Find my new article, “The Tension of Intention: Merleau-Ponty Gestures Toward Kafka,” in a special issue (21) of Chiasmi International on Merleau-Ponty’s conception of literature and literary language. This article examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reference to Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and “Investigations of a Dog” in his lecture on gesture and reconciliation, “Man See from the Outside.” Given the centrality of gesture in Kafka’s work, this essay considers the connections between the two figures and the likely influence of Kafka on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of gesture and intentionality. It compares their respective philosophies of gesture as they relate to meaning, reliability, silence, music, and intention. Finally, Kafka’s gestural motif of the springing body is suggested as a significant example of Merleau-Ponty’s “escaping intentions,” expressing a powerful will to intend toward others.
Category: Research & Publications
Bodleian Library, Oxford University 
Weston Library, home of the Franz Kafka papers 
Weston Library
Many thanks to the Northeast Modern Language Association for funding my research in the Franz Kafka papers at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in August of 2019. My initial findings from Kafka’s sketches and handwriting were presented at a poster session at NeMLA’s annual convention for 2020 in Boston, MA. As a recent recipient of the fellowship , I studied Kafka’s sketches and handwriting in order to continue my research on gesture, modernism, and the modern novel. This work is significant to my future manuscript on bodily motion in the novel and other articles. Stay tuned for more work on Kafka’s sketches!
This study is an extension of my recent publication on Kafka, gesture, and phenomenology. You can find “The Tension of Intention: Merleau-Ponty Gestures Toward Kafka” in issue 21 of Chiasmi International , which is the trilingual language journal concerned with the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
U.S. Studies Online: Forum for New Writing reviews the program for last summer’s annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference, the theme of which was slavery. My own presentation is mentioned. The corresponding essay, “Ritual Architectures: Doorless and Makeshift Boundaries in Faulkner’s Slave Quarters” is forthcoming in Faulkner and Slavery, published by the University Press of Mississippi. See the article for last year’s highlights:
