INTRODUCTION TO REDESIGNING MODERNITIES II: THE DONKEY, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE

This article provides an introduction to Redesigning Modernities II, the second of two special publications that grew out of the Redesigning Modernities project led by Penn State’s School of Global Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. The article explains the aims of the larger project, which sought to encourage complementary and collaborative research agendas among faculty and graduate students, develop new curricula and innovative course designs, and generate materials for inclusion in the university’s Open Educational Resources (OERs) archive. This introduction synthesizes the main lines of inquiry opened in the seminars and workshops conducted in the summer of 2021, showing how the theoretical and literary texts, which focused on Arabic and Brazilian literature, produced new ways of thinking about modernity. This article also highlights some of the thirteen syllabi and eighteen OER modules produced over the two years of the project. Finally, it previews and connects the three special dossier articles that follow: an analysis of Gregory Bateson’s contributions to aesthetic theory, an archipelagic approach to Intan Paramaditha’s 2017 Indonesian novel Gentayangan (The Wandering), and a feminist analysis of the protagonist’s use of fashion in Futabatei Shimei’s 1897 Japanese novel Ukigumo (Drifting Clouds).