http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/comparative-literature Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:12:37 -0400 Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:12:37 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1959/occupation-and-the-road-not-traveled-in-habibi-rasak-kharban-2011 By Alya Osman - In adapting the twelfth-century story Layla and Majnun, Susan Youssef’s 2011 film Habibi Rasak Kharban re-imagines the Arabic folk tale in the context of Israeli occupation of Palestine, wherein the significance of journeys arises primarily from those not taken. Placing Youssef's film in conversation with Nizami's original poem (composed in 1118), this article examines Youssef's representation of literal and figurative journeys, focusing on the role of nature, mobility, stigma,notions of displacement and encounters with the ‘Other,’ and. Subsequently, I argue... Mon, 19 Sep 2022 02:51 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1959/occupation-and-the-road-not-traveled-in-habibi-rasak-kharban-2011 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1887/reconstructing-ruin-as-future-rethinking-the-spatiotemporality-of-race-and-gender-in-glissant-and-spillers-middle-passage By Yiyang Chen - Intersecting Edouard Glissant’s poetics with Hortense Spillers’ theory of race, gender, and sexuality alchemizes a new conception of the Middle Passage’s spatiotemporality. With the slave trade haunting the living, this paper attempts to orient a rupture in the fabric of spacetime, through which implosion leads to a new future. The destructive and destabilizing abyss of the Middle Passage, in itself, creates a philosophy of alterity, where linear, universalizing logics of the West become ruin through which new paradigms emerge. In Poetics of Relation, Glissant delineates three... Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:59 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1887/reconstructing-ruin-as-future-rethinking-the-spatiotemporality-of-race-and-gender-in-glissant-and-spillers-middle-passage http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1846/the-subversion-of-conventional-charisma-in-john-miltons-paradise-lost-and-johann-wolfgang-von-goethes-faust-part-one By Ching Yan Clarissa Lee - This paper focuses on the manifestation of an unorthodox charisma in the devil figures of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: Part One. Using the respective connotations of ‘charisma’ with positive charm, and of the devil with ignobility and vice as a starting point, I explore how the intricate dispositions of Goethe’s Mephistopheles and Milton’s Satan isolate the two from the cookie-cutter stereotype of the devil, thus subverting the expectations readers hold for a wicked devil-antagonist. I propose that the display of the devils... Fri, 04 Dec 2020 05:46 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1846/the-subversion-of-conventional-charisma-in-john-miltons-paradise-lost-and-johann-wolfgang-von-goethes-faust-part-one http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1812/redemption-and-reconciliation-in-oedipus-at-colonus-and-gran-torino-a-comparative-reading By Linda Gao - This paper presents a comparative analysis of Oedipus at Colonus, a play written by the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles, and Gran Torino, an American film directed by Clint Eastwood. The two literary productions, although remote as they seem, contain significant parallels and similarities that reveal trans-temporal themes of human life. The paper first analyzes the shared arc of narrative: both stories depict the journey of alienated, polluted sinners moving away from isolation and sin; by attaining humbleness, re-establishing social relationships, and atoning externally for their past sins,... Thu, 08 Oct 2020 07:22 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1812/redemption-and-reconciliation-in-oedipus-at-colonus-and-gran-torino-a-comparative-reading