Logomotives are words that change worlds past, present, and future. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volumes twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment to reveal how words are catalysts of cultural, political and epistemological change. Harnessing new developments in philologies of race, in queer-, feminist-, trans-, transnational- and postcolonial philologies, as well as translation studies, Logomotives illuminates the world-making capacity of words. Each chapter opens with a methodological statement, pursues a central reading and concludes with a lesson plan for undergraduate or graduate classrooms. The volume orients critical attention to the relations between what a word means, the ways in which it moves, and the changes that such motion engenders, both within and across the historical cultures under analysis and in present-day scholarship.
Arvustused
Logomotives is a beautifully crafted study of the world-changing power of words. Ranging across diverse geographies and cultures, these essays show how words catalyse cultural, political and epistemological change in the pre-modern world. This collection will be an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the force language exerts across history. -- Jenny C. Mann, New York University
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Series Editors' Preface
List of Contributors
Introduction: From Keywords to Logomotives
Marjorie Rubright and Stephen Spiess
1. Bethink
Heather Hirschfeld
2. Black
Paul Yachnin
3. The Blush
Valerie Traub
4. Conversio/Conversion
Katharina Piechocki
5. Corn/Maize
Allison Margaret Bigelow
6. Cynefin
Elaine Treharne
7. Desert
Derek Higginbotham
8. Diferencias
Esteban Crespo
9. Ethnic/Ethnicity
Carla Della Gatta
10. Frolic
Jeffrey Masten
11. Gross
Adam Zucker
12. Habla de Negros
Nicholas R. Jones
13. Harem
Bernadette Andrea
14. Hew/Hue
Colby Gordon
15. Impotent
Ari Friedlander
16. Post-
Christine Varnado
17. Profit
Kathryn Vomero Santos
18. Project
Debapriya Sarkar
19. Silenus
Ian Smith
20. Simian
Holly Dugan
21. Study
Andrew Hui
22. Taste/Dhawq
Jane Mikkelson
23. Traductio
Belén Bistué
24. Transport
Joseph Gamble
25. Venture Capital
Nicole Legnani
Index
Marjorie Rubright is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directs the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies. She is founder of the Renaissance of the Earth project, an interdisciplinary research collaboration that engages the early modern past with questions about our environmental future with the goal of discovering diverse avenues for creating sustainable and equitable life. She is the author of Doppelgänger Dilemmas: Anglo-Dutch Relations in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (2014), and co-author of So Long Lives This: A Celebration of Shakespeare's Life and Works, 1616-2016 (2016), winner of the 2017 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab Award. Her public humanities work includes the curation, most recently, of the 2023-2024 campuswide special exhibit: Shakespeare Unbound. Stephen Spiess is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature at Babson College. His essays on Shakespeare and the interrelations of sex, language, embodiment and knowledge have appeared in Modern Philology, Shakespeare Survey, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment, and Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and His World. His book, Shakespeare and the Making of English Whoredom, is forthcoming. A highly decorated teacher, he has received a Deans Award for Undergraduate Teaching and a Babson Pride Award, for significant contributions to the colleges LGBTQ+ community.
