Returning to revolution’s original meaning of ‘cycle’, Contemporary Revolutions explores how 21st-century writers, artists, and performers re-engage the arts of the past to reimagine a present and future encompassing revolutionary commitments to justice and freedom. Dealing with histories of colonialism, slavery, genocide, civil war, and gender and class inequities, essays examine literature and arts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and the United States.
The broad range of contemporary writers and artists considered include fabric artist Ellen Bell; poets Selena Tusitala Marsh and Antje Krog; Syrian artists of the civil war and Sana Yazigi’s creative memory web site about the war; street artist Bahia Shehab; theatre installation artist William Kentridge; and the recycles of Virginia Woolf by multi-media artist Kabe Wilson, novelist W. G. Sebald, and the contemporary trans movement.
List of Figures Notes on Contributors Beginnings Introduction: “The Past in the Present: Temporalities of the Contemporary” Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Chapter 1: “Recycling Revolution: Re-mixing A Room of One’s Own and Black Power in Kabe Wilson’s Performance, Installation, and Narrative Art” Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Recycles: Aesthetics of Unsewing and Blacking Out Chapter 2: “Stitch Works: Ellen Bell’s Unpicking Aesthetics and Victorian Women’s Creative Labor” Susan David Bernstein, Boston University, USA Chapter 3: “Make It Niu: Blacking Out of Albert Wendt’s Pouliuli the Tusitala Way” Selina Tusitala Marsh, University of Auckland, New Zealand Revolutions: Arts of Resistance Chapter 4: “Curating the Syrian Revolution Online” miriam cooke, Duke University, USA Chapter 5: “A Thousand Times No!: Spray Painting as Resistance and the Visual History of the Lam-Alif” Bahia Shehab, American University of Cairo, Egypt Restages: Palimpsests of the Past Chapter 6: “The Folds of History in William Kentridge’s Black Box Theatre: Sampling German Nazism and Colonialism” Rosemarie Buikema, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Chapter 7: “The Revolutions of Antjie Krog’s Lady Anne: A Chronicle in Verse.” Rita Barnard, University of Pennsylvania, USA Rereads: Then, Now Chapter 8: “Repair Work, Despair Work: W. G. Sebald’s Contending Modernisms” Elizabeth Abel, University of California, Berkeley, USA Chapter 9: “On Rereading Woolf’s Orlando as Transgender Text” Margaret Homans, Yale University, USA Index
Susan Stanford Friedman is Hilldale Professor of the Humanities and the Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her recent books include Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time and Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses (with Rita Felski). Her work has been translated into ten languages.
