Inventing Romance Studies

If the hallmark of literary representation is that it is an unfaithful representation of the real, then perhaps the most literary texts are those that betray (disclose or let slip) that infidelity even as they indulge in it themselves.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction02:07 Patterns of Commonality and Difference03:36 Questions04:57 Growing Up and Betrayal14:24 Romance Studies as Minor Literature20:09 CreditsFor RMST 202. Website: https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) and Jon Beasley-MurrayLecture video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etyrdFxPV-oWebsite: http://rmst202.arts.ubc.caInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inventingromancestudies/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202 about Djaïli Amadou Amal's The Impatient. With Djaïli Amadou Amal and Jon Beasley-Murray.Interpretation by Julien Mowang Ngoula. Many thanks also to Irem Ayan for her advice and help.Short: https://youtube.com/shorts/snVovb7I0qo Lecture video: Website: http://rmst202.arts.ubc.caInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inventingromancestudies/#romancestudies #rmst202

This is a novel that is both in transit and in translation.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 02:23 Politics as Necropolitics11:08 Questions 14:03 Burrowing through Space26:21 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

The best they can do, it seems, is embrace their fate, fight for their own servitude.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction02:04 Acquiring a Taste for Domination06:53 Questions11:00 Mobilizing the Politics of Language19:33 CreditsFull text here: https://rmst202.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2022/02/brilliant-friend.pdfFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Ann Goldstein (Ferrante's translator) and Jon Beasley-Murray.See also the lecture video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl434Ui-dhs#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

Art may not be able to evade death, but through performance it can be a vehicle of resurrection.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 03:18 Politics as Necropolitics07:25 Questions 10:14 Reading as Resurrection20:03 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202 about José Eduardo Agualusa's The Book of Chameleons. With José Eduardo Agualusa and Jon Beasley-Murray.11:46 An Absurd Reality: Violence, the Fantastic, and Exuberance16:59 Literature and Dreams: Disquieting Reminders, Sudden Creativity20:19 Dreams as Preparation for Reality: Nightmares and Tears21:55 Enter the Gecko: Finding the Voice of a Laughing God25:37 Nature and Animism: Paying Attention to Life and Death28:02 Writing and Reading to Understand the Other30:14 Credits#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

Doubling kickstarts a mechanism that generates uncountable multitudes, whose diverse multiplicity contrasts starkly with the image of one nation, one people.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

It may be nice to think we can reinvent ourselves, construct new pasts and precursors, and fiction encourages us in this fantasy. But there are scars that simply will not fade.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 06:22 The Powers of the False07:03 Questions 16:02 History's Revenge26:42 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

Writing is rendered a battle of betrayal and counter-betrayal, whereby it is not truth (fidelity) that leads to the real, but subterfuge (perfidy) that gives us the really real, the heart of the matter!By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Bécquer Seguín (Johns Hopkins University) and Jon Beasley-Murray.Lecture video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-_eMlcYl0Website: http://rmst202.arts.ubc.caInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inventingromancestudies/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Ryan Long (University of Maryland) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

Bolaño's fiction, whether set in Chile or Mexico, is as much about a memory of Latin America as it is about the region’s actuality, even if that memory is sometimes also a memory of the future.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. ⁠https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/⁠#rmst202 #romancestudies

Money is, after all, one of the most powerful fictions that structure social relations.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 08:49 Based on a True Story20:41 Questions 22:38 Bonfire of the Vanities35:05 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Fabricio Tocco (Australian National University) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudies http://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

There is a margin of uncertainty in life as in literature, and a strange resonance between the experiences of living in Communist society and engaging with a text, both of which are exercises in close reading, a hermeneutics of suspicion.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction04:06 The Uncertainty of Interpretation05:54 Questions13:43 The Temptations of Complicity19:20 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With famed Romanian writer Norman Manea, Jon Beasley-Murray, and students of RMST 202.We profoundly thank Professor Manea for the privilege of his time and his extraordinary generosity.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

The power of writing has little to do with whatever meaning it may convey, subject to interpretation, but rather with the book as fetish object, the materiality of paper.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

In rewriting the lover, Duras also rewrites herself, her origin as writer, in a precarious zone shuttling between past and future and back again.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 03:11 Approaching Agency09:35 Questions 12:19 Rewriting Hierarchy22:01 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Fernanda Negrete (University at Buffalo) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

You, of course, may take your reading of the novel in some other direction, reach your own conclusions.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 04:40 Metafiction and Materiality08:47 Questions 17:53 Escaping Gendered Endings26:14 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Claudia Dellacasa (Glasgow University) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudies ⁠http://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

It is about an ethics of writing, about how writing can be true to life, to “a life,” without necessarily laying claim to the truth of that life. It is about the hesitations, affirmations, and disruptive explosions that mark any text as it tries to describe and negotiate the world.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia00:00 Introduction10:59 A Hesitant Ethics13:20 Questions21:29 An Interrupted Consumption31:02 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

Postmodernism, by putting truth in question (or in brackets) does not necessarily abandon either politics or ethics.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction01:48 Postmodernity, Postmodernism, and Fragments07:50 Questions11:15 Life Writing and the Return of the Subject19:49 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Vincent Gélinas-Lemaire (UBC) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

By the end G. H. accepts, even embraces, passion, if at the price perhaps of accepting that she is neither subject nor object but, like the cockroach, abject.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction01:36 Learning from Difficulty09:36 Questions10:51 Passion Between Subject and Object21:08 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

The challenge is to try to stitch things up, paper over the cracks, create new attachments or conjunctions of people and objects in a bricolage that is no longer indebted to myths of organic harmony or natural inclination.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction02:30 Bare Life08:56 Questions11:50 Putting back the Pieces19:27 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Anna Casas (UBC) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

If colonization is not (yet) complete, then the outcome of this struggle is perhaps still to be determined.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia00:00 Introduction04:43 Never-Ending Stories12:42 Questions17:37 Approaching Reconciliation27:52 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#romancestudies #rmst202

The novel resists the imposition of meaning and emotion, to affirm instead vitality and affect. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 01:40 Translation and Feelings03:18 Questions 08:58 Affect on the Surface 19:40 Credits For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/ #rmst202 #romancestudies

It is as though Black labour existed wholly outside language altogether, or at least outside the French language. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 01:56 The Problem with Development 07:30 Questions 10:47 The Pleasure, Possibilities, and Dangers of Writing 19:23 Credits For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Emily Zobel Marshall (Leeds Beckett University) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

The scars of conflict are everywhere evident, if seldom dwelt upon, in Laforet’s novel.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction01:42 Nothing like a Story08:20 Questions10:08 Memory and the Open Secret17:01 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Sally Perret (Salisbury University) and Jon Beasley-Murray.00:00 Introduction00:57 Fragments of Unsuspected Truth07:15 Hints at a Political Past08:45 Senses at the Limit12:00 A Feeling for What Could Have Been15:37 Gender and Possibility19:18 Nothing but Resignation?21:17 Credits#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

Agostino’s loss is inherent to language, whose powers to name always fall short.00:00 Introduction , 01:26 Size Isn't Everything, 06:56 Questions , 08:32 Oedipus at Sea, 16:35 Credits By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Gaoheng Zhang (UBC) and Jon Beasley-Murray.00:00 Introduction00:51 Between Freud and Marx03:53 Neorealism and Narrative06:19 Danger and Coming of Age10:26 Temporality and Disruption14:23 What Next? Telling and Showing18:00 Credits#rmst202 #romancestudies http://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

The power of fiction resides in the fact that it is not simply mimicry—or rather, that even mimicry is more than mere copy.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction01:52 The Powers of Fiction07:29 Questions08:47 Gender and Agency12:50 A View from the Margins17:33 CreditsFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Naomi Lindstrom (University of Texas at Austin) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

We are challenged to impose some sense on the disorder the book shows us, through either analysis or fiction, but also to postpone that sense-making, to live (however briefly) with the unexpected contingencies of modern life.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 02:49 Fictions of the Self and Others08:21 Questions 15:38 Risking the Self with Others24:48 CreditsShort: Lecture video: Website: http://rmst202.arts.ubc.caInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inventingromancestudies/#romancestudies #rmst202

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Mark Polizzotti (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

The ruins of the modern, everything that escapes but also haunts it, reveal modernity’s true shape.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.For RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/#rmst202 #romancestudies

Arlt steals from the literary tradition, as with his theft of elements of the picaresque, but he also turns his back on it, betrays it, gives it a figurative middle finger, by opening up his text to the cacophonous demotic of the Buenos Aires streets.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction 02:39 The Picaresque, Pulp Fiction, and New Forms of Representation05:35 Questions 11:28 The Politics and Aesthetics of Betrayal21:00 Credits#rmst202 #romancestudies ⁠http://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Ben Bollig (St Catherine's College, Oxford) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

It aims to shake us out of our habits, so we become more active readers, and as such better readers.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.#rmst202 #romancestudiesFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Farid Laroussi (UBC) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#rmst202 #romancestudieshttp://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca

Romance Studies emerges when tradition is infiltrated and overthrown by the demotic, by the everyday speech of a nameless multitude.By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia.00:00 Introduction01:12 In Search of the Commons05:50 Where in the World?06:15 Question10:50 A Bastard (Anti-)Discipline16:04 Credits#rmst202 #romancestudiesFor RMST 202. https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/

A Conversation for RMST 202. With Tim Beasley-Murray (University College London) and Jon Beasley-Murray.#romancestudies #rmst202 http://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca