Abstract: This paper engages the disruption of the categories of civility and savagery/native and settler in Book IV of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726.) The central puzzle of whether the ultra-rational Houyhnhmns or the vulgarly debased Yahoos were Swift’s primary satirical target remains a hotbed of debate. This paper argues that in Book IV of the Travels Swift’s depiction of human nature as universally corrupted undermines the essentiality of colonially derived identities of civility and savagery/settler and native. By inserting the prideful Gulliver as a conspicuously imperial adventurer in the midst of this two peoples, Swift overtly problematizes and destabilizes these identities. By fluctuating between two groups that are almost absurdist caricatures of civility and savagery, Gulliver embodies the fluidity of the imperial subject in the New World. This focus on the liminal position of Gulliver as an interstitial settler brings attention to the significance of his mimicry of both Houyhnhmn and Yahoo in Swift’s subversion of erstwhile monolithic categories of civility and savagery/native and settler. Through a close reading, this paper argues that Gulliver’s inability to grasp the truth of his relationship to either of the diametrically opposed groups of Houyhnhmnland demonstrates how the fatal flaws of human nature transcend (and perhaps nullify) these distinctions. The contributes to existing scholarship on the topic by bringing recent theoretical and historical developments on the topic of settler colonialism to bear on a core aspect of Swift’s masterwork.

Paper / Communication

Abstract: "Several commentators in recent times have put forth the claim that Shakespeare was a proponent of Platonic political philosophy. This paper will argue, however, that Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost is a sharp critique of the Platonic idea of the philosopher king. In this comedy Shakespeare presents a political ruler, the King of Navarre, dedicating himself and his courtiers to a life of contemplation in their bucolic Academy. Shakespeare reveals in the course of the romantic interplay between Navarre’s court and the visiting Princess of France and her retinue that the attempt to unite political rule and the philosophic life is misguided and untenable as it leads to a life-denying asceticism. This paper will examine the play in light of the experience of Henry of Navarre, and as of 1589 King Henry IV of France, upon whom Navarre in the play is loosely but clearly based. This famous king was a Huguenot, who abjured his Calvinist faith in order to become King of Catholic France. I will argue that the critique of philosophic rule in Love’s Labours Lost reflects Shakespeare’s concern that certain puritanical forms of Christianity encouraged unhealthy asceticism and promoted religious conflict. The failed (or suspended) courtship of the male courtiers of Navarre and their French female visitors stands in Shakespeare’s narrative as perhaps the romantic episode that taught Henry IV about the potential dangers of immoderate speculation. Thus Shakespeare’s commentary about the underlying connection between philosophic asceticism and religious fanaticism lies at the heart of Love’s Labours Lost."

Paper / Communication

Abstract: Drawing on classical conceptions of comedy and tragedy, and considering what it means for the cosmos to be tragicomic as opposed to rationally ordered, this paper seeks to assess superhero comic books as a modern phenomenon in light of ancient categories. The resulting analysis makes the case that the popularity of superhero stories is indicative of an inarticulate awareness of the shortcomings of modern moral and political purposes and the metaphysical premises on which they rest. Whereas superhero comic books are not simply "conservative" as they are often alleged to be by those who wish they were more progressive with respect to matters of identity politics or as regards the advocacy of transformative social change, it is definitely the case that they constitute criticisms of the worldview upon which modern progressivism is constructed, even as they generally uphold modernity's fundamental commitments to freedom and equality.

Abstract: Certain kinds of novels, novels such as Kafka’s The Trial and Camus’ The Stranger, have become an important component of an adequate understanding of self and its relationship to political morality (Dolan, 1976; Horton and Baumeister, 1996; Keren 2003). Analysis of narrative fiction written by war journalists about imaginary war journalists reveals similar themes and raises similar moral and ethical questions. What is the war journalists’ self-perception as he goes about his work; how does he/she relate to other war journalists and society in general. How does she/he react to censorship, pervasive propaganda, the darker truths of war? There are only a handful of novels written by experienced English-speaking war journalists in which the main character is a war journalist. These novels provide insight into the self-perception of the imaginary war-journalist as they struggle with the political realities of a war zone. In this paper I will analyze the narrative fiction of two Canadian war journalists. Gil Courtemanche, a Quebec journalist, is the author of A Sunday by the Pool in Kilgali, a fictionalized account of the Rwandan genocide written from the point of view of a journalist. Oakland Ross, the former Latin American correspondent for The Globe and Mail, is the author of Guerilla Beach a collection of short stories based in Central and South America in which many of the main characters are journalists. War journalists’ representations of war in the news media are integral to modern society’s understanding of war and its political and social consequences. These works of narrative fiction provide a valuable perspective of the war journalist as he or she makes decisions about how to represent war.

Paper / Communication