There is a view that the African verbal genre is not literature and its nature does not include bodily performance; it belongs to sociology and not literature because literature is the art that is written while African verbal genre is presented orally. Thus, the present study aims to demonstrate that, despite its oral nature, the African verbal genre is both literature and oral performance that includes bodily performance and that its literary and performative constituents synergize to achieve the purpose of the genre.

There is an urgent need to teach “Writing for Publications” classes to graduate and doctoral students. Though the debate about who should instruct such classes continues, the paper proffers best practices for writing instructors to use while teaching it. The paper highlights the need for scholar-participants to opt for modeling as a way to familiarize themselves with disciplinary and journal conventions. The paper expands on the way online peer review workshops could be conducted at milestone points in the semester to elevate and formalize peer reviews, so integral to the publication process. A sample syllabus with week-by-week activity break-up is offered.

This research paper is my attempt, through a blow-by-blow analysis of a fictional work of a rising star in postcolonial writing, to grapple with the manifold discontents that attend the event of migration. Migration is an astoundingly painful experience to go through, whose multifaceted toll on the subject may be beyond repair. Using NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New names as a stepping-stone, I argue that migration, albeit a time-honoured phenomenon has picked up speed in the twentieth-century and continued into the twenty-first century with a most heavy human toll. The paper emphasizes that even though the act of migration is underpinned by a hope for betterment, it may turn out to be a damp squid. No end of landmines and hiccups dot the migratory journey. The long-suffering postcolonial subject, hallmarked by the stifling strictures of marginality owing to a long history of race-based oppression that stretches back to the gruesome eras of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonization, is on the receiving end of the horrors of migration. I tap into key terms in postcolonial theory cum sociology-informed perspectives to make a valid point about the dehumanizing fallout from the migratory experience.

Anne Sexton’s poem “The Double Image” is explored, delving into the complexities of the role of the author as confessional poet, daughter, mother, and anorectic. This piece begins by noting the differences between the final published piece and the earlier drafts of the poem, focusing on the subtle differences and attempting to decipher why these changes were made. The significance of Sexton’s childhood home in the poem is noted, as this is seen to infantilise the author and creates a narcissistic regression often seen in anorectic patients. Sexton’s recurrent mouth imagery is addressed, as it is the gateway for food (or lack thereof) and plays a crucial role in the works of Sexton throughout her work and life. This topic is further developed into using hunger and eating metaphorically by Sexton, noting that as a daughter she engulfed everything in her mother’s world. The placement of the portraits in the poem is another aspect that Sexton changes consistently throughout the drafts and this piece delves into theories of the significance the position of the portraits might have had. This piece ends with the importance the color green has for the author in her work, possibly linking it to the choice of using green for the wicked within the original technicolor version of The Wizard of Oz (LeRoy & Fleming, 1939).

This paper aims to compare the poetic styles and views on human nature of three literary giants in English literature, namely, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. As the three men of letters almost lived in the same age and they were all fond of writing on human nature, it will be very interesting to compare their respective styles and views on this issue. Since no previous studies have been found on this topic, this paper will be of great significance in exploring how their individual style and thinking vary from one another. Through close textual analysis of their representative poetic works, including An Essay on Man by Pope, The Vanity of Human Wishes by Johnson, and finally Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D. by Swift, this paper discovers the extent to which the three great authors differ from one another in their poetic styles and views on human nature. From Alexander Pope to Samuel Johnson and then down to Jonathan Swift, their respective poetic styles drop in formality and start to be increasingly less serious. Their views on human nature, accordingly, become increasingly hopeless and bleak. For Alexander Pope, self-love and reason are the central traits in human nature; to live a righteous life man has to use reason to counterbalance his self-love. For Samuel John, it is vanity that motivates all human actions; to resolve all the unhappiness in human life, however, man must use reason. Therefore, both poets emphasize reason as a combating force against all the ego-centrism inherent in human nature. As for Jonathan Swift, he even did not believe human beings are capable of reason; what he perceives in human nature is mere selfishness. This means that Pope and John are still serious about human nature and believe all the evilness in human nature can be mended or bettered, while Jonathan Swift starts to jeer at it, which signifies his complete loss of faith in human nature. Although they all believe ego-centrism to be intrinsic in human nature, we can conclude that Jonathan Swift, among the three, possesses the bleakest view of human nature.

Human is at the heart of the story of climate change in the Anthropocene where, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty (2012), human behaviors have influenced the environment and created a distinct geological epoch. Current climate change issues are largely human induced. This implies that the human species is now part of the natural history of the planet. In November 2016, Stephen Hawking warned that humanity has 1000 years to leave the earth due to climate change, but in his most recent BBC documentary aired on June 15, 2017 called Expedition New Earth, he suggested humans have just 100 years left before doomsday. In spite of such warnings and writings, Donald Trump withdrew America from the Paris Climate Agreement on June 2017, on the same day, satellite images showed that a huge mass of ice in an area of ??five thousand square kilometres was breaking away from the Antarctic continent under the impact of rising temperature. It seems that Trump’s act is beyond ecological consideration as he believes the agreement could “cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025”. Projections of climate change, however, have shown horrible scenarios involving a central economic metropolis such as New York losing much of its lands because of rising sea levels. The inhabitants of such areas will have to uproot their communities and cultures to move to less vulnerable lands. Thus, it is important to examine how ecoutopian literature is responding to the conditions of the human being in this epoch. In the following interview, Heather Alberro has answered to some questions on climate change, the conditions of human being in the Anthropocene, and the role of literature and culture in relation to environmental issues.

Vengadasalam’s book offers a comparison of the literary and artistic practices and philosophies of three authors, two from India (Rabindranath Tagore and Badal Sircar) and one from Nigeria (Wole Soyinka), by examining their dramatic works: four plays in total, which offer an evaluation of the pre and post-independence national environment. Vengadaslam posits that the existing terminology for examining their work in the postcolonial context is insufficient and suggests a new term: “intercultural” to fully explore the magnitude of these writers’ art and the extent of their influence.

This paper examines some tenets in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry and shows how poets such as Ibrahim Ibn Khafaja (1058-1138) and William Wordsworth (1770 –1850) used nature as a motif in their poetry. Relying on a historical approach, this paper links smaller features such as themes and literary devices in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry with larger features, including genre, traditions, and cultural system. I argue that the emphasis on both the larger and smaller features of poetry creates what Franco Moretti calls “distant reading.” Comparing and contrasting Ibn Khafaja’s “the Mountain” and Wordsworth’s “the Daffodils,” for instance, introduces nature as a recurrent theme in both Andalusian and Romantic literary traditions, reinforcing Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s description of poetry as a common possession of humanity” (Goethe 229). In addition to that, comparing the images and themes in both the Andalusian and Romantic poetry not only shows internally linked meanings, but it creates what Cesar Domínguez, et al, call “a space for polyglottism, multidisciplinarity, scholarly collaboration” (75). Reading these works and movements closely and distantly serves as a cross-cultural dialogue between the Arabic and English poetic conventions. While Ibn Khafaja and Wordsworth lived in different places and times, wrote in different languages, and did not have the same socio-political circumstances, their poems show the richness and multiplicity of the historical experience of world literature.

There is an urgent need to teach “Writing for Publications” classes to graduate and doctoral students. Though the debate about who should instruct such classes continues, the paper proffers best practices for writing instructors to use while teaching it. The paper highlights the need for scholar-participants to opt for modeling as a way to familiarize themselves with disciplinary and journal conventions. The paper expands on the way online peer review workshops could be conducted at milestone points in the semester to elevate and formalize peer reviews, so integral to the publication process. A sample syllabus with week-by-week activity break-up is offered.

This research paper is my attempt, through a blow-by-blow analysis of a fictional work of a rising star in postcolonial writing, to grapple with the manifold discontents that attend the event of migration. Migration is an astoundingly painful experience to go through, whose multifaceted toll on the subject may be beyond repair. Using NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New names as a stepping-stone, I argue that migration, albeit a time-honoured phenomenon has picked up speed in the twentieth-century and continued into the twenty-first century with a most heavy human toll. The paper emphasizes that even though the act of migration is underpinned by a hope for betterment, it may turn out to be a damp squid. No end of landmines and hiccups dot the migratory journey. The long-suffering postcolonial subject, hallmarked by the stifling strictures of marginality owing to a long history of race-based oppression that stretches back to the gruesome eras of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonization, is on the receiving end of the horrors of migration. I tap into key terms in postcolonial theory cum sociology-informed perspectives to make a valid point about the dehumanizing fallout from the migratory experience.