bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
East and West in Kim and Gora
Authors: Asfia Ruhul
Published: June 2023

The two novels, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora (1908), explore the different national and cultural perspectives of Eastern and Western writers regarding the representation of India during the British Raj. But the two novels have interesting parallels which are the focus of this paper. Kipling acquired this race-prejudice from his Anglo-Indian community and reinforced imperialistic theories in his writings current in England towards the close of the nineteenth century. He deliberately focused attention on those things in Indian life which would provide a justification for his imperialistic views. In some of his writings he attempted to show the convergence of East and West. but it always resulted in confrontation.

Rabindranath Tagore’s commitment to the nationalist movements originated from his realization of the intense feeling of how miserably Indians felt subordinated during the colonial rule. Tagore’s novel is a scathing exposure of the narrowness, bigotry and stupidity of Hinduism. Where it differs artistically from Kim is that the racial problems in it are treated on a purely human level. In Gora, Rabindranath Tagore speaks for global humanity. But Kipling could not transcend the imperialist ideology in Kim. Tagore’s Gora explores the possibilities of the convergence of East-West but Kipling’s Kim does not let the East and West converge.
The English Linguistic Imperialism
Authors: Nasrin Mahmuda
Published: June 2023

The causes of the current global spread of English is critically analysed in this article. A discussion on the following questions is the basis of this article.

Is English a global language today as a result of policy to make so?

Or is it just an accident?

If, it was planned, then by whom? And why?

If, it was not planned, then how did it get to where it is today?
Teaching ‘Listening‘ as an ‘English Language Skill‘
Authors: Saha Mili
Published: June 2023

Listening skill is elementary for EFL, or ESL learners. It is the most frequently used one among the four skills of a language. Beginners of EFL need more listening input than the other learners. Although English has been taught as a foreign language in our country for long, we can overlook neither the contribution of practising listening in order to be successful nor the failure rooted in its absence in teaching or learning English. So, in this essay I have attempted to discuss the essentiality and utility of listening as a skill in the field of ESL or EFL through depicting the form, variety and necessity of listening, as well as strategies and phases of teaching listening formulating.
Good soldier, better politician, charming lover
Authors: Ahsan Syed Badrul
Published: June 2023

Caesar: Life of a ColossusAdrian GoldsworthyPhoenix: Yale University Press, 2006

Julius Caesar disregarded warnings about the Ides of March. He believed, as Shakespeare would have us know, that he was more dangerous than danger itself. That precisely is what he told his wife Calpurnia when she tried to dissuade him from going to the senate because of the nightmares she had gone through during the preceding night…
Editorial Note
Authors: Editorial Note
Published: June 2023

Crossings: ULAB journal of English StudiesDepartment of English and HumanitiesUniversity of Liberal Arts BangladeshVolume 3, Number 1, Fall2010-Fall2011
Bakha Dismissed by Untouchable or The Internal-Textual Dislocation:
Authors: Gupto Arun
Published: June 2023

The paper aims to reveal how in Mulkaraj Anand’s fiction untouchable the very narrative alienates its hero Bhaka. He thus is doubly marginalized. He is marginalized by the society, the obvious conditionality of a sudra boy in an orthodox location. He again is marginalized by the text/narrative itself of which he is a hero. The narrative dislocates him which I refer to as “internal-textual dislocation.” There are multiple instances of people and their language which dismiss him to the edge where he does not comprehend the situations around.
Enigmatic Arrivals:
Authors: Iqbal Asif
Published: June 2023

In The Enigma of Arrival (1987), V.S. Naipaul evokes a picture of the English countryside of Wiltshire, his residence in England and constantly recalls images of his native Trinidad that are set against the English country atmosphere, ushering the presence of the colony in the post-imperial English countryside. He also attempts to negotiate and reevaluate his colonized ‘self’ with that of his writer’s ‘self’, shaped by imperial standards, hence, creating a sense of anxiety. Naipaul’s anxiety is also seen in the Bangladeshi English writers. While their works challenge the notion that literature can only be produced in one’s mother tongue, they are also susceptible to be branded as elitist. If we look at the works of some litt6rateurs who have consciously chosen English for literary purposes, we will find that their works embrace hybridity and challenge uniform national identity but at the same time the works are exclusive. This paper will look into the works of some post-1971 litterateurs who endorse postcolonial hybridity and whose conscious choice of English for creative writing challenges the notion of uniform Bengali identity. The paper will also show how elitism and alienation often creep into their works.
The Restoration of Feminist Subjectivity in Henrik Ibsen and Rabindranath Tagore
Authors: Chowdhury Mohammad Shahidul Islam
Published: June 2023

Henrik Ibsen (i828-1906) focuses, among other issues, on the individuality in his play A Doll’s House. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), in some of his short stories, depicts the struggle by women to assert their individuality in the patriarchal social structure of the Indian subcontinent. Ibsen and Tagore are from different cultures, but still they have much in common regarding feminist subjectivity. They reveal the anguish of the women of their times and their treatment by the elements of the society. What unites these two writers is that women in society not only become the victims: of oppression but also find a way out of that oppression, and try to establish themselves as individuals. Such struggle attributes universality to the subject-matter in the writings of these two authors. This paper aims at finding the thread that binds together the writings of Ibsen and Tagore from the feminist point of view, and how their female characters fight to assert their individuality in an adverse environment.
Pioneering a Tagore Revival:
Authors: Haq Kaiser
Published: June 2023

Amidst the fanfare and spate of Tagore-related publications prompted by the poet’s sesquicentenary, it may be of some interest to recall slightly earlier attempts to revive his reputation in the Anglophone world in general. From the mid-eighties onwards William Radice, Andrew Robinson and Krishna Dutta brought out translations and studies of Tagore that attracted considerable attention, and also highlighted a problem that has always bedevilled Tagore studies: the contrast between good translations and bad, and between astute and slipshod scholarship.
Theater of Deschooling:
Authors: Raghavan Vellikkeel
Published: June 2023

Safdar Hashmi’s oppositional theateris aimed at dismantling the caste, class, and gender-ridden establishment. It explores a strategic way for the establishment of a society that is free of any biases. In this struggle, Hashmi, as a theater activist with a political purpose, uses theater as his weapon. A communist with an aesthetic bent of mind and an artist who took his theater to the masses, Safdar was the co-founder of the militant political theater oJ’ protest, Jana Natya Manch. His commitment to giving vent to the aspirations of the toiling masses gave his performance and writing a sense of urgency and the need to act purposefully. He proceeded with this fight for justice against exploitations and discriminations from a left leaning point of view. This paper explores Safdar Hashmi’s use of theater to mobilize the public conscience.
Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines as a political Novel
Authors: Wadud Nasihul
Published: June 2023

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines delineates many of the political issues related to the partition of the subcontinent. The paper examines how the narrativitized fiction of Ghosh creates the human story behind the political history that is responsible for the creation of nation-states. It explores various characters across the territorial divides to give a human face to political facts.
Nearing Singularity
Authors: Mortuza Shamsad
Published: June 2023

Ray KurzweilThe Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend BiologyNew York: Penguin, 2005, pp.652Price US$22

Optimism unsettles us. In the departments of English and Humanities, in liberal arts in general, we are trained to critique to prove ourselves human. Humanism, in its garbed guile, teaches us to point out what’s wrong with…
The Quest for Beauty in Rabindranath Tagore’s Poetry
Authors: Islam Mohammad Shafiqul , Mahmud Rashed
Published: June 2023

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) pursued beauty all through his life. In his quest for beauty, he passed through many stages of development. His early poems incorporate sensuous observations of nature. The effect of sensuous magnetism persists, but the soul is awakened towards a greater vista of beauty. The soul keeps searching and comes to the conclusion that mere sensuous beauty is not the goal; it needs a revelation of a deeper meaning. He finds beauty in harmony with the inner and the outer principles of nature midway through his poetic life. It is also at this stage that he finds beauty and truth synonymous. To find the absolute beauty, the Infinite, Tagore reaches the final stage where he discerns God and seeks communion with Him. The paper aims at showing how Tagore sees beauty in every object of this universe; how he correlates beauty and truth; and how he seeks communion with the Infinite, the definitive source of all beauty and truth.
Life, Labor and the Picturesque:
Authors: Sharpe Jenny
Published: June 2023

The keynote address examines the race-gendering of Indian indentured workers in the colonial imaginary through which Jamaica was remade as a tourist destination during the late nineteenth century. It specifically examines the visual portfolio created by photographers of tropical fecundity and idyllic rural life that would dispel the perception of Jamaican plantations being ruined by the emancipation of slaves. While scholars are critical of the Oriental picturesque projected by these photographs, Professor Sharpe makes a case for a “coolie picturesque”depicting Asian Indians as an uprooted people who do not belong in the New World. This colonial imaginary continues to haunt the perception of Indo-Caribbeans as outsiders to the region even until today
Reading Poetry Slam:
Authors: Cho Seo In
Published: June 2023

Poetry slams have recently received critical attention in relation with troubadour tradition, beat generation and Harlem Renaissance. A few studies have analyzed some poems of poetry slams and most of them have set apart script from performance. However we have to pay attention to the performance which is mainly paralinguistic expressions to understand a slam poem comprehensively. A performed poem is distributed not as a written text but as a movie clip that contains the performer’s paralanguage expressions as well as linguistic contents of the poem. The key questions in this respect are: 1) what kind of factors do we consider here and 2) how are multi-sensory poetic words organizedand how can we analyze these works academically. To amplify on the first question, the theater semiotics of Anne Ubersfeld will be partially applied. For the second question, this paper will discuss Andrea Gibson’s “I do” performances based on an analysis of details selected according to the answers of the first question.
The Writer in Exile:
Authors: Haque Rebecca
Published: June 2023

This paper seeks to explore aspects of Anita Brookner’s autobiography and personality which have been recreated in the female protagonists of many of her well-known early novels. Born into a family of European Jews displaced by the Second World War, Brookner projects the collective memory and the life experience — the angst — of the émigré and the refugee. Exile is a legacy of history, a painful inheritance of the Jewish “diaspora.” In Brookner’s fiction, exile is a psychological state of being not restricted by notions of national identity politics. Brookner recreates the difficult patterns of personal survival and provides a unique perspective on cultural dislocation. An acclaimed art historian and academic, the psychological truth of Anita Brookner’s lived experience, of compromise and interrogation of the cultural rift between the European and the British sensibilities, endows her fiction with the attributes of the Künstlerroman. The argument of my paper will be based on ideas borrowed from Edward Said’s famous essay “Reflection on Exile” (2000). I shall examine Anita Brookner’s cultural identity within the tropes of critical discourse inextricably linked to the “community of refugees”: loss, nostalgia, memory (the twin faculties of remembering and forgetting), and trauma.
Uses of (Media) Technology in Constructing Diasporic Home in the Shorter Fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri
Authors: Haque Rezaul
Published: June 2023

Use of technology is an indispensable feature of modernity. But communities imagined along modern lines use technology in multifarious ways, be it print or digital technology. Benedict Anderson in his pathbreaking study of how nation socio-culturally comes into being stresses the decisive role print technology (in the form of newspaper and realist novel) plays in constructing the community of nations. In a globalized world, however, the role of print technology in imagining larger collectivities as well as home is being fast replaced by information and media technology. Nowhere are such uses of the later technologies perhaps as prominent as in diasporas. Diasporic communities, though largely defined by the parameter of deterritorialization, attempt to appropriate and use technology (especially media technology) with a view to “producing locality,” to borrow from Arjun Appadurai. That is to say, diasporas resort to technology to cope with the often traumatic sense of dislocation and minimize the overwhelming sense of insecurity in an alien cultural environment. In the present article, I intend to look closely at the uses of technology in general and media technology in particular by Indian/South Asian diaspora in some of the short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri. The more precise critical agenda here is to examine how Indian/South Asian diaspora utilizes (media) technology to construct “home” or a sense of “homeness” in the selected stories.
Colonial Separation and Identity in Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen
Authors: Ismail Md. Ishrat Ibne
Published: June 2023

Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen depicts how Aboriginal identity in Canada is destroyed by institutionalized racism, sexual abuse, separation from family and community, and by the forced abolition of Aboriginal culture and spirituality. The story is about two brothers, Gabriel and Jeremiah Okimasis, and their forced displacement from their family into the residential school where they are exposed to the colonial indoctrination and the crudeness of Catholicism. This paper will particularly focus on the character of Gabriel Okimasis and his experience in the residential school and ultimately how his Cree identity is shattered due to the colonial and Christian indoctrination. This study will also shed light on the issues of colonial separation and on the (re)creation of Cree identity, which is illustrated by Highway through Gabriel’s death.
Allen Ginsberg’s Blake Vision
Authors: Mortuza Shamsad
Published: June 2023

Allen Ginsberg famously had an auditory hallucination after reading William Blake’s “Ah Sunflower,” “Little Girl Lost,” and “Sick Rose.” He was at Columbia University when he had this “Blake Vision” in the 1940s. Around this time, he befriended William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac and started a poetic circuit called “New Vision.” Members of this group eventually contributed to the emergence of the Beat movement. The purpose of this paper is to identify the mutual influence of these writers who eventually forged a community and looked for new poetic language and expression. While Ginsberg’s interaction with the San Francisco based poets was real, his attachment with Blake remained imaginary. The paper purports to show how Ginsberg appropriated the Romantic Blake as well as negotiated with an intellectual community in his pursuit of “true art.” In other words, the paper revisits the theme of language, literature and community keeping Blake and Ginsberg at its focus.
From Text to Technology:
Authors: Nessa Vikarun , Alam Faria
Published: June 2023

The absence of technology in classrooms reduces the opportunity of visual learning which is deemed to be crucial for the students in a rapidly growing globalized world. Visual media can be a very effective means of getting and retaining attention of the students. Literature, in its textual form, is necessary since the words are the sources of interpretation and critical analysis but if the students only go through textual materials it often becomes a tedious effort and as a result they lose both attention and interest. This paper aims to show how technology (screen adaptation) can make learning easier, entertaining, and effective for learners. Therefore, creating a bridge between texts and visual media is something that is, literally, a demand of the present time. It is also a good idea strategically since adaptations of different texts offer diverse contexts and backgrounds. To showcase the aforementioned effects of technology two widely taught texts of Shakespeare, The Tempest and Macbeth are chosen as the primary texts for this paper. The texts and the adaptations will show how a comparative analysis of texts and their adaptations is more effective in developing a sound understanding and critical analysis of the texts. Moreover, the use of adaptation will trigger a creative response in the learners’ minds and lessen their heavy reliance on class lectures and other secondary sources. This paper will accommodate the concept of “tiered text,” which refers to a series of interconnected materials, through which different transitions or even shift in the basic structure of the narrative can be seen.
Violence and New Media Ethics
Authors: Noman Arafat
Published: June 2023

Who could have imagined the speed and depth of new media until Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was overthrown by an upsurge resulted from an acute civil resistance or until the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi? No doubt, the Arab Spring was germinated in a virtual world and further escalated into the “real.” In this scenario, it can be said that the ego (of the civil society and of the youth bearing new spree of freedom) opposes the conscious recall of repressed unpleasant experiences that ultimately culminates in a new era (or a different era, if not new). The upsurge, in this sense, is an epitome of “constructive violence.” But then again, the series attack on Buddhist monasteries and Shrines in Ramu, Bangladesh in reaction against a Facebook image of desecrating the Quran gives us a different glimpse regarding the versatility or charisma of new media. Hence, drawing two examples that cover both the constructive and destructive milieu of new media, the paper is designed to address the concept of new media ethics and the idea of violence the new media bring forth. Keeping “violence” under a broader aspect the paper illustrates what kinds of ethical issues may arise from the consumption of new media and technology. It sheds a light on the popular argument that technology is ethically neutral or ambivalent. Finally, the paper takes into account the behavioral aspects of individuals and community when they are blessed (or cursed?) with overt CMC (Computer Mediated Communication).
Of Movies and Money
Authors: Saba Anika
Published: June 2023

The commercial aspect of the film industry is becoming more prominent than its artistic concern in the global community. As a representation of the American film industry, the biggest film industry in the world, this paper will study the commercial aspects of the comic-based superhero movie The Avengers. Superhero movies often prove blockbuster hits and make mind-boggling amounts of money even though they have very loose plots and little artistic value besides the use of special effects. Here, I will discuss Frederic Jameson’s critique of postmodernism for promoting schlock or kitsch and for being pro-capitalist. The paper will talk about the cultural implications of these Hollywood blockbusters and the money-making processes beyond the tickets sale such as gaming, toys and other merchandise. It will argue that the film industry has become the biggest cultural industry today run by media moguls and capitalist giants in the light of Stuart Hall’s notes on popular culture. Finally, I hope to show that mainstream or popular movies make more money now because they are part of a hegemonic culture created by certain power groups.
Canonization:
Authors: Yasmin Tahsina
Published: June 2023

The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) by the celebrated Boom author Gabriel García Márquez and The Lizard’s Tail (1983) by the Argentine author Luisa Valenzuela expose dictator/ruler with physical deformity and supernatural power. The first portrays an unnamed dictator in the Caribbean living for ages and the latter the historical López Rega, Isabel Perón’s minister of social well-being in Argentina ruling through sorcery. Within the usual but marvelous Latin American literary framework of magic realism, incoherent narrative, and various perspectives in story-telling, both the novels surprisingly show the use of canonization through which the megalomaniac dictator/ruler dominates the state and its people. García Márquez’s dictator sanctifies his mother, the birdwoman Bendición Alvarado, by false means to maintain power. Valenzuela’s competitor (metaphorical) in the writing of the biography of the Sorcerer, López Rega, first benefits from the canonization of Eva Perón (the Dead Woman) and then sanctifies himself to sustain power. The paper aims to show a comparative analysis of the two Latin American dictator novels in the light of theories on gender studies, power and psychoanalysis in terms of their representation of mother figures and how the process of canonization is used to create an ideological fantasy among the superstitiously manacled, awe-struck people to perpetuate power
Learning Language through Literature:
Authors: Kabir Md. Shahjahan , Sabuj Md. Inamul Haque
Published: June 2023

This study shows how literature can be used as a tool to develop learners’ knowledge in English. Most of the courses in the Departments of English in Bangladesh are literature-oriented and the teaching and testing systems mainly cover some thematic and philosophical aspects. This paper aims at exploring the effectiveness of learning language through literature, locating the different distinctive linguistic features tightly patterned in a literary text. As literature does not constitute a particular type of language, the effects of literary language and the real life use of it in texts allow the language learners to trace how different linguistic rules are embedded in, and how the learners can develop language skills, unveiling the inseparable bridge between language and literature. This paper, therefore, is a linguistic experimentation on Maugham’s “The Luncheon” and Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to demonstrate how they can be used as teaching materials to enrich students’ communicative and linguistic competence in English. This study also focuses on practical uses of some figurative languages such as dramatic monologue, humor, irony, metaphor, paradox, satire, and symbol as well as some idioms and phrases which may help the learners gain a lot of exposure in English.
MOOC Mania:
Authors: Miraj Asek Amin , Aminul Islam Mohammad
Published: June 2023

In today’s Internet ridden world e-learning is one of the crucial parts of modern education. This way of learning is surprisingly diverse but shares a predictable common denominator. Technology’s transformative power enables learning interactions that might otherwise be impossible for students and teachers alike. Coursera.com is a fast growing MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) provider empowering students and educators, and enables learners to create an interactive platform. In this study, we will discuss the course “Shaping the Way we Teach English” which has brought enthusiasm among passionate English teachers. This paper will highlight how the flexibility of this course paves the way for collaborating with the online and offline teaching and learning community with the experience of digital learning. Furthermore, it also examines how the learners are adapting to the digital platform, the challenges they face, and how they are overcoming the obstacles.
Facebook Could Motivate EFL Learners to Develop Genre Based Writing Skills:
Authors: Sufian Md. Abu , Islam Md. Mahbubul
Published: June 2023

It is observed that EFL learners from mainstream education taking admission in different undergraduate programs at different public and private universities in Bangladesh are very weak in L2 writing. Because of the HSC (Higher Secondary Certificate Examination in Bangladesh) question pattern and traditional methods of teaching, it is observed that almost ninety percent students are weak in free writing in L2. The learners do not have any idea of different genre of writing in L2. It is also found that the learners are not motivated enough to write in L2. They somehow try to avoid the writing from their creativity. Often teachers complain that the learners take much time than they are given to complete the writing, since they did not get enough opportunity to practice creative writing in the class room. However, they need extensive writing skills at university level in L2. Therefore, the teachers of undergraduate programs are facing a challenge to develop their writing skills in L2. It has also been observed that because of limited vocabulary, the newcomers cannot write according to the requirements. To help these students, the researchers have observed that proper guided Facebooking can motivate students to write L2 on their own. For this research, the researchers will go through mixed method research. The researchers have collected data through a questionnaire for teachers, a questionnaire for students and interviews. The findings of the research will definitely help both the teachers and students at undergraduate level.
True Blue:
Authors: Anwa Kasfia Yasmin
Published: June 2023

Most people, anywhere in the world, are obsessed with fair complexion, blue eyes, and blonde hair. Those who are educated are aware of the politics behind this even if they have a fascination for fair skin, consciously or unconsciously. This obsession does nothing good to mankind. It creates a kind of inferiority complex which hinders the ultimate development of human civilization and because of this many individuals fail to achieve success despite their potential. The imposed ugliness on Pecola Breedlove finally leads her to insanity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. This paper critically analyzes how Pecola’s insanity ultimately represents the miserable condition of the larger part of the population trapped in an inferiority complex on account of this myth of “gaze” and politics of white ideologies. It shows how the “Fourth Reich Culture” is nurtured throughout the world even after the defeat of the third German Reich. No doubt that the British have spread this concept of White supremacy through their process of colonization but if a deep analysis is done then it will be seen that they took up this concept mainly from the Germans who claim that they are the true blue blood and, in consequence, this is nothing but a continuation of the “Fourth Reich.” The Germans have been defeated in World War II but they are alive and kicking in spreading and establishing their concept of Aryan supremacy.
Time and Narrative in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame
Authors: Hossain Md. Fahad
Published: June 2023

The account of narrative temporality has a propensity to give impetus towards an absurd c o m p l e x i t y. C o s m o l o g i c a l a n d phenomenological collision of time gives rise to this absurdity. Philosophical tradition views the cosmological time as a succession of ‘ n o w s . ’ O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , phenomenological time is seen as an embedded structure. The concept of time as succession is rendered inoperable by the knowledge of time as co-existence. This paper intends to examine time and narration in Samuel Beckett’s plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame which always play a vital role in the turns and twists of the plot structure, characterization, environment, stage, and, above all, on the audience. The treatment and treatise of time from an ontological and epistemological viewpoint, which is seen through the scope of Narrative Theory, will certainly add more insight to the subject, and hence will explore beyond the mere philosophical/metaphysical boundaries of ‘time’ to the more practical aspects of it in Beckett’s plays.
Influences and Varied Perspectives of Colonial Science and Technology in Amitav Ghosh’s “The Imam and the Indian” and The Calcutta Chromosome
Authors: Huda Roohi Andalib
Published: June 2023

The colonialists’ advances in terms of establishing complete political, economic and often cultural hold in the colonies came with their concurrent advances in scientific and technological arenas. The technological advances of the colonizers were also a means of showcasing their superiority over the colonized, and in turn, holding the colonized in awe of the colonizers’ scientific inventions. The focus of this paper is on how the technology of the colonizers played a role in the making of the modern world, and the way it has been reflected in literature and science thriller writing. Taking Amitav Ghosh as an example, it will also focus on the varied viewpoints and encounters of the colonized people with the technological advancements of the colonizers.
Homesickness, Failed Transnationality, the Conservatism of Belonging, and Salman Rushdie
Authors: Ismail Md. Ishrat Ibne
Published: June 2023

The Satanic Verses as a text that dramatizes the failure of a transnational belongingness and the conservatism of place and belonging; it is a celebration of migrancy and cosmopolitan identity. Focusing on the tensions between the homeland and the migrant self, this paper intends to highlight a depiction of homesickness in the novel’s major migrant characters to show how they fail to negotiate an idea of a new cosmopolitan space that not only accommodates the migrant on equal terms with the city host, but also one that insists on the possibility of a community of different peoples living and working together harmoniously. The question of how the novel fares in the context of transnational globalism and the immigrant’s claim to citizenship rights and fair treatment is also considered.
In the Light of What We Know:
Authors: Rabbani Golam
Published: June 2023

It is not easy to define the boundary between knowing and knowledge. Being informed and being knowledgeable can be two different intellectual states. IKnowing history can lead to a partial understanding of the present until one can interpret the present through history. Knowledge is the conclusion that one reaches after knowing and interpreting. For a novelist, his or her plot should inform the historical context and provide the readers with the scope to interpret the present through the facts of the past. A successful novel triggers constant interpretations as well as makes the readers doubt their interpretations. Also, a successful novel knows the necessity of its time. Keeping all these aspects in mind, it seems appropriate to coin Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know as a novel of its time. However, it is problematic to say that the novel offers knowledge or the scope of interpretation for readers. A novel needs to manifest the triggering events in its plot that fetches diverse interpretations from different cultures and countries. Rahman’s novel seems to refer to a lot of intellectual works and historical facts, but it is not clear how the readers will interpret the events by connecting the references with the events of the fiction.
Editorial Note
Authors: Editorial Note
Published: June 2023

CrossingsA JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIESDepartment of English and HumanitiesUniversity of Liberal Arts BangladeshSpecial Volume December 2015 | ISSN 2071-110
(Re)tracing Resistance from a Culture of Silence:
Authors: Ashraful Islam Khandakar
Published: June 2023

Bengal—a land of rivers and natural resources—has been the abode of the “jele” community (fishermen) for centuries. But hardly have we come across the life of the fishermen in Bengali literature before Manik Bandopadhyay and Adwaita Mallabarman. In fact, these two noteworthy novelists, in their novels, The Boatman of the Padma and A River Called Titash, poignantly depict the poverty, hunger, suffering, and exploitation of the fishermen. However, both novelists portray this community as passive victims of all socio-economic exploitations and nowhere in their narratives is there any trace of resistance from the side of the afflicted. Therefore, in this paper, focusing on Harishankar Jaladas’s Sons of the Sea I will re-read the novels of Bandhopadhyay and Mallabarman in search of the forces that dissuaded this community from fighting back. Moreover, shedding light on the life of this subaltern group, in Sons of the Sea, I will attempt to trace the root of resistance so that breaking the age old culture of silence may create a new future for them.
The Effects of Inescapable Memories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland
Authors: Yeasmin Sharjita
Published: June 2023

The paper discusses the effects of disruptive memories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. The death of Udayan and the memories of it make the existence of three characters dysfunctional: Bijoli, Gauri, and Bela. Of them, the former two have witnessed the killing while the latter has vicariously felt its everlasting impact on her psychological upbringing. Bijoli, who is the mother of Udayan, is rooted to the time and place of her son’s killing, and Gauri, the wife of Udayan, is crushed in between the remembering and the forgetting of her husband’s existence. Gauri wants to but cannot forget the past she left behind; her attempts to forget, on the other hand, largely affect her daughter, Bela’s life. The article focuses on the overwhelming and all-consuming power of unpleasant memories and concomitant psychosocial crisis of them.
Speaking Anxiety and Learner’s Own Variety of English
Authors: Sikder Shafinaz , Mahmudul Haque Mohammad
Published: June 2023

In this increasingly globalized world, English is the most widely used international contact language as it has spread to different parts of the world. Due to its wide use by speakers of many different languages, English has been influenced by many different factors including diverse ways of pronunciation. Therefore, it is not surprising that such pronunciation varieties have obvious classroom implications, especially among the nonnative teaching-learning communities. In most contexts, the nonnative teacher-learners are under pressure to conform to any of the native varieties, which, this paper argues, isresponsible for creating language anxiety among the learners. Reviewing selected works by Crystal, Bolton, Canagarajah, Farooqui, Jenkins, and Sharifian’s that address the way “power,”“hegemony,” and “politics” operate behind the promotion of such native varieties, the present paper probes into the relationship between speaking anxiety and the enforced native varieties on the nonnative ones of English. It concludes that there is little rationale behind such enforcement as English is increasingly becoming a contact language, which enables the nonnative speakers of English to equally own the language as their native counterparts. It also suggests that promotion of the nonnative varieties in language classes will encourage the learners to use the language from their own comfort zone, and will eventually decrease their speaking anxiety.
Note to Contributors
Authors: Note to contributors
Published: June 2023

CrossingsA JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIESDepartment of English and HumanitiesUniversity of Liberal Arts BangladeshVolume 7 | December 2016 | ISSN 2071-1107
Comics and Graphic Novels:
Authors: Hasan Syeda Nadia
Published: June 2023

Adapting either comic stories or graphic novels for the big screen with their spate of sequels has proved lucrative for the film industry. A myriad of images have sprung out of this current surge in comic or graphic characters and stories associated with popular demands for an alternative source of entertainment – one that has hitherto been undermined by the mainstream genres. This attraction towards comics and graphic novels has skyrocketed as a recent phenomenon, thanks to Hollywood’s commercialism. Paradoxically, too, the strength of burgeoning fandom is what boosts this industry to generate more profit while the industry itself remains morally equivocal in the way it responds to the committed viewers. But what panders to the endless promotion of entertainment has already been damaging to the core principles of this medium. In capitalist economy movies created based on comics or graphic novels become cultural products. Before reaching the consumers these are intercepted by the intermediary groups, namely the studio conglomerates. Thus the artists’/creators’ rights are violated and talents frequently go unacknowledged. What matters in the process of being so is the devaluation of comics or graphic novels as works of art or aesthetic creations. The premise of this paper is to investigate the nature of graphic novels and how they retain the transcendence of art as the primary function. The secondary role of the graphic novels is not to be ignored, given that numerous examples are available to validate their insightful probing of ideas. The paper will also seek to determine the factors that transform art into mere commodities.
Homer’s Threshold:
Authors: Navid Nakibuddin Haider
Published: June 2023

The earliest literary texts provide us with a glimpse of the beginning of literature in mythology. The oral tradition in which these myths were preserved were later collected into the primary epics such as Homer’s The Iliad. As transitional texts that bridge the oral tradition and a culture informed and molded by written language, these texts demonstrate the quality of liminality. This paper therefore seeks to place Homer not in the Oral-formulaic school, limited to stock-epithets, but to a transitional period between the oral and the written, with references to language that suggest an inherently written quality in epic poems. Homer exists in such a threshold between two points: mythology and literature, mythos and logos, the sacred and the profane, and ultimately between oral and written language. By applying the theories of ecolinguistics, this paper examines the liminal texts of Homer in the context of Bronze and Iron Age narratives, and concludes how such early literary texts with myths of heroic city-builders, divine architects, and the politics of establishing an urban language, ultimately sacrifice linguistic diversity. This paper is therefore ultimately about what is lost in translation between the oral and written, and concludes that such loss of ecolinguistic diversity is characteristic of the threshold that Homer occupies as evident in the language of The Iliad.
Life in the Diaspora:
Authors: Gupta Prabal Das
Published: June 2023

A tale about duty and desire, conflict and reconciliation in the lives of the diaspora, is molded in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices. The present paper demonstrates the unevenness in the diasporic life showing the difficulty of the diasporic community, in a cross-cultural ambience, to reconcile with the conflicting entities of their life. Divakaruni epitomizes the spices, appearing emblematic throughout the novel, as the treasure of India, “a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination.” This research focuses on how the author depicts an altruistic character like Tilo, who struggles to harmonize herself with the shifting priorities of her life. Her ambivalent soul sways between her egalitarian sense of duty and bodily desire for love. In the midst of turmoil, Tilo settles her mind to “acknowledge the suffering” of all, substantiating that “the smell of charred flesh is the same everywhere.” Finally, the paper concludes with showing how pertaining to “a double consciousness,” the characters, negotiating with the nuances of their inheritance, grow up cosmopolitan, that is “vernacular” in nature, allowing “the local, parochial, rooted, culturally specific” one to live together with the one who is “transnational” and “transcendent.”
The Interface between Translation and Drama:
Authors: Moruwawon Babatunde Samuel , Oyeniyi Toluwalope Olubukola
Published: June 2023

Translating a dramatic text is a daunting task. The challenge is rooted in the fact that the text is specifically written to be acted or performed on the stage. A dramatic text is written in acts, scenes, and contains dialogues spoken by the characters. Apart from this, translating a dramatic text from one language with a different cultural setting into another language requires high creativity to guarantee faithfulness in the target language and culture. This article analyzes the interface between translation and drama as well as the woes and possibilities of translating Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel into French. The result of this research indicates that linguistic and cultural issues which are based on the shared knowledge of the original author and the readers are mostly problematic in translation and usually require the translator to do serious research to acquire the necessary background knowledge, and find out whether this background knowledge is at the target language readers’ disposal; if not, to make it available to them through translations, expansions, explanations, and footnotes.
Trauma and Fiction:
Authors: Osman Khan Touseef
Published: June 2023

Trauma involves a rupture in the temporal and symbolic orders at individual and collective levels. Fictional representation of trauma, therefore, is marked by a problem of referentiality, where mimesis fails and chronology breaks down. The article opens with a discussion on the disorientation in the co-ordinative links between the world, the self, and representational tools in the event of a traumatic experience, which results in the crisis of referentiality. The inadequacy of language as a representational medium on the one hand, and unacknowledgement of extreme events beyond “socially validated reality” on the other, constitute two of the major issues creative artists have to deal with. An extreme event leaves a mnemonic gap in the psyche of the traumatized individual, and the process of recovery involves the gap being filled in with narrative memory, suggesting an epistemological void. Narrative memory acts as the surrogate memory of the traumatic event, which is unavailable to willed recollection. This surrogate memory is compared to Jean Baudrillard’s third order of simulation, where a false presence conceals the absence of any basic reality. Recognizing the referential and representational crises at work in rendering traumatic experiences in fiction, the article goes on to explore the ways of bypassing them and discuss the idea of indirect representation in Michael Rothberg’s Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. Rothberg believes that an oblique rendition of traumatic events in fiction may be an appropriate representational mode within the conflicting demands of the documentation of reality, meditation on the formal limits by the creative artist, and risky circulation of images in the globalized world. This leads to a deliberation on Anne Whitehead and Laurie Vickroy’s idea of the emerging genre of “trauma fiction” with its thematic and stylistic concerns. The article ends with a summary of the representational techniques likely to feature in fictions written on violent events.
Spaces and Sexuality in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story”
Authors: Sen Anupam Kamal
Published: June 2023

Ernest Hemingway is an influential writer of twentieth-century American literature. His personal experiences and involvement in the First World War have somehow emerged in many of his major works. “A Very Short Story,” published as a chapter in the 1924 Paris edition titled In Our Time, covers the same underlying war dimensions found abundantly in his other works. Despite the narrative brevity of it, the two page story might present a vast cartographic experience for the readers who, along with the characters, can travel from one place to another. All spaces – both public and private – are so fleetingly transiting here that they altogether generate a fragmentary vision of the war history. The story is centeredaround a nurse named Luz who has developed a romantic relationship with an unnamed soldier during World War I. The major concerns of the text – the war realities and aftermath of the psycho-physical struggle of these two individuals within the spatio-temporal settings – facilitate an introspective look into the text. The text particularly deals with a variety of spaces within the narrative; for example, some major cities of two countries – Italy and America. These spaces – interior and exterior – play a significant role to form a viable textual understanding because they construct the background of the protagonists’ brief romance and the following submersion into a diseased and depressed sexuality. From this perspective, the paper will attempt to discuss the intertwined functionality of spaces and sexuality in this text of Hemingway’s.
Jason and Medea’s Relationship in Medea:
Authors: Shama Mahbuba Sarker
Published: June 2023

Medea in Euripides’ Medea murders her two sons to take revenge on her husband Jason who has married the Corinthian princess Glauce for royal power. However, little attention has been paid towards the cause behind the killing of her sons. This paper will examine the marital relationship between Medea and Jason from the perspective of the colonizer and the colonized and it will show Medea as the victim colonized who kills her brother and leaves her native land Colchis to marry Jason. Jason is presented as the oppressor colonizer who betrays Medea without whom he could have never achieved the Golden Fleece. The terms colonizer and colonized which are at the heart of the postcolonial theory are hardly applied with the play Medea. Therefore, analyzing this topic from the present day postcolonial theory adds a new perspective to this Greek play.
Interactive Reading Activities
Authors: Sowell Jimalee
Published: June 2023

Instructors of English courses and students alike tend to view reading as a mostly solitary activity with interaction limited to reader and text. Classroom interaction with reading texts is often limited to the teacher eliciting answers to comprehension and vocabulary questions, and students calling out responses. Teachers sometimes fail to see how reading texts can be used in interactive activities that require spoken communication beyond questions and responses and incorporate a variety of skills. This article explores how reading and interaction influence language development and introduces a number of interactive reading activities teachers can take into their classrooms.
Front Matter
Authors: Front Matter
Published: June 2023

CrossingsA JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIESDepartment of English and HumanitiesUniversity of Liberal Arts BangladeshVolume 8 | Summer 2017 | ISSN 2071–1107
Editorial Note
Authors: Editorial Note
Published: June 2023

CrossingsA JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIESDepartment of English and HumanitiesUniversity of Liberal Arts BangladeshVolume 8 | Summer 2017 | ISSN 2071–1107