Linda Heß
Biographic Data
| ID | 5425845 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Linda Heß |
| GIVEN NAMES | Linda |
| FAMILY NAME | Heß |
| SIGNATURE | HESS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Augsburg |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Mita Banerjee: Centenarians’ Autobiographies: Age, Life Writing and the Enigma of Extreme Longevity
Article Mita Banerjee: Centenarians’ Autobiographies: Age, Life Writing and the Enigma of Extreme Longevity was published on June 1, 2025 in the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (volume 73, issue 2)
Filmic Gold: The Elemental Aesthetics of the Klondike Gold Rush in Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
This contribution examines the elemental aesthetics of Bill Morrison’s documentary film Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016). The film traces connections between the birth of Dawson City as a boomtown of the Klondike Gold Rush in Yukon Territory in 1896 and the birth of cinema and the rise of the Hollywood movie industry, linking actual resource extraction (gold mining) to its discursive framing and mythologization (in Hollywood movies). Throughout th…
Cringe and Sympathy: The Comedy of Mental Illness in Flowers
This article on brings together findings from humor studies, especially work on cringe comedy, and disability studies. It analyzes how Flowers uses elements of cringe to question societal norms of the “proper person” in connection to mental illness, but also how Flowers broadens the genre of cringe so that, at times, it becomes a cringe tragedy rather than a cringe comedy, thus taking seriously the pain of mental illness. As a third point, this a…
Queer Aging in North American Fiction
My whole life I’ve been dressing up like a man: Negotiations of Queer Aging and Queer Temporality in the TV Series Transparent1
At a time when America is increasingly regarded as a “graying nation,” but aging LGBTQ persons often remain marginalized in discourses of aging, the TV series Transparent takes portrayals of queer aging in new directions. Transparent not only redresses this invisibility of older LGBTQ persons, but also questions heteronormative, linear understandings of life courses. The show queers the cultural constructs of aging and temporality in significant …
Political / Spiritual Kabir
This concluding chapter reviews the tendency to split Kabir along political/spiritual lines—a theme that has recurred throughout the book. Some people valorize one side and reject the other, while some try to embrace both. The scope widens to include urban intellectuals, activists, and artists. Ancient Indian debates about social responsibility versus world renunciation are cited. The story of Lenin’s conversation with Gorky about Beethoven’s App…
Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body
Two competing lineages of the sectarian Kabir Panth have differing views as to the divinity of Kabir and the Panth gurus. Each criticizes the other and claims to be the original, authentic Panth. Institutional structures, traditions of guru worship, social attitudes, and uses of Kabir texts are observed. A dramatic story unfolds in which Prahlad Tipanya (central to chapters 1 and 6) becomes a Kabir Panthi mahant and guru, presiding over a controv…
Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in Northern India
This book studies the poetry and culture of Kabir—a great and still popular fifteenth-century religious poet of North India—through the lens of oral-performative traditions. It draws from ethnographic research conducted over a ten-year period, mainly in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, as well as on the history of written collections. First it focuses on texts—their transmission by singers, the dynamics of textual forms in oral performance, and the connect…
The Bijak of Kabir
The Bijak of Kabir
Kabir, the fifteenth‐century weaver‐poet of Varanasi, is still one of the most revered and popular saint‐singers of North India. He belonged to a family of Muslim julahas (weavers of low‐caste status), is believed to have been a disciple of the Hindu guru Ramanand, and often sang of inner experience using language of the subtle yogic body. Yet he cannot be classified as Hindu, Muslim, or yogi. Fiercely independent, he has become an icon of speaki…
The Poet, the People, and the Western Scholar: Influence of a Sacred Drama and Text on Social Values in North India
Every autumn in hundreds of North Indian villages, towns, and urban neighborhoods, local people produce a sacred drama called the Ramlila. Based on the popular Rmimyana epic, the performance continues for a number of days and is presented outdoors in multiple locales. It is free, entertaining, charged with religious meaning, and open to everyone. Nearly all Hindus in North India watch a Ramlila at some time in their lives, and many attend on a re…
The Bījak of Kabir
INTRODUCTION TRANSLATIONS APPENDICES 1. THE TRADITION 2. THE COW IS SUCKING AT THE CALF'S TEAT: INTERPRETING KABIR'S UPSIDE-DOWN SONG
The Cow Is Sucking at the Calf's Teat: Kabir's Upside-Down Language
The Ramlila of Ramnagar [India]
Ramlila is a cycle play lasting ten to thirty-two days performed annually outdoors in the Hindi speaking region of north India. Its season is around the Dasarha holidays in September-October. The performance is based on Tulsidas’ late 16th-century epic poem Ramacaritamanas (RCM), a Hindi version of Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana. Although thousands of Ramlilas are performed, we shall describe only one—the 31-day cycle of Ramnagar across the Ganga Ri…
My whole life I’ve been dressing up like a man: Negotiations of Queer Aging and Queer Temporality in the TV Series Transparent1
At a time when America is increasingly regarded as a “graying nation,” but aging LGBTQ persons often remain marginalized in discourses of aging, the TV series Transparent takes portrayals of queer aging in new directions. Transparent not only redresses this invisibility of older LGBTQ persons, but also questions heteronormative, linear understandings of life courses. The show queers the cultural constructs of aging and temporality in significant …
Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in Northern India
This book studies the poetry and culture of Kabir—a great and still popular fifteenth-century religious poet of North India—through the lens of oral-performative traditions. It draws from ethnographic research conducted over a ten-year period, mainly in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, as well as on the history of written collections. First it focuses on texts—their transmission by singers, the dynamics of textual forms in oral performance, and the connect…
The Ramlila of Ramnagar [India]
Ramlila is a cycle play lasting ten to thirty-two days performed annually outdoors in the Hindi speaking region of north India. Its season is around the Dasarha holidays in September-October. The performance is based on Tulsidas’ late 16th-century epic poem Ramacaritamanas (RCM), a Hindi version of Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana. Although thousands of Ramlilas are performed, we shall describe only one—the 31-day cycle of Ramnagar across the Ganga Ri…
The Bijak of Kabir
Kabir, the fifteenth‐century weaver‐poet of Varanasi, is still one of the most revered and popular saint‐singers of North India. He belonged to a family of Muslim julahas (weavers of low‐caste status), is believed to have been a disciple of the Hindu guru Ramanand, and often sang of inner experience using language of the subtle yogic body. Yet he cannot be classified as Hindu, Muslim, or yogi. Fiercely independent, he has become an icon of speaki…
The Cow Is Sucking at the Calf's Teat: Kabir's Upside-Down Language
The Poet, the People, and the Western Scholar: Influence of a Sacred Drama and Text on Social Values in North India
Every autumn in hundreds of North Indian villages, towns, and urban neighborhoods, local people produce a sacred drama called the Ramlila. Based on the popular Rmimyana epic, the performance continues for a number of days and is presented outdoors in multiple locales. It is free, entertaining, charged with religious meaning, and open to everyone. Nearly all Hindus in North India watch a Ramlila at some time in their lives, and many attend on a re…
The Bījak of Kabir
INTRODUCTION TRANSLATIONS APPENDICES 1. THE TRADITION 2. THE COW IS SUCKING AT THE CALF'S TEAT: INTERPRETING KABIR'S UPSIDE-DOWN SONG
The Ramlila of Ramnagar [India]
Ramlila is a cycle play lasting ten to thirty-two days performed annually outdoors in the Hindi speaking region of north India. Its season is around the Dasarha holidays in September-October. The performance is based on Tulsidas’ late 16th-century epic poem Ramacaritamanas (RCM), a Hindi version of Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana. Although thousands of Ramlilas are performed, we shall describe only one—the 31-day cycle of Ramnagar across the Ganga Ri…
The Cow Is Sucking at the Calf's Teat: Kabir's Upside-Down Language
The Bījak of Kabir
INTRODUCTION TRANSLATIONS APPENDICES 1. THE TRADITION 2. THE COW IS SUCKING AT THE CALF'S TEAT: INTERPRETING KABIR'S UPSIDE-DOWN SONG
The Poet, the People, and the Western Scholar: Influence of a Sacred Drama and Text on Social Values in North India
Every autumn in hundreds of North Indian villages, towns, and urban neighborhoods, local people produce a sacred drama called the Ramlila. Based on the popular Rmimyana epic, the performance continues for a number of days and is presented outdoors in multiple locales. It is free, entertaining, charged with religious meaning, and open to everyone. Nearly all Hindus in North India watch a Ramlila at some time in their lives, and many attend on a re…
The Bijak of Kabir
Kabir, the fifteenth‐century weaver‐poet of Varanasi, is still one of the most revered and popular saint‐singers of North India. He belonged to a family of Muslim julahas (weavers of low‐caste status), is believed to have been a disciple of the Hindu guru Ramanand, and often sang of inner experience using language of the subtle yogic body. Yet he cannot be classified as Hindu, Muslim, or yogi. Fiercely independent, he has become an icon of speaki…
The Bijak of Kabir
Political / Spiritual Kabir
This concluding chapter reviews the tendency to split Kabir along political/spiritual lines—a theme that has recurred throughout the book. Some people valorize one side and reject the other, while some try to embrace both. The scope widens to include urban intellectuals, activists, and artists. Ancient Indian debates about social responsibility versus world renunciation are cited. The story of Lenin’s conversation with Gorky about Beethoven’s App…
Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body
Two competing lineages of the sectarian Kabir Panth have differing views as to the divinity of Kabir and the Panth gurus. Each criticizes the other and claims to be the original, authentic Panth. Institutional structures, traditions of guru worship, social attitudes, and uses of Kabir texts are observed. A dramatic story unfolds in which Prahlad Tipanya (central to chapters 1 and 6) becomes a Kabir Panthi mahant and guru, presiding over a controv…
Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in Northern India
This book studies the poetry and culture of Kabir—a great and still popular fifteenth-century religious poet of North India—through the lens of oral-performative traditions. It draws from ethnographic research conducted over a ten-year period, mainly in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, as well as on the history of written collections. First it focuses on texts—their transmission by singers, the dynamics of textual forms in oral performance, and the connect…
My whole life I’ve been dressing up like a man: Negotiations of Queer Aging and Queer Temporality in the TV Series Transparent1
At a time when America is increasingly regarded as a “graying nation,” but aging LGBTQ persons often remain marginalized in discourses of aging, the TV series Transparent takes portrayals of queer aging in new directions. Transparent not only redresses this invisibility of older LGBTQ persons, but also questions heteronormative, linear understandings of life courses. The show queers the cultural constructs of aging and temporality in significant …
Queer Aging in North American Fiction
Cringe and Sympathy: The Comedy of Mental Illness in Flowers
This article on brings together findings from humor studies, especially work on cringe comedy, and disability studies. It analyzes how Flowers uses elements of cringe to question societal norms of the “proper person” in connection to mental illness, but also how Flowers broadens the genre of cringe so that, at times, it becomes a cringe tragedy rather than a cringe comedy, thus taking seriously the pain of mental illness. As a third point, this a…
Filmic Gold: The Elemental Aesthetics of the Klondike Gold Rush in Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
This contribution examines the elemental aesthetics of Bill Morrison’s documentary film Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016). The film traces connections between the birth of Dawson City as a boomtown of the Klondike Gold Rush in Yukon Territory in 1896 and the birth of cinema and the rise of the Hollywood movie industry, linking actual resource extraction (gold mining) to its discursive framing and mythologization (in Hollywood movies). Throughout th…
Mita Banerjee: Centenarians’ Autobiographies: Age, Life Writing and the Enigma of Extreme Longevity
Article Mita Banerjee: Centenarians’ Autobiographies: Age, Life Writing and the Enigma of Extreme Longevity was published on June 1, 2025 in the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (volume 73, issue 2)
Art (11 works) · History (10 works) · Literature (8 works) · Eurasian Exchange Networks (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Law (4 works)