Author: Rita Rumboldt

We are pleased to announce the publication of this year’s autumn edition of Patchwork, which includes three articles:

First, Dora Lešnjak discusses the construction of Black male identity and masculinity in Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War short story “My Contraband” by analyzing the various names Robert, a formerly enslaved man, assumes throughout the story, mapping his transformation from the dehumanizing label of “contraband” to the symbolic adoption of the name “Robert Dane”. In particular, Lešnjak argues that the naming and descriptive language used in “My Contraband” reflects the limited terms under which Black identity could be publicly acknowledged in this transitional period.

Next, Karlo Stanko interprets the visuality in Christina Rossetti’s poem “When I am Dead, My Dearest” in the context of her involvement with, the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. The analysis is divided into two halves, in compliance with the subject matter of the poem. The paper finds that the poem is not only successful in translating the visual elements of a pre-Raphaelite painting into a lyrical work but also in translating the brotherhood’s approach and themes, creating a deeply personal work of poetry in the process.

Finally, Lara Braun traces the representation of multilingualism in Anglophone cinema by comparing GoldenEye (1995) and The Hate U Give (2018). The paper contrasts the negative stereotyping of multilingualism in the James Bond film with the more positive representation of code-switching in the newer coming-of-age drama, which explores its importance as a tool for survival and self-expression.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The Editors

We are pleased to announce the publication of this year’s double edition of Patchwork Student Journal. It encompasses six very diverse texts, five of which were presented at Anglophonia, the international student conference in English studies organized by the English Student Club X.a. this May.

First, Stefan Čizmar writes about different masculinities in Kunzru’s Transmission: by distinguishing between the hegemonic, dominant strain of masculinity and the subordinate strains of masculinity which belong to men who are not in positions of power, he argues, the novel is able to problematize and subvert this dominant conception of masculinity in various ways.

Next, Leoni Flower Finocchiaro’s text focuses on the interactive and intertextual nature of Mansions of Madness, a board game based on H.P. Lovecraft’s writing, claiming the shift from the passive reader to the active player as a fundamentally postmodern phenomenon.

Honing in on different aspects of Lovecraft’s work, Taha Al-Sarhan looks at the interactions and blurred lines between individual perception and objective reality in “The Nameless City” which serve to highlight the precariousness of human comprehension in the presence of the unfathomable.

On a different note, Tijana Šuković looks at the formation of lexemes such as New Yorkness, Obamahood and Stalinoid through three different mechanisms. mechanisms (schema, analogy and second-order schema), suggesting that all three ensure the formation of structurally and semantically acceptable novel lexemes which are successfully interpreted thanks to our extra-linguistic knowledge.

Andi Febriana Tamrin examines YA fiction, fanfiction, and four methods utilized by its reader-writers: oppositional gazing, alternate universes, cross overs, and mash ups. By adapting specific source-texts to construct their own stories and introduce novel perspectives, these fanfictionists can subvert established norms and create unexpected communities.

Finally, Nika Keserović explores Edgar Allan Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin in relation to the socio-political climate of the 19th century – namely, the combination of liberalism, the commodification of information, and societal distrust following urbanization. Tracing Poe’s ratiocination cycle, she argues that Dupin’s transformation from solver of mysteries to guardian of the status quo reflects the growing influence of capitalism and subsequent commodification of knowledge.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The Editors

We are pleased to announce the publication of the eleventh issue of Patchwork Student Journal. Although the texts in this edition may seem disparate, there seems to be a throughline connecting them – the line between the cultural and the natural. Where is this boundary, where does the human fall and are there other oppositions to be delineated?

The natural and the cultural within the human: First, David Brajković analyzes the use of music in Burgess’ and Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange as an exploration of the duality of humanity as both cultural and bestial. He argues that the juxtaposition of classical music with scenes of extreme violence challenges the audience’s preconceived notions about high culture, while also critiquing various societal structures which accentuate one aspect of human nature and violently suppress the other.

The human and the cultural within the natural: This is followed by Petar Sakač’s sonnet The Tears of Eagles (and a bit of Tempest), an interlude which decenters the human in its own dealing with the relationship between the “cultural” and the “natural”, alluding to Shakespeare’s (certainly high culture) take on that dichotomy in The Tempest.

Beyond the human, the cultural, and the natural: Taha Al-Sarhan similarly departs from anthropocentric perspectives in describing Lovecraft’s inversion of traditional humanistic (Burkean) conceptions of the sublime – rather than revealing the vastness of experience as an opportunity for transcendence, Lovecraft’s encounters with the sublime only indicate the insignificance of human agency within those vast expanses.

Who gets to be human? Finally, Lara Braun’s paper narrows the scope, focusing in on the question of agency, specifically in Women in Prison media – who is granted humanity and subjectivity and who is simply captured by the subject’s gaze?

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The Editors

We are pleased to announce the publication of the ninth issue of Patchwork Student Journal. It is the second of two issues titled Spaces in Between, both of which focus on interdisciplinary works, as well as works on intertextuality, transtextuality and intermediality. As explorations of the junctures of various arts and disciplines, these issues are especially interested in concepts such as “borders”, “liminality”, and “ambiguity”: 

In identifying and analyzing references to Lolita in the post #MeToo novel My Dark Vanessa, Bikić uses an intertextual approach to illustrate shifting cultural boundaries and power dynamics, as well as the obscure yet unrelenting effects of trauma.

Surjan’s reading of Light in August highlights the semipermeable and contingent nature of purportedly absolute and biological categories such as race.

Keserović’s interpretation of the supernatural elements in Coleridge’s demonic poems explores the poet’s idea of imagination as the subject’s attitude to reality, both natural and supernatural.

Finally, Francišković offers an overview of the many ways social boundaries, such as exclusion based on racial prejudices, are unconsciously and arbitrarily constructed, as seen in The Lonely Londoners.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The Editors

We are pleased to announce the publication of the eighth issue of Patchwork Student Journal. It is the first of two issues titled Spaces in Between, both of which focus on interdisciplinary works, as well as works on intertextuality, transtextuality and intermediality. As explorations of the junctures of various arts and disciplines, these issues are especially interested in concepts such as “borders”, “liminality”, and “ambiguity”:

Stanko’s paper describes both the literal pushing of borders in 19th century North America and the permeable borders between the empirical world, the discursive worlds of literature and academia, and the virtual one of Red Dead Redemption 2.

Krčan’s reading of Winterson’s work offers an optimistic approach to the increasingly hazy distinction between human and artificial intelligence through the inherently ambiguous, simultaneously human and superhuman nature of narratives.

Analyzing Hogg’s novel, Čatlaić identifies its many liminal and uncanny aspects which were to become so characteristic of later Gothic fiction, pointing to the text’s own intermediate, transitional status

Finally, Finocchiaro’s reinterpretation of Zone One through the lens of Derridean deconstruction introduces a productive ambiguity into a seemingly overdetermined world of capitalist realism.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The Editors