This essay explores the rhetorical strategies deployed by Don DeLillo in his essay on 9/11. What distinguishes the essay is less what it says about 9/11 than how, in responding to the event, it puts the question of response at stake. Resisting the demand to speak with moral clarity and declare what 9/11 means, he instead shows that response is always a question of response-ability, or the ethical “how.” To image 9/11, DeLillo rhetorically activates a neorealist mode of seeing that differs ethically from other accounts of perception, such as those of (neo)phenomenology. Whereas the latter locate the perceiving subject's perspective outside an event, DeLillo insists that point of view—the act of seeing—is immanent in the event. Responding to this immanence, DeLillo's rhetoric of seeing suspends and questions any representational judgment of 9/11.

Recent studies of medieval English literature have queried anew the role of the anthology (medieval and modern) in shaping both historical and current notions of vernacular canons. Here, my examination of two major assemblies exemplifies the theoretical, interpretive, and pedagogical problems raised by this recent work. In British Library manuscript Harley 2253, an early-fourteenth-century collection, and in Sammelbände of printed books put together in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, I discern sequences of texts that take as their theme the idea of the anthology: the languages of poetic expression, the technologies of public literacy, and the cultural values that generate canons. Studying and teaching medieval literature requires us to restore texts to such early compilatory contexts; but it also requires us to reflect on our contemporary fascination with anthologies and with the de-authorizing of the literary in the wake of postmodern theory—a move, I suggest, anticipated in medieval literary culture.

Reunified Berlin's ubiquitous examples of architectural citation—such as the Reichstag, the plans for the Stadtschloß, the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, the new Hotel Adlon, and the FriedrichstadtPassagen—variously inscribe contemporary architectural styles with allusive reinventions of previous forms and cultural discourses, incorporate remnants of older edifices, or use partial reconstructions for new social purposes. In the process, these projects problematize conventional principles of architectural restoration by dramatizing a productive tension between past and present, between authenticity and simulation, between genuine nostalgia and the sometimes cynical manipulation of historical memory. Relying on the synchronicity of (seemingly) nonsynchronous styles, architectural citation goes beyond postmodern pastiche; such citation signifies Berlin's renegotiation of its identity as the new-old capital by recycling half-obliterated and yet irrepressible traces of urban history within the parameters of international capitalism, Europe-directed national politics, and the rampant tourist industry.

This essay considers one of the most underexamined characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: Augustine St. Clare's effeminate manservant, Adolph. I evaluate Adolph's critical elision to illustrate how the success of critiques centered on race and gender unintentionally permits other minority identities (and stereotypes) in the book to continue unremarked. While revisionist readings of Stowe's novel complicate racial and gender stereotypes, they nevertheless accept stable (even conventional) categories to describe minority identity. Such formulations foreclose the possibility of seeing other minority identities in the book that intertwine race and gender in ways different from normative standards. In examining Adolph's character, this essay considers how intersectional analysis reveals important representations of social difference—including differences not always acknowledged in present-day culture.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's meditations on artificial society's perversions of natural sentiment, specifically on the theater's contribution to societal degeneration, provide a historical context for the dialogue between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine about the nature of the French Revolution. Much of the debate over the political rights of man consisted of an analysis of his affective rights. It was in many ways a controversy over what could be considered a moral method for attaching an individual's sympathies. The problem of affective liberation stands behind Paine's quarrel with Burke's Reflections and with the victim Burke offered for the world's consideration in that text: Marie Antoinette. For Burke the emotions aroused by theater and by the tragic representation of historical events could liberate the spectator into constructive action. Exposing Burke's own affective imprisonment by the spectacle of revolution, Paine demanded instead a liberation through rational inquiry.

It's hard to think of resisting without imagining there is something to resist. That's the tough part, conjuring up the attack, the opposition. The OED lists many depressing meanings for resist and resistance, but they all assume that something we want to keep out is trying to come in. In calico painting, for instance, a resist is a preparation applied to those parts of the fabric you don't want colored. I didn't know that, and I bet you didn't either.

For years scholars have been required to pay photography and permission fees associated with their monographs and journal articles, although publishers' guidelines state this requirement in different ways. The scholar's responsibility for securing images has been made clear in nonpartisan sources like The Chicago Manual of Style for twenty years: “The author is responsible for any fees charged by grantors of permission to reproduce, unless other arrangements are made, in writing, with the publisher” (13th ed., 4.55; 14th ed., 4.70). Though there are variations and exceptions, by and large publishers have successfully off-loaded this expense.