Top 10 pics.upenn.edu Wettbewerber

fulbrighternetwork.com

An object’s “thingness” occurs when it behaves in a way that no longer allows us to see through it (metaphorically). For instance, we often don’t notice a gramophone in the literature, film, or TV that we consume since it primarily functions as a kind of set piece. It’s just there in the background signalling a time period or a certain amount of wealth or some such thing. But once a gramophone misbehaves, we can’t “see through” it anymore. Ireland's Gramophones: Material Culture, Memory, and Trauma in Irish Modernism (2021) explores the gramophone as an object that refuses to remain in the background in certain Irish modernist texts. Gramophones become complex things that offer symbolic parallels with Ireland's wider traumas and cultural upheaval. We caught up with Zan Cammack (Canada, 2017/18) to find out more about the origins of Ireland's Gramophones and some of her literary inspirations. Ireland's Gramophones I first started exploring gramophones in Irish literature in grad school while reading Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The Last September where a gramophone crashes to the ground and “dies” and the protagonist has an intense kind of grieving for the object. It is such a bizarre moment that I couldn’t help but fixate on it. After reading the novel again, the gramophone was everywhere, but I just hadn’t noticed it before. And that is kind of what happened with the rest of this project. I couldn’t stop seeing gramophones in Irish literature. Not only is it pervasive, but also highly visible in some of Irish modernism’s most famous works: Dracula, Ulysses, Pygmalion, Juno and the Paycock, and At Swim-Two-Birds, for example. And these weren’t just casual references to the gramophone, either. These were moments similar to the one in Bowen’s novel where characters were having intense interactions with the machine or the machine was acting in unexpected or peculiar ways. And this is where the research really takes off: considering the gramophone not only as an instrumen

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shopsatpenn.com

It’s that time of year again—the Penn Relays!

the74million.org

With school buildings closed for the foreseeable future, many families are seeking new activities that align learning with social distancing. Fortunately, we can still connect with — and learn from — the great outdoors even as we quarantine. As spring blossoms across the nation, so does a therapeutic activity: bird-watching. Online resources like Audubon and […]