Rita Barnard | University of Pennsylvania (original) (raw)

Books by Rita Barnard

Papers by Rita Barnard

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1369801022000013860, Jun 1, 2011

Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995, 1998

American Historical Review, 1997

... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture a... more ... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture and modernism are "torn ... terms "Depression" and "abundance." I argue, in essence, that the stock market crash of ... Chapter 4 traces Fearing's understanding of the psychological effects of mass culture, by which I ...

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2000

... The Smell of Apples, Moby-dick, and Apartheid Ideology. ... But for a reader like me, who gre... more ... The Smell of Apples, Moby-dick, and Apartheid Ideology. ... But for a reader like me, who grew up as a child of the Afrikaner elite in exactly the same period as the children in the novel, it is more like a haunting, an uncanny encounter with nearly forgotten, yet instantly recognizable ...

Interventions, 2002

... revelatory Wordsworthian COETZEE 'S COUNTRY WAYS Rita Barnard Page 5. 388 moments we... more ... revelatory Wordsworthian COETZEE 'S COUNTRY WAYS Rita Barnard Page 5. 388 moments we have all heard about' (p. 23). As an attempt at cultural trans-lation, Lurie's commentary moves in the wrong direction. The members ...

The American Historical Review, 1997

... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture a... more ... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture and modernism are "torn ... terms "Depression" and "abundance." I argue, in essence, that the stock market crash of ... Chapter 4 traces Fearing's understanding of the psychological effects of mass culture, by which I ...

Journal of the African Literature Association, 2014

Safundi the Journal of South African and American Studies, 2006

This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah ... more This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrues that, as mediated by Oprah, Cry, the Beloved Country is no longer the problematic, urbophobic “Jim Goes to Joburg” story that South African readers (including such important figures as Esk'ia Mphahlele, Stephen Watson, Tony Morphet, and J.M. Coetzee) have often subjected to sharp critique. It is transformed into an “Oprah” product: a narrative in which “the glamour of misery,” as Eva Illouz has termed Oprah's chief stock-in-trade, generates a highly sentimental and commercialized form of global thinking and feeling.The essay closes with a series of reflections on the general implications of Oprah's Paton for future studies of literary reception. While Barnard is hesitant to entirely reject Oprah Winfrey's form of empathetic globalization (it is clearly preferable to the globalization of greed, revenge, and religious polarization sponsored by the Bush administration), it is nevertheless, in her view, inseparable from voyeurism and profit and is far too closely tied to a therapeutic feel-good mode of consumption to be ethical in any serious sense. Though a singular media event, the “Americanization” of this South African novel under the auspices of Oprah's Book Club tells us much about the instability of cultural products as they make the South-North or North-South passage across the Atlantic.

British and Irish Literature, 1899–1939, 2007

Safundi, 2006

This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah ... more This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrues that, as mediated by Oprah, Cry, the Beloved Country is no longer the problematic, urbophobic “Jim Goes to Joburg” story that South African readers (including such important figures as Esk'ia Mphahlele, Stephen Watson, Tony Morphet, and J.M. Coetzee) have often subjected to sharp critique. It is transformed into an “Oprah” product: a narrative in which “the glamour of misery,” as Eva Illouz has termed Oprah's chief stock-in-trade, generates a highly sentimental and commercialized form of global thinking and feeling.The essay closes with a series of reflections on the general implications of Oprah's Paton for future studies of literary reception. While Barnard is hesitant to entirely reject Oprah Winfrey's form of empathetic globalization (it is clearly preferable to the globalization of greed, revenge, and religious polarization sponsored by the Bush administration), it is nevertheless, in her view, inseparable from voyeurism and profit and is far too closely tied to a therapeutic feel-good mode of consumption to be ethical in any serious sense. Though a singular media event, the “Americanization” of this South African novel under the auspices of Oprah's Book Club tells us much about the instability of cultural products as they make the South-North or North-South passage across the Atlantic.

Safundi, 2006

This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests th... more This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests that they are ultimately best captured in the notion of “deterritorialization”: a consideration of cultural products as they are exported or interpretively wrested away from their geographic origins and from their “natural” context in any sort of unilinear national narrative. It also describes the origins of this issue. The initial idea was create a counterpart to an earlier issue of Safundi, which featured reflections on the way South African history, culture, and politics is presented at U.S. universities. The editors therefore set out by asking a number of South African scholars, many of them in English departments, to reflect on the way in which U.S. culture was taught in South Africa. It soon emerged, however, that a strictly pedagogical focus was too constricting to generate a rich collection. While several of the articles in this issue do include reflections on pedagogy, the collection as a whole now presents a broader consideration of the nature of U.S.-South African cultural exchange. It leaves one with a sense that that the near-absence of American studies in the formal curriculum in South Africa has produced a need for methodological inventiveness and a desire to examine matters that are often ignored in academia. These include not only popular culture, but also the complicated, intimate, and often undisclosed relationship of the scholar to the subject of his or her research: the personal and political reasons behind his or her intellectual and imaginative engagement. This collection, in sum, approaches “America” and “South Africa” as diasporic and translational phenomena.

Research in African Literatures, 2000

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1369801022000013860, Jun 1, 2011

Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995, 1998

American Historical Review, 1997

... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture a... more ... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture and modernism are "torn ... terms "Depression" and "abundance." I argue, in essence, that the stock market crash of ... Chapter 4 traces Fearing's understanding of the psychological effects of mass culture, by which I ...

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2000

... The Smell of Apples, Moby-dick, and Apartheid Ideology. ... But for a reader like me, who gre... more ... The Smell of Apples, Moby-dick, and Apartheid Ideology. ... But for a reader like me, who grew up as a child of the Afrikaner elite in exactly the same period as the children in the novel, it is more like a haunting, an uncanny encounter with nearly forgotten, yet instantly recognizable ...

Interventions, 2002

... revelatory Wordsworthian COETZEE 'S COUNTRY WAYS Rita Barnard Page 5. 388 moments we... more ... revelatory Wordsworthian COETZEE 'S COUNTRY WAYS Rita Barnard Page 5. 388 moments we have all heard about' (p. 23). As an attempt at cultural trans-lation, Lurie's commentary moves in the wrong direction. The members ...

The American Historical Review, 1997

... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture a... more ... or even Adorno's more melancholy observation that mass culture and modernism are "torn ... terms "Depression" and "abundance." I argue, in essence, that the stock market crash of ... Chapter 4 traces Fearing's understanding of the psychological effects of mass culture, by which I ...

Journal of the African Literature Association, 2014

Safundi the Journal of South African and American Studies, 2006

This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah ... more This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrues that, as mediated by Oprah, Cry, the Beloved Country is no longer the problematic, urbophobic “Jim Goes to Joburg” story that South African readers (including such important figures as Esk'ia Mphahlele, Stephen Watson, Tony Morphet, and J.M. Coetzee) have often subjected to sharp critique. It is transformed into an “Oprah” product: a narrative in which “the glamour of misery,” as Eva Illouz has termed Oprah's chief stock-in-trade, generates a highly sentimental and commercialized form of global thinking and feeling.The essay closes with a series of reflections on the general implications of Oprah's Paton for future studies of literary reception. While Barnard is hesitant to entirely reject Oprah Winfrey's form of empathetic globalization (it is clearly preferable to the globalization of greed, revenge, and religious polarization sponsored by the Bush administration), it is nevertheless, in her view, inseparable from voyeurism and profit and is far too closely tied to a therapeutic feel-good mode of consumption to be ethical in any serious sense. Though a singular media event, the “Americanization” of this South African novel under the auspices of Oprah's Book Club tells us much about the instability of cultural products as they make the South-North or North-South passage across the Atlantic.

British and Irish Literature, 1899–1939, 2007

Safundi, 2006

This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah ... more This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrues that, as mediated by Oprah, Cry, the Beloved Country is no longer the problematic, urbophobic “Jim Goes to Joburg” story that South African readers (including such important figures as Esk'ia Mphahlele, Stephen Watson, Tony Morphet, and J.M. Coetzee) have often subjected to sharp critique. It is transformed into an “Oprah” product: a narrative in which “the glamour of misery,” as Eva Illouz has termed Oprah's chief stock-in-trade, generates a highly sentimental and commercialized form of global thinking and feeling.The essay closes with a series of reflections on the general implications of Oprah's Paton for future studies of literary reception. While Barnard is hesitant to entirely reject Oprah Winfrey's form of empathetic globalization (it is clearly preferable to the globalization of greed, revenge, and religious polarization sponsored by the Bush administration), it is nevertheless, in her view, inseparable from voyeurism and profit and is far too closely tied to a therapeutic feel-good mode of consumption to be ethical in any serious sense. Though a singular media event, the “Americanization” of this South African novel under the auspices of Oprah's Book Club tells us much about the instability of cultural products as they make the South-North or North-South passage across the Atlantic.

Safundi, 2006

This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests th... more This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests that they are ultimately best captured in the notion of “deterritorialization”: a consideration of cultural products as they are exported or interpretively wrested away from their geographic origins and from their “natural” context in any sort of unilinear national narrative. It also describes the origins of this issue. The initial idea was create a counterpart to an earlier issue of Safundi, which featured reflections on the way South African history, culture, and politics is presented at U.S. universities. The editors therefore set out by asking a number of South African scholars, many of them in English departments, to reflect on the way in which U.S. culture was taught in South Africa. It soon emerged, however, that a strictly pedagogical focus was too constricting to generate a rich collection. While several of the articles in this issue do include reflections on pedagogy, the collection as a whole now presents a broader consideration of the nature of U.S.-South African cultural exchange. It leaves one with a sense that that the near-absence of American studies in the formal curriculum in South Africa has produced a need for methodological inventiveness and a desire to examine matters that are often ignored in academia. These include not only popular culture, but also the complicated, intimate, and often undisclosed relationship of the scholar to the subject of his or her research: the personal and political reasons behind his or her intellectual and imaginative engagement. This collection, in sum, approaches “America” and “South Africa” as diasporic and translational phenomena.

Research in African Literatures, 2000

Research in African Literatures, 2001

... Schalkwyk, David. "Confession and Solidarity in the Prison Writing of Breyten Breytenbac... more ... Schalkwyk, David. "Confession and Solidarity in the Prison Writing of Breyten Breytenbach andJeremy Cronin." Research in African Literatures 25.1 (1994): 24-45. Serote, Mongane. Come and Hope with Me. Cape Town: David Phillip, 1994. South African Outlook. ...

English Studies in Africa, 2004

Mental Maps in the Era of Détente and the End of the Cold War 1968-91