Dirk van Rens

New publication: My review of Daphne Lamothe's monograph Black Time and the Aesthetic Possibility of Objects (2023) was published in the latest issue of American Studies in Scandinavia yesterday!

rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/as... (Open Access)

Novel Reviews David Machado, The Shelf Life of Happiness, trans. Hillary Locke (Seattle: Amazon Crossing, 2016), 236 pp., $14.95 (paperback). Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (New York: Doubleday, 2021), 336 pp., $...

New publication: My novel review of @colsonwhitehead.com's Harlem Shuffle is now out in Transfers!

I focus on how the novel offers a mapping of New York which produces a pertinent interrogation of the way ‘race’ and capital govern space and mobility in the city and beyond.

doi.org/10.3167/TRAN...

"Each time I encounter a meaningful work of art, I feel like I have received an unexpected gift, something to cherish." (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies, 2016: 293).

New publication: My paper on Nana Oforiatta Ayim's novel The God Child (2019) was published online in Matatu last week! The article is part of the Special Issue 'Africa in Europe, Europe in Africa’: Transcultural Histories in African Anglophone Literature and Media.

brill.com/view/journal...

"[I]t is not that dreams are for those who cannot endure reality, reality itself is for those who cannot endure (the Real that announces itself in) their dreams." 😃

”On aika hurjaa, jos tällä osaamisella ei työllisty” – Elina Ahokangas on tohtori, joka ei löydä töitä Suomessa on 1 400 työtöntä tohtoria, joista iso siivu pitkäaikaistyöttömiä. Yrityksillä on tarve työntekijätason osaamiselle, ei niinkään tohtoreille, sanoo asiantuntija.

yle.fi/a/74-20134039 Glad to see this issue get some attention, but I don't see anything changing soon. Best bit of the article is the PhD who was finally offered a job--to pick up dog shit. Maybe some will now understand why PhD students are miserable most of the time, esp when closer to graduation

“When He Comes, He Will Be Like an Englishman”: Space, Spy Fiction, and Englishness in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight This paper examines the appropriation of the spy fiction genre in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight by means of a spatial approach. By adopting and at times subverting spy fiction tropes, Ondaatje’s nove...

New publication: My article on Michael Ondaatje's Warlight (2018) is now out (open access) in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction!
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www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thanks for the link—looks like something worth checking out!

I had no idea of their involvement/interest in scholarship on metamodernism. Usha once gave a presentation as part of a BA seminar where members of the Eng staff talk about their research to give students an idea of their work, but it was on periodical research/Paris Review if I recall correctly🤔

I spot my BA thesis supervisor😮

”Things were awkward between Carney and Delroy—beyond the coerced protection-money aspect—until the hood started seeing this Jamaican gal with a lackluster dining situation. Carney was happy to move another Collins-Hathaway dinette set, ten percent off for loyal customers.”

Having said that, despite dropping the second novel from the presentation I sadly still won’t have time for covering Carney’s newspaper ads (puns combining the Harlem Riot & furniture), nor some of the many enjoyable instances where furniture salesmanship and crime meet, such as:

Arrived in Helsinki for the biennial Maple Leaf & Eagle conference. On Fri I’ll be discussing the intersection of crime, mapping the city, and postcolonial trauma in @colson.bsky.social’s Harlem Shuffle. Had to drop Crook Manifesto because Harlem Shuffle already was chock-full of great bits.

[He looks again at ESTRAGON.] At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. [Pause.] I can’t go on! [Pause.] What have I said?"

"Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. [He listens.] But habit is a great deadener.

behalf of the reader. I remember feeling the same as they did when I read it for the first time in a BA course in 2015 (thus also disliking it). Upon my second reading in preparation for this course my perspective was entirely different and I really enjoyed it at times.

privilege) appeared the main issues. Several felt frustrated at not always understanding what was going on, almost blaming themselves for losing track of time/place. I reminded them that often when a text gets too confusing it's because it's intended to be, rather than due to a lack of skills on

Thanks! I was very fortunate; teaching the course (esp for the first time) would've felt entirely different had the students not been so interested. As for Woolf: the fragmentation, ever-changing perspective, and lack of 'likeable characters' (students took issue with most of the characters'

Percival Everett’s novel The Trees, Picador, 2021

”’Did you see the cross burning last night?’ [sheriff Jetty] asked.

’That was a cross?’ Jim shook his head. ’I didn’t know what that was. I thought it was a car fire or something.’ …
’You mean like a KKK cross burning?’

The sheriff nodded.

’I wish I had known,’ Jim said. ’I forgot to be scared.”

… animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that […] For the truth is that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”