Rocky Mountain Review

70-2-2016 | Fall 2016 

Articles

Articles are published in alphabetical order according to the name of the author.

 

Laura R. Beadling, Youngstown State University

           

This essay examines two films by Indigenous feature-film women directors: Kissed by Lightning (2009) by Shelley Niro (Mohawk) and Older than America (2008) by Georgina Lightning (Cree). My essay contextualizes these two films in terms of both Hollywood westerns and more recent feature films by Native American men, including Smoke Signals (1998) and others, before it analyzes how the two films use familiar genre trappings to engage non-Native viewers while simultaneously layering in tribally and historically specific material.

 

Nozomi Irei, Southern Utah University

 

This essay takes up Brecht’s 1941 play, Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui [The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui] and investigates the question of whether or not the play mitigates against “aestheticizing” the figure of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. In “Commitment,” Adorno is highly skeptical of the effectiveness (implying also, appropriateness) of portraying Hitler’s rise in a comical manner. The piece explores how the play may be considered in ways other than as a play which, as Adorno describes, “takes the teeth out of fascism.” A guiding principle is Brecht’s view of Gestus as a collection of contradictions that suspends the movement of a dialectic. Gestus offers a way to consider the specificity of Brecht’s various theories on art, including epic theatre, parody, and the parable, among others.

 

Michèle A. Schaal, Iowa State University

 

Wendy Delorme’s Insurrections! En territoire sexuel (Insurrections! in Sexual Territory, 2009) articulates a French third-wave feminism that builds upon both historical French feminisms and contemporary American gender and queer theories. This article considers two aspects of Delorme’s syncretic feminism. Drawing on second-wave legacies, she articulates a “femmenism,” or queer performative critique, that exposes gender as a performance and lingering sexist and homo/lesbophobic discriminations. Delorme also belongs to the post-pornographic movement, itself linked to French third-wave feminism. Again bridging feminisms, Delorme uses explicitness when asserting her sexuality while also discussing ongoing issues regarding women’s sexualities in contemporary French society.

Reviews

Reviews are published in alphabetical order according to the name of the author reviewed.

 

El Quijote liberal y otros papeles cervantinos, byFredo Arias de la Canal.

Reviewer: Efraín Garza

 

First Words. On Dostoevsky’s Introductions, by Lewis Bagby.

Reviewer: Tatyana Novikov

 

Marie Antoinette's Head: The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution, by Will Bashor.

Reviewer: Lorie Sauble-Otto

 

The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice and Motion, byChristopher Lupke

Reviewer: Paul Manfredi

 

Despertad al diplodocus, by José Antonio Marina.

Reviewer: Elia Romera Figueroa

 

Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988-2012, by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado.

Reviewer: Jennie I. Daniels

 

Radical Chicana Poetics. by Ricardo F. Vivancos Pérez 

Reviewers: Rachel Spaulding and Sarah Spoon

 

The Middle Ages in Popular Culture: Medievalism and Genre, by Helen Young.

Reviewer: Albrecht Classen