom, wounded but defiant, its author transformed from novelist into emblem, and Islam diminished from living tradition into reactive monolith (Mondal 2014, 1–3; Asad 2003, 200–202; Mahmood 2005, xv–xvii). Yet this dialectic conceals the novel's aesthetic complicity in the Islamophobic grammar it provokes.The question is not whether The Satanic Verses incites offense, but
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallNarrative Desecration: The Satanic Verses and the Aesthetic Logic of Islamophobia2026-04-29text/htmlen-USNarrative Desecration: The Satanic Verses and the Aesthetic Logic of Islamophobia2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®1236262026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29The Financial Regime and Rapacious Banking in William Makepeace Thackeray's The Newcomes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988736
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The frequent appearance of the crooked bankers and financiers in the nineteenth-century literary texts is closely related to the periodic financial crises and cash panics clouding the nineteenth century. Wagner (2010, 1) demonstrates how "financial instability" set "an immensely popular set of motifs" in motion in the nineteenth-century England in her influential book, Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction. The increase in the narratives of financial ruin does not only reflect Victorian concerns over financial speculation, but also those concerns over heavy reliance on credit, the finance oligarchy, and the future of wealth. Among the narratives that reflect skeptically on England's financial transformation
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallThe Financial Regime and Rapacious Banking in William Makepeace Thackeray's The Newcomes2026-04-29text/htmlen-USThe Financial Regime and Rapacious Banking in William Makepeace Thackeray's The Newcomes2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®629752026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29The Gilded Cage: A Philosophical Critique of Anora's Acclaimed Immorality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988737
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In the landscape of contemporary cinema, few films achieved the meteoric success of Sean Baker's Anora. Crowned with the Palme d'Or at Cannes and subsequently showered with accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, it was hailed as a vibrant, humanistic portrayal of life on the fringes, propelled by a "star-making" performance and Baker's signature raw energy. Critics celebrated its "dark comedy," its "breathless pace," and its unflinching look at class, power, and transactional relationships in modern America. Yet, beneath this glittering surface of critical adoration and industry validation lies a profoundly disquieting core.How does a film depicting coercion, implicit trafficking, constant
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallThe Gilded Cage: A Philosophical Critique of Anora's Acclaimed Immorality2026-04-29text/htmlen-USThe Gilded Cage: A Philosophical Critique of Anora's Acclaimed Immorality2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®588092026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29Artificial Intelligence and Animism: Explorations in Digital Humanities
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988738
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The evolution of humanity from time immemorial demonstrates man's inability to exist without depending on his environment for varied forms of support and subsistence. This support and subsistence could be economic or spiritual. Although the economic provenance of man's relationship with nature is more widely known and acclaimed, the historical milieu of his spiritual inclination also stakes a huge claim in the man-nature existential interface. Whether we view man's relationship with nature within economic or spiritual parameters, there is undeniable evidence of his dominance over nature from these dualistic orientations. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition recounted in the Biblical book of Genesis1:26, God
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallArtificial Intelligence and Animism: Explorations in Digital Humanities2026-04-29text/htmlen-USArtificial Intelligence and Animism: Explorations in Digital Humanities2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®826352026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29Geographical Imaginations: Literature and the "Spatial Turn" by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988739
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Geographical Imaginations: Literature and the "Spatial Turn" by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda offers a concise and accessible introduction to the diverse ways in which place and space are represented in literature. With its focus on geocriticism and spatial humanities, this work provides both a theoretical framework and practical examples by revisiting familiar canonical texts. The exploration of the mutual influence between space and human emotion leads to a more profound comprehension of place as an essential aspect of human experience. There is no denying that spatial humanities is a well-established arena in research, but the book observes that "it is still in a nascent stage in India" (xi).Anita
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/555/image/coversmallGeographical Imaginations: Literature and the "Spatial Turn" by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda (review)2026-04-29text/htmlen-USGeographical Imaginations: Literature and the "Spatial Turn" by Indranil Acharya and Ujjwal Kumar Panda (review)2026-04-292026TWOProject MUSE®191662026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-29