NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is one of the best American academic journals I've seen. It offers a healthy collection of cutting-edge scholarship. This general issue includes articles on, among others, Willa Cather, Raymond Williams, Thomas Hardy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The essay of particular interest to me addresses the work of the turn of the century African-American writer, Charles Chessnut. Here Matthew Wilson discusses how Chessnut's faith in post-Enlightenment reason is undermined by the public's refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the African-American voice regardless of the truths it might seek to articulate. It is a thought provoking piece as are the other essays in this excellent issue.

Guest Edited by Jennie Skirl, this special issue on TEACHING BEAT LITERATURE reflects the upsurge of recent interest in the Beats at the turn of the century, not just by those in college but also by those in the wider community. It is likely that Kerouac has been responsible for more youngsters strapping on a rucksack and heading into the blue yonder than any other single person in the twentieth century (Maybe Alex Garland will inherit that crown for the twenty first century).

A number of writers deal with specific college issues in teaching what was an underground movement which first flourished without academic acceptance. There is also a dilemma to be found in whether the Beat phenomenon is as much sociological as it is literary. Inevitably these essays cover the Beats in the context of current literary theory - a number of writers attempt to tie the Beats into the move from Modern to Postmodern, whilst many essays look at them as a social movement encompassing minority rights.

Kerouac's work still draws the most interest, although it is placed in an increasingly wider context. Burroughs, Ginsberg and Snyder also are well represented in this set of essays.

There is a clear target audience for this book, and I believe it will receive a warm welcome there. Such a collection always provides value for money - there is a wide scope, and one will always find a good selection of references. It has a wider appeal for anyone with an academic bent who knows something of literary theory and who is interested in the Beats.

Subtitled ORAL FIXATIONS, this issue contains ten substantial and wide-ranging inquiries into issues concerned with the thematics of digestion and incorporation, and with the historical, ethical and sociological implications of "oral ingestion".

In short, various moral questions arising from what we eat are covered in depth, and include FLESH TRADE by Alfonso Lingis, which explores the philosophical implications of cannibalism and THE VASA MENSTRUALIS by Merrall Llewelyn Price, a discussion beginning with the peculiar shape of the Virgin Mary's breasts, as presented in late medieval art and after, and going on to discuss the blood/milk equivalent in Christian sustenance, the "good" and "evil" mother archetypes, and lots of other good stuff.

Valerie Karno explores how the discourse of orality and the way the vernacular of the biological eating process has become linked to the language of American law in its search for National evolution and stability. Phrases like "feeding national growth", "National sustenance and consumption" "undernourished economy" and "undigested wastage" as applied to populations, are held to have been a distinctive aspect to the phraseology of the developing nation of America and its legal constitutions. If this sounds a bit heavy on the semantics it is worth noting that Karno teaches Law and Literature at the University of Rhode Island.

The theme of appetite and gratification is extended further in Jeffrey Falla's DISORDERLY CONSUMPTION AND CAPITALISM: THE PRIVILEGE OF SEX ADDICTION, in which he questions the attempts to establish a sexual normalcy through the discursive production of myriad perversions. He explores how the American "unalienable right" in the Constitution of "the pursuit of happiness" has become entrenched as a consumerist pleasure principle including a confusion of sexual aspirations. The essay offers telling contrasts between high-earning "sex addicts" like Clinton, who need delicate remedial therapy from a chummy shrink, and a "sex offender" for whom treatment would be a waste of tax dollars.

Every single essay in this publication is stimulating and well worth its space and, as with all these academic journals, have points of view which deserve to reach a wider public than distribution to college libraries.

How do you teach students about Medieval Women? Well, to begin with you have to convince them that the subject is worth studying. Jane Chance got a lot of grief from her students when "obscure" dead white females like Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich ousted "important" dead white males like Milton from her survey course in English literature.

Daniel T. Kline on the other hand found he could interest students in medieval saints by drawing parallels between medieval hagiography and websites honouring Mother Teresa and Princess Di.

COLLEGE LITERATURE is a journal for university teachers by university teachers. It contains a certain amount of grumping about students (I'm sorry, but I have some sympathy with Chance's students when they complain that their course is being distorted by feminist dialectic) and handy hints and stratagems for teaching. Being an academic journal it is, of course, stronger on jargon than laughs.

The section on Teaching Medieval Women takes up about half this issue. In addition there are essays on GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, the movie HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and PUNK ECONOMICS, plus a number of reviews.

I'm interested in the middle ages, and I learned a thing or two about them from the special section essays. My favourite piece is Katie Normington's on TEACHING FEMINIST APPROACHES TO THE MYSTERY PLAYS, where her close study of these important communal rituals throws up fascinating insights into medieval views of women and their place in society. Women may not have been allowed on stage (though this wasn't an iron rule) but they were active behind the scenes, producing props, costumes and important funding.

COLLEGE LITERATURE is handsomely produced and has won prizes for design in the past. Sadly there aren't any pictures.

College teaches a person many things that eventually prepare them for live. Most importantly after years of believing the opposite, students find that behind those closed staffroom doors, tutors don't sit there sharpening their tongues in order to castrate and berate the next student who doesn't hand their essay in on time. Instead they sit their complaining about the size of their mobile phone bill whilst smoking five cigarettes at once and cramming a Belgium bun down all within the allotted 15 minute break. That is until you enter the English literature and language staffroom. Here strange elf like men wearing tweed blazers pace up and down in feverish contemplation whilst they puff furiously on their favourite pipe.

Which is exactly what College Literature reminds me off; either American College students are as clever as Steven Hawking or they all have a very strong need for Prozac. I mention this because College Literature is too academic; here we have 186 pages of essay reviews, book reviews and essays which is either a sesquipidillan's delight or a dyslexic's nightmare. A prime example of this is H. Aldair Murdoch, GHOSTS IN THE MIRROR: COLONIALISM AND CREOLE INDETERMINACY IN BRONTE AND SAND. Mr. Murdoch is lucky enough to be able to peer back through the passages of time due to Ms. Bronte and Sand and also posses the benefit of hindsight. It is due to this last reason that I would have preferred it if he had expressed his ideas in a way that were accessible to everyone. Instead the reader is constantly reaching for their thesaurus and dictionary or having to re-read the last page or paragraph to remind themself what the point was, which makes this a very slow, and dare I say, mind numbing reading.

An example of this is on page five; here in drawing a comparison and pointing out the difference of Creole identity in JANE EYE with Jean Rhys' WILD SARGASSO SEA he states;

By deliberately underlining and subverting the doubled, dissonant trope of Creole identity, Rhys undermines our notions of the oppositional relation between self and Other; the very discursive act of bringing this text into being undoes the presumed instability of the "mad Creole"...

Why this is I can only hazard an informed guess. But regardless of that if English Literature students in the UK were forced to read this, class sizes would fall dramatically. Either that or there'll be a new generation of Prozac addicted children on our streets.