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Contemporaries Essays, Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

“Literature” and the “Contemporary” in the German American Studies Classroom

What’s the use of contemporary literature? I ask the question as someone invested in contemporary literature, and someone whose teaching often is on, or includes, significant elements of what I…

Contemporaries Essays, Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

The Play of Classrooms

Gaming and literature are increasingly entangled, both as media and as academic disciplines. Recent years have seen an explosion of “literary-ludic” games offering inventive approaches to narration, characterisation, and the construction…

Contemporaries Essays, Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

Envisioning AfAm Literary History in Norwegian Fjord og Fjell

To many, Norway is a land of extremes. One of the wealthiest countries in the world, it’s also said to be home to the happiest people who benefit from the…

Contemporaries Essays, Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

Multicultural Literature in a Superdiverse City

You notice more alertness in the eyes. You sense the stimulated mind. There is something to say, should be said, a willingness to say it. When a person is engaged…

Contemporaries Essays, Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

Contemporary Literature from the Classroom

It feels like a precarious moment to be talking from the classroom. It has for a long time. When I originally wrote these words (January 2024) the politicization of the…

Contemporaries Essays, Reading Disco Elysium

Further and Further Away

The most expensive thing you can buy in Disco Elysium is a streetlight. It sits in the corner of the pawn shop on Rue de Saint-Ghislaine and has been modified…

Contemporaries Essays, Reading Disco Elysium

Shivers

Shivers come when the temperature drops and you become more keenly aware of your surroundings. It enables you to hear the city itself, to truly belong to the streets. It…

Contemporaries Essays, Reading Disco Elysium

Inebriation and Allegory

KIM KITSURAGI: “Not being hungover helps too.” I don’t drink anymore. Or at least I don’t drink with the apocalyptic fury I personified around a decade ago. No dramatic event…

Contemporaries Essays, Reading Disco Elysium

DISCO-ORIENTED HAUNTOLOGY

Psychiatrist Marie Rudden describes a private, internal space her patient would withdraw to whenever he became anxious and confused — when the interpersonal reality insisted upon by others in his…

Contemporaries Essays, Reading Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium and Narrative Superposition

Early in Disco Elysium, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi arrives at the Whirling-in-Rags, the hostel where the player character, Harry Du Bois, has just emerged from an alcoholic spiral so intense as…