San Diego State University – ROSES AND REVIEWS

July 8, 2022December 10, 2022

The Gift of Rumi

As one of the world’s most loved poets, Rumi’s poems are celebrated for their message of love and their beauty, but too often they are stripped of their mystical and spiritual meanings. The Gift of Rumi offers a new understanding of Rumi, contextualizing his work against the broader backdrop of Islamic mysticism and adding a magical richness and authenticity that is lacking in so many Westernized readings of his work.

“The main goal of Sufism is to achieve loving union with the divine by detaching from the self and the desires of the ego”.

Dervishes try to free themselves from any attachments to the ego. One of the secrets to Sufism is to “die before you die”. It is seen as an intentional rupture of one’s attachment to ego, the material world, and identity.

Essentially, Sufism teaches us “how to live and how to love”. And the happiness of the Sufi flows from within—not from the material external world.

“Know that the way of pleasure is from within, not from without.”
Rumi

At the heart of Rumi’s mystical poetry is the “religion of love” which transcends all religions. Through his majestic verses of ecstasy and longing, Rumi invites us into the religion of the heart and guides us to our own loving inner essence. The Gift of Rumi gives us a key to experiencing this profound and powerful invitation, allowing readers to meet the master in a new way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Jane O’Dell has studied Sufism both academically, in her work and research at Harvard, Columbia, and the American University of Beirut, and in practice, learning from a Mevlevi master and his whirling dervishes in Istanbul. She weaves this expertise throughout The Gift of Rumi, sharing a new vision of Rumi’s classic work.

January 5, 2017December 10, 2022

Patchwork Girl Stands on The Shoulders of Shelley & Baum

PATCHWORK GIRL

Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl demonstrates how intertextual allusions are used as piecework in order to construct new literatures together from various sources of the past. Presented in hypertext format, Patchwork Girl uses intertextual allusions borrowed from canonical texts such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and L. Frank Baum’s Patchwork Girl of Oz to create a new work inspired by and in reference to Shelley and Baum’s works, reinterpreting their ideas and making them modern. The work of Patchwork Girl proves that literature has always been intertextual – writers have forever been influenced by other writers. We are all only standing on the shoulders of giants.

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December 10, 2016December 10, 2022

Pry as a “novel”

nov·el /ˈnävəl/ noun

1. a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

adjective

2. new or unusual in an interesting way.

Poet Ezra Pound once wrote, “The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, or a discovery is of little worth.” The very word “novel” implies innovation; in fact, the first printed novels were thus named for their specific cutting-edge contemporary style of writing. The novel itself (which was different from the other books available at the time of their invention, which included but were limited to *mostly* Bibles, ancient plays or works of poetry, or books of science or history) has gone through many iterations over the years, evolving from Gothic romance stories of the 19th century to modern series’ and now experimental novels.

This work Pry, though it is digital literature, can be considered [a] “novel” by some, in the way that it is taking the tradition of storytelling via literature and “making it new” (“novel” here meaning new, as well as a book) .

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October 13, 2016December 10, 2022

Digital Humanities: A Conversation with DHC

The student committee for Digital Humanities held an event addressing the idea of “What is Digital Humanities?: A Conversation” in Love Library last Thursday. The student branch is a network of DH scholars, researchers, teachers, and students at SDSU and in the region that seeks to study digital technologies, employ conceptual practices in research, and reflect upon the impact of the digital. Dr. Pam Lach, Dr. Adam Hammond and Dr. Nathan Rodriguez comprised a panel of experts on Digital Humanities here at SDSU and their presentations shed some light on the growing field of Digital Humanities. This was the first in a series of events the Digital Humanities Collaborative (DHC) plans to hold over the course of this school year.

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May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

An Interview with Margaret Larlham

Margaret Larlham is a director and playwright at San Diego State University. Her scripts are adapted from children’s literature have a strong focus on physicality and cultural diversity.

Larlham was born and educated in South Africa, and taught in the Speech and Drama Department at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa prior to moving to San Diego in 1986. Continue reading “An Interview with Margaret Larlham”