Author Archives: The Scattered Pelican

Translating Travel: Psychological, Temporal, and Linguistic Displacement in Abbas Maroufi’s Symphony of the Dead (1989)

by Leave a comment

Sogand Shenavar from Sapienza University of Rome presents insights on translations and inter-lingual investigations in the context of travel. The work emphasizes the complexities involved in translating experiences across languages and cultures, highlighting the nuances that influence the travel narrative. By examining various translation methodologies, this study aims to enhance understanding of how cultural meanings can be preserved or altered during the translation process. It serves as a valuable contribution to the field of translation studies.

Read Article →

The Psychology of Displacement and Forced Migration in Widad Nabi’s “I Don’t Carry Your Name”

by Leave a comment

Daiyan Zakaria of the University of Texas at Austin delves into the complex interplay of language and psychology in “Translations and Inter-lingual Investigations.” The work uncovers how language shapes our understanding of displacement, challenging conventional narratives. As the world grapples with migration and cultural upheaval, Zakaria’s insights demand attention, urging us to rethink the nuances of communication in our increasingly globalized society. This is not just academic—it’s essential for grasping the human experience.

Read Article →

Indigenous Toronto: The Stories That Carry This Place – Coach House Books, 2021 (Review)

by Leave a comment

The book review by Raphaela Pavlakos, affiliated with McMaster University, explores themes significant to Indigenous communities in Toronto. It provides insights into the representation of Indigenous perspectives and experiences, emphasizing the importance of understanding their narratives within a larger societal context. Through critical analysis, the review highlights the impact of literature in fostering awareness and appreciation for Indigenous cultures and the complexities of their histories. This engagement is crucial for promoting dialogue and reconciliation.

Read Article →

“I Run Towards Home. My Heart Arrives Before Me.”: The Uncanny Presence of the Question of Home and Identity in Ma’asoumeh Jafari’s Why Shan’t I Worship The Darkness? (2021)

by Leave a comment

Many people around the world have formed a relationship with “Home” and “Identity” which is bizarre, unsettling, and creates moments of hesitation when facing these concepts. . In this paper, I argue that the Persian short story collection Cherā Tāriki Rā Khodāy-e Khod Nakonam?, loosely translated as Why Shan’t I Worship the Darkness? (2021), is exactly a depiction of that unsettling state of misplacement between the home and the heart. Through a close reading of two of the stories it is discussed that the writer has used Uncanny as a literary device to address “Home” and “Identity.”

Read Article →

Refugeedom and Homeliness in What Strange Paradise (2021) and Cockroach (2008)

by Leave a comment

Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise (2021) follows the haunting journey of a boat filled with refugees in search of a new home. What Strange Paradise implies several theoretical questions, chief amongst them being: What if the refugees had reached their destination? What type of home awaited them? Such questions, and many similar to them, find answers in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach (2008), a novel that depicts a refugee’s troubled life after successfully leaving their homeland. This article examines the relationship of the two novels surrounding the notions of “refugeedom” and “homeliness” …

Read Article →

Paths of Visual Wandering: Reading Character Through Imagined Visual Cohesion

by Leave a comment

This paper argues for the freedom of the reading eye as it reconstitutes visual characters, both as discernible figures imagined and seen and as tangible and intangible characteristics that make up these figures. The texture of a literary character’s existence grows out of textual mentions, and these mentions are compounded by visual representations as the character is mediated through adaptations. Through this excursion, I return to the question of the newness of the break in representation and the freedom it affords the wandering eye.

Read Article →

“The World Where We Live Is a Burning House:” Historical Mapmaking and Travel in the Anthropocene

by Leave a comment

Exploring Anne Carson’s “The Anthropology of Water”, this article examines the way Carson erases the human through historiographical overwriting to present the possibility of reconceiving the nonhuman in order to engage with nonhumans in the context of the Anthropocene. This examination includes: the interplay of theological notions with representations of nature and nonhuman scales of time and space; the historical palimpsest of the pilgrimage becoming emancipatory from a certain kind of human history; and nature continually evading the speaker’s grasp, making up the subject who can interact with the nonhuman without eclipsing it.

Read Article →

Post-Apocalyptic Shakespeares: Trauma, Memory, and Performance in Station Eleven (2014)

by Leave a comment

“Some towns, as I was saying, some towns are like this one, where they want to talk about what happened, about the past. Other towns, discussion of the past is discouraged. We went to a place once where the children didn’t know the world had ever been different, although you would think all the rusted-out automobiles and telephone wires would give them a clue.” (Mandel 115). These lines are spoken by Kristen Raymonde in an interview with the town librarian Francois Diallo twenty years post-pandemic in Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, a post-apocalyptic romance that explores through narrative how survivors choose to remember the lost past, destroyed by an aggressive, widespread pandemic.

Read Article →