Category: 2017 Blog Posts

Writing From the Hyphen: Studying Salvadoran Literature as a Salvadoran-American Writer

My efforts to analyze the role of resistance and resilience in Salvadoran writing is both rooted in and inseparable from my own identity and relationship to these stories. My work to gain a better understanding of the country’s history, political climate, and particularly, of the Salvadoran Civil War, is as central to my academic project as it is to my understanding of myself, my family, and culture. This work is also foundational for my creative work, as I am someone that is not only invested in studying Salvadoran writing, but also a Salvadoran-American woman writing in the same tradition of the writing that I am researching and analyzing. What this brings to my literary analysis is a consciousness for how my own positionality and lived experiences shape my understanding and interpretation of these literary works.

I first came across Javier Zamora’s work in The Wandering Song—an anthology in which one of my own poems appears. Eager to read more work by contemporary Salvadoran writers, I went through the anthology’s author biographies and researched the writers whose work had been published. I was drawn to Zamora’s work after reading his poem titled “El Salvador” on the Poetry Foundation website. The poem also appears in Zamora’s poetry collection, Unaccompanied, which narrates his experiences migrating from El Salvador to the United States at nine years old. Zamora’s “El Salvador” personifies the country so as to begin a conversation that addresses the intricacies of the speaker’s relationship to it:

Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb
             will clean your beard of  salt, and if  I touch your volcanic face,

kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster. 

The poem is ultimately driven by the question of return, as the speaker analyzes his positionality in relation to the country’s sociopolitical climate. His characterization of Salvador’s face as volcanic evokes a recurring trope common to Central American writing that draws upon the isthmus’s geographic landscape to describe Central America and its people—a trope that my own writing has reflected. When the speaker begs, “please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster,” he begins a discussion of both criminalization and the militarized police force in El Salvador and focuses on that to convey his relationship to the country.

In my own positionality as a U.S. poet born to Salvadoran immigrants, my experience is a generation removed from homeland and has created a disconnect that I seek to bridge through both my studies and my poetry. This positionality means that when I sat down to write my own version of an “El Salvador” poem in my sophomore year poetry workshop, drawing from my own experiences was limited to envisioning El Salvador primarily through the perspectives of my six-year-old and ten-year-old selves (the ages during which I had visited El Salvador). Unlike Zamora and other Salvadoran writers like William Archila, Leticia Hernández-Linares, and Alexandra Relegado, my own life is rooted in the hyphen between my Salvadoran-American identity. I do not carry the same stories that these writers emphasize in their works, but I do maintain a consciousness for this via the stories shared within my family.

I read, write, and analyze Salvadoran literature through the lens of my own upbringing in U.S. culture and education as well as with understandings of my cultural heritage and family history. My personal connection to the work that I am studying shapes my scholarship in crucial ways: it is the reason for which I am able to engage directly with specific cultural references and experiences described in the literature I study. As I move forward with my research, it is as important that I consider my positionality and personal connection to the work, as much as it is that I engage critically through theoretical frameworks and approaches.

Zamora, Javier. “El Salvador” Poetry, November 2016.

Alterations in Beowulf

Although I have not yet read my primary texts fully enough to pick a stance, opinion, or argument, I think that a potential position that I may take is that the tale of Beowulf was once a Norse oral saga that was extremely Pagan, but then was later Christianized by a Christian author. While the unnamed person who wrote down the story explicitly attempted to make the tale a Christian one, elements of the Pagan religion and traditions still slip through the cracks. The references to a singular God and to Jesus seem forced and out of place, like a badly photo-shopped picture. Beowulf also bears a striking resemblance to at least two other Icelandic sagas, particularly Hrolf Kraki’s Saga and Grettir’s Saga. I have not yet read Grettir’s Saga, so this piece of evidence is liable to change as I do further research; however, the similarities between Beowulf and Hrolf Kraki are too close to be accidents, borne of chance. I think that the Christian author in England heard oral Nordic tales and tried their very hardest to make it Christian and Anglo-Saxon, because the story itself is exciting and appealing. I will also research some of the history of this time period, because politics are not something to be overlooked, even in reference to ancient times. This is pertinent because the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons have a  history of conflict, approximately around the same time that Beowulf would have been written down. The Vikings (a term I will disambiguate more in my research due to the fact that “Vikings” refers to a large variety of peoples from all over northern Europe, however the Sagas/texts are mostly Icelandic) attempted to conquer England numerous times between the eighths and ninth centuries. After many invasions, King Alfred of England smashed the Vikings for the final time, around 954 (reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z8q487h). I will also look into other Anglo-Saxon texts from this time period to further develop my understanding of the Anglo-Saxon view of their invaders. I will also research their conception of race, because even though the invading force was technically white, they were stilled viewed as primitive and barbarous. Racial theory, or at least “views of the other”, may or may not be applicable here. The ancient concept of race is very different from our conception, anyway. It had almost nothing to do with physical color. This popular view actually lasted for a while, up to about medieval times with the conquest of Africa by Spain, France, Belgium, and England; this is when the concept of eugenics, the notion that some races are inherently better than others due to biology, came into play. More to come on that. This lens may be relevant to Anglo-Saxon views of the Pagan, and the reason why the author felt it necessary to alter the tale. But maybe not.

In Beowulf, the author was attempting to retell an old and exciting oral tale while appealing to their audience at the time, who would have been other Christians. I believe that the written-down version leaves out or alters some facets of the story in order to make it a Christian tale, or at least adds extraneous information and digressions that are superfluous to the story itself. When I have the epic poem in front of me, along with other secondary texts, I will be able to point out more specific evidence that supports the argument that the written version was altered in specific ways to appeal to Christians and repress the tale’s Paganism.

(Again, this is only a potential stance I may take in my paper and not my definitive view on these texts).

A Personal Reflection on John Okada’s “No-No Boy”

The book No-No Boy by John Okada has been a favorite of mine since I first encountered it in Professor Seiler’s class entitled “War, Race and American Literature Since WWII”. I’ve been drawn back to this text once again as I think about relevant primary sources that engage the reader in a personal account of what its like to return to an imagined “home” after fighting in a war for a country you only slightly consider yourself a citizen of – and all of the emotional and physical traumas that are suffered as a result. The Japanese-American community, which is highlighted in this novel through the main protagonist, Ichiro, is explored through the main tropes of identity, belonging, and the unequal balance between juggling two cultures as a Japanese-American. This text develops multiple layers of Ichiro’s life, who acts as a stand-in for the Japanese community in America as a whole, by explaining the internal battle he has regarding serving in an army that he considers foreign, while also uncovering his external battle with friends and family who question his decisions on not fighting for the US, but also not being wholly American either.

When I first encountered this book, I was merely reading it for a class to understand how it contributed to the larger scope of work we were studying, and how it fit within the description of how literature changed after WWII. Because of these circumstances, I only scratched the surface of the major themes working together in the book that created this accurate portrayal of life for an American citizen who is struggling with balancing two separate and very unrelated cultures. Although I read the text and was aware of these themes – identity, self-discovery, lost sense of home, cultural frustration, etc. – I was unable to situate them within a larger conversation, nor was I able to see how this writing could have been a representation of the author’s actual experiences as well.

NJohn Okada, a Japanese-American citizen himself who resided in Seattle for the majority of his life, wrote No-No Boy as a way to express his own experiences with balancing dual cultures in an America that was highly prejudice against Japanese citizens during this time, due to Pearl Harbor and WWII. Through Okada’s personal account, the main protagonist, Ichiro, expresses his confusion right off the bat, stating to his mother (but, more broadly, to America) “I am not your son, I am not Japanese, I am not American” (12), suggesting that the author, much like Ichiro, has a conflicting relationship with the two types of identities he has – as an American man and as a Japanese man. On a similar note, Ichiro expresses his awareness of his conflicting cultural background, stating “…in truth, he could not know what it was to be a Japanese who breathed the air of America and yet had never lifted a foot from the land that was Japan” (10). Once again, Ichiro states how he feels American because he lives on American soil, but yet he still is bound to Japan because he feels that culture in a more intimate way than he feels the American culture.

Upon first reading statements like these made by Ichiro, I understood them as him disobeying his family’s wants and rebelling as a teenager who went off to war to fight. After rereading these same passages in a more analytical way, I was able to understand these reactions as a way for Ichiro to express his pain and lost sense of self he is experiencing as a Japanese man. Not only is he a Japanese man in America during a controversial time, but he also feels extremely connected to his culture, and is forced to take a side and fight for a country he resides in, but doesn’t completely feel connected to what would compel him to fight otherwise. The underlying message of Okada’s No-No Boy has less to do with a young boy rebelling against his parents wishes, and more to do with how Ichiro 1) is battling with his identity and where he stands as both an American man and a Japanese man and 2) how Ichiro stands in for not only the author, John Okada, but countless other Japanese-American citizens who struggled with this same internal battle during the 1940s, when this novel takes place.

 

Citation:

Okada, John.  No-No Boy.  Combined Asian American Resources Project, 1976.

 

Subconscious Cultural Signifiers and Self-Discovery through Food: Freedgood’s “Reading Things”

Elaine Freedgood’s “Introduction: Reading Things,” from The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel, introduces Freedgood’s goal to glean novelistic meaning from “things” in Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and Mary Barton. But Freedgood neglects to emphasize, perhaps because it would distract from her purpose, that this tactic can be applied to arguably any “thing” a culture produces: namely, my own subject of ingredients and cooking habits in the Victorian, Turn of the Century, WWI, and WWII eras. By modeling my research perspective on Freedgood’s argument that “things” in the Victorian novel expose historic and character-centered meaning, I can apply her ideology to my subject of “food in crisis” and tease out “fugitive meanings” that cookbook recipes, culinary articles, and domestic cooking habits divulge of their recipe-makers and the people who interact with those culinary texts.

Freedgood writes, “[E]ach of these objects, if we investigate them in their ‘objectness,’ was highly consequential in the world in which the text was produced” (2) – I would add, the culture in which the people or characters are produced. I included two novels on my reading list for the purpose of connecting the cookbooks and Victorian journal articles I read to a personal experience, to illustrate my larger discoveries on a personal scale. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie’s weekly trip to the candy store and her mother’s insistence that Francie throw out her coffee if she prefers (even though the family is scraping by in 1911 Brooklyn) shows that food poses a mode of empowerment for the young girl, and gives the family a sense of worth among degrading jobs and being forced to buy the tongue of a cow, an undesirable but cheap cut of meat. Interactions with food in this novel and the Victorian and wartime cookbooks I am reading illustrate the cooks and Francie defining their self-worth by the food they can afford or are savvy enough to get ahold of – even Fannie Farmer’s recipe for “mock turtle soup,” which uses a cow head, illustrates this (Fannie’s Last Supper). For these consumers, food becomes a precious commodity of self-worth.

Freedgood’s introduction focuses heavily on the examples she will provide in the novel’s subsequent chapters, which does not pose useful to my work. But her contextualizing passages do help to frame my research. One meaning Freedgood represses throughout her article is the possibility that her chosen Victorian authors’ inclusion of “things” “at crucial narrative moments” (2) could be subconscious – this is the assumption my fledgling thesis argument seeks to unearth or recover. As stated in the previous paragraph, Francie Nolan’s self-definition relies on her ability to access food; Laura Shapiro emphasizes in Perfection Salad that turn of the century housewives channeled their measuring of themselves into writing to housekeeping columns and removing blemishes from their domestic skills – “culinary idealism,” Shapiro calls it (3). Shapiro even notes that Mary Lincoln “asked,” “Now, what does all this interest in cookery mean?” (71). Cultural (and here culinary) fads often appear to the consumer to emerge out of the air, without predictors or precedent, framing them as subconscious. For my purposes, “subconscious” refers to symptoms, ones from existing in a culture (in this case, British and American culture from about 1880-1945) and seeking self-definition and reassurance via that culture’s fads (“this interest in cooking”) or contemporary causes (wartime recipes designed to reduce food consumption and waste).

Freedgood does not attend to the subconscious in her argument, and instead asserts, for instance, that the cultural implications of mahogany in Jane Eyre (2) are intentional and crafted by the author. I cannot rationalize why Freedgood neglects to explore the subconscious, since it would assist her argument rather than undermine it: Freedgood argues that the prevalence of mahogany in Jane Eyre signifies the culture in which Jane’s story occurs; but Jane uses her story to define herself, and undergoes a journey of self-discovery. So even if I challenge Freedgood’s assertion that the novel intentionally features mahogany “at crucial narrative moments” (2), those moments still exist; they continue to hold all the historical and colonial implications Freedgood identifies, but more tellingly of the impact Jane’s culture has on her self-perception, they do this un- or subconsciously. In the novels and cookbooks I am examining, the people interacting with food utilize cuisine in the same self-defining way.

 

Works Cited: (the blog software wouldn’t let me indent lines so I apologize for the incorrect MLA formatting)

Fannie’s Last Supper. Directed by Michael Rothenberg, American     Public Television, 2010.

Freedgood, Elaine. “Introduction: Reading Things.” The Ideas in Things: Fugitive   Meaning in the Victorian Novel. The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Collins Publishers, 1986.

Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Harper Collins, 1947.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Great Cranford Panic”: A Personal Reflection

I have chosen to use Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story, “The Great Cranford Panic” as one of my primary texts for my thesis. This story was written in 1853 and is a part of a larger piece of work that Gaskell composed titled Cranford. I stumbled upon this short story in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short stories, while I was going through the anthology in hopes of finding interesting short stories written by female authors. The name Elizabeth Gaskell has often come up in my studies of Victorian literature and so I decided to narrow in on one of her short stories to explore the possibility of using one of her pieces as a primary text in my own research. Why I settled on this short story, however, is because of the way the text deals overtly with race and gender immediately at the onset of the story. “The Great Cranford Panic” explores the interactions between white women of high society rural England and the mysterious newcomer, Signor Brunoni, whose racial identity is perceived as a threat within the town of Cranford. I plan on using this text to explore Victorian anxieties surrounding race, especially within the context of non-white men being seen as a threat to white women.

One way in which “The Great Cranford Panic” explores racial identity is by setting up the town of Cranford as being traditional, proper, and overwhelmingly populated by women. By setting up Cranford as this pinnacle of British high society, Gaskell is furthering the “otherness” of the traveling foreign magician, Signor Brunoni. The story opens with Miss Matey writing the protagonist and narrator asking for help with fashion. Miss Matey requests for the narrator to bring her a turban, as she wishes to don a different type of headwear that is “newer” than the other ladies in town (pg. 124). The narrator, however, brings her a traditional (to England) cap and explains that she was, “anxious to prevent her [Miss Matey] from disfiguring her small gentle mousey face with a great Saracen’s head turban; and, accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap,” (pg. 124). Here, the juxtaposition between the threat of the foreign and the innocence and daintiness of the white woman is seen in the syntax of the sentence. Throughout this quote, the narrator displays concern over the white woman who is described as “gentle,” “mousey,” “small,” “pretty,” and “neat,” all of which are terms that imply innocence and fragility. The turban, however, is described as “Saracen,” which, according to the footnotes, refers to Arabs or, “a non-Christian heathen,” (pg. 124). Furthermore, this piece is described as having the potential to “disfigure” a woman. This juxtaposition between the piece of Muslim culture and the white woman is meant to exacerbate racial tensions and public fear and anxiety towards the foreign, Eastern world.

Not only does Gaskell’s short story explore racial tension in high society rural England through social/cultural facets such as fashion, but also through the characters themselves. After a round of robberies occurs within the beloved town of Cranford, the narrator says, “Cranford has so long piqued itself on being an honest and moral town, that is had grown to fancy itself too genteel and well-bred to be otherwise, and felt the stain upon its character at this time doubly,” (pg. 132). Here, Gaskell is setting up the pristine nature of the town and the way in which it is held as the pinnacle of propriety and even whiteness. Although it may be a stretch, the term “stain” here can be interpreted within a radicalized context. If the town is stained, it implies a sort of purity and pristine about it; however, it is the foreigner, Signor Brunoni’s, presence that results in a sort of corruption. The narrator says, “we must believe that the robbers were strangers- if strangers, why not foreigners?- if foreigner, who so likely as the French? Signor Brunoni spoke broken English like a Frenchman, and…he wore a turban like a Turk,” (pg. 132). Here, the citizens of Cranford immediately blame the “foreigner,” who is posed as threatening. This image of the radicalized threat is exacerbated by the fact that Signor Brunoni wears a turban, a symbol that is used throughout the text to represent the foreign threat.

Ultimately, Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Great Cranford Panic” is a useful piece to my thesis that is intriguing to me because of of one of its main themes;  the threat of the non-British male to the pristine, white women.

Citations:

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories. Edited by Dennis Denisoff, Broadview Press, 2004.

Malcomb, Elizabeth. “Cranford.” Cranford, The Victorian Web, Jan. 1997.

Updated: Reading About Citations

Secondary Sources:
-Bagnoli, Carla. “The Authority of Reflection.” Theoria: Revista De Teoria, Historia Y Fundamentos De La Ciencia, vol. 22:1, no. 58, 01 Jan. 2007, pp. 43-52. PDF File, Accessed: 24 Sept. 2017.

-Bayard, Pierre. How to Talk about Books you Haven’t Read. New York, Bloomsbury USA, 2009. Print.

-Hansen, Hans V. “Whately on Arguments Involving Authority.” Informal Logic, vol. 26, no. 3, 01 Sept. 2006, pp. 319-340. PDF File, Accessed: 24 Sept. 2017.

-Hilgartner, Stephen. “The Sokal Affair in Context.” Science, Technology, and  Human Values, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 506-522. PDF File, Accessed: 24 Sept. 2017.

-Fish, Stanley. “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One”

-Nelson, Cary. “Reading Criticism.”

-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Truth. Web, Accessed 10-22-17

-Walton, Douglas. “The Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority.”
Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. 74, no. 289, 01 July 1999, pp. 454-457. PDF File, Accessed: 24 Sept. 2017.

-Wimsatt/Beardsly. “The Intentional Fallacy”

 

 

Journal:
Likely the Review of English Studies — for both primary and secondary sources.

Narrative (Ohio State)

Key Terms:
Citations, Argument from Authority, Intentional Fallacy

Primary Sources:

-Bayard, Pierre. How to Talk about Books you Haven’t Read. Les Editions de Minuit. New York, Bloomsbury USA, 2009. Print. (Using it as both)

-Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” Print.

-Borges, Jorge Luis. “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain.” Print.\

-Gladwell, Malcolm. “Blink”

-King, Lovalerie. “Property and American Identity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”

-O’Brien, Flann. The Third Policeman. Flamingo Press. London. Print.

-Sokal, Alan. “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Social Text, vol. 46/47, pp. 217-252. Web. Accessed: 10-22-17.

-Wallace, David. Infinite Jest. Back Bay Books, New York, NY. 2016. Print.

Overview:
In the past week, I’ve taken more and more to the idea of writing about the validity of citations in critical writing. To summarize, I think I want to write about how literary critics will cite something in lieu of making an argument, which is known as an argument from authority. This sort of argument is flawed in two huge ways. First off, it presupposes that the writer has understood exactly what the person he or she is citing wrote. This is hazy territory, but it’s possible that this in itself is a violation of the intentional fallacy, depending on your viewpoint. So, I’m going to have to ask whether the author’s intention can ever be understood, then move on from there. The argument from authority is also problematic because there really isn’t any authority in literary studies. To make this claim, I’m going to have to come up with a working definition of truth to rely on which stipulates that there isn’t an actual authority on literary or philosophical matters. This is going to require me to cite something as part of my argument and therefore violate one of the premises on which it is based, so that should be interesting. I’ll also talk about people will oftentimes lazily cite things just as a way of passing the actual work of argumentation onto someone else, often without having really read and/or fully understood that person’s writing. That should sort of segue into the way that literary writing is done and the sense in the current form of practice, which I’m pretty eager to start just throwing garbage and screaming at (it’s so unnecessarily tedious and has all these fake authority complexes built into it to give it the illusion of thoroughness and technicality).
In preparation for compiling this list, I talked to Professor Maher and Steirer. I asked Professor Maher about where I could look for a definition of truth and papers on philosophy, and he directed me to great sources on that front. I then asked Professor Steirer about specific instances of lazy citations in literary writing and fictional accounts of same, and he came through with a ton of fantastic stuff, most of which I didn’t have occasion to put here, but will definitely read and (I’m sure) put in the paper.

Update:

I chose Narrative as my journal rather than the one I had previously because I first made my choice pretty arbitrarily and Narrative actually includes a lot of discussion about the ways in which stories are told, which could be useful to me.

I’m starting to think more about the relation between novels and criticism and the difficulty in understanding criticism at all. I think I’ll use the possible argument from authority inherent in citations to highlight a broader problem with the overall intelligibility of any writing. Essentially, my original point was that some authors rely on sources to make, rather than support, their arguments, which is an appeal to authority. However, I’m now more interested in the fact that the author always assumes that the reader isn’t familiar with the sources they’re citing and so the act of citing is essentially just a reference to that author’s reading of the text, which they slot in as support for their argument. It’s possible that the author could either be misappropriating the source’s argument (whether intentionally or not) or just fabricating an argument and bolstering it with a tangentially related source. Since the reader is obliged to believe the author’s reading of their sources since it’s unreasonable to expect the reader to have either read all those sources beforehand or to go read them afterwards, they’re relying on the author’s professed interpretation of their sources. However, for mere evidence the source exists as this infallible authority which authors are almost encouraged to exploit by the difficulty of doing the work required to use them properly and the improbability that someone will refute what is ultimately a reading (both a reading of the author’s use of the source and the author’s reading of that source).

So, I’ve added some sources to contrast the way in which novels and criticism are read and some other secondary sources needed to establish the position my essay will assume on truth, readership, the intentional fallacy, and knowability.

In my primary sources, …Books You Haven’t Read makes an argument about unintelligibility that I’m both going to use and push back against (I plan to argue that criticism is ultimately comprehensible despite the problems my analysis of citations points out) which also slots in nicely with “The Library of Babel.” My other primary sources complicate the ways in which citations are used, either by using them inappropriately (in the cases of Gladwell, Wallace, and Sokal) or by using them subversively (as Borges and O’Brien do). I’ll also discuss the ways in which Bayard and King (she talks about both primary and secondary sources and I figured that since I already did a pretty in-depth reading of the article, “why not use her?”) read novels and criticism to compare and contrast the two styles of reading with respect to my essay’s previous assertions about the limits of understanding written text.

updated reading list

Ian Morris
9/22/17
Reading List Prompt
Forms and Contexts

Updated:
The list should:
(i) include 3-5 secondary or theoretical works (monographs, collections, articles, or journal special issues/edited collections) you will read on your own this fall;
John Dower, War Without Mercy (1987) –this book discusses Propaganda

The Successes and Failures of German War Propaganda in Estonia, 1941-1944 written by Kari Alenius.

Frank Capra (Film Director)-The Nazis Strike- World War 2 1943 (Film) and Battle of Britain 1969 (Film)
Peter Paret-Persuasive Images (1992)
Triumph of the Will (Film)1935, by Leni Riefenstahl

D-Day Proaganda (1984), Caroline Reed

(ii) choose one academic journal of which you will survey the last year’s worth of issues;

One of the academic Journals that I found that will be helpful for my research is Nazi Influence Outside Germany Before and During The Second World War.

(iii) be informed by 1-3 far-reaching keywords or key terms.

1. Newspaper Articles from World War 2
2. Propaganda
3. Nazi Rallies

Primary Texts:
• Triumph of the Will (Film)1935, by Leni Riefenstahl
• Squander Bugs on the home front: National Propaganda and women’s fictions, Nickianne Moody (2009)
• Ethical Judgements about wartime ads depicting combat, written by Richard Tansey, Michael Hyman, Gene Brown (1992).
• The Ascendancy of Radio News in Wartime. Richard Fine, published 2014.
• The Art of Propaganda: Charles Alston’s World War 2 Editorial Cartoons for the office of War information and the Black Press. Harry Amana, published 2004.

(iv) In addition to the three parts of the list you have above, I want you to write a healthy paragraph describing for your classmates and me how you put together this list and what kinds of questions frame your inquiry. This short accompanying essay should be in the range of 250-500 words.

I had a great discussion with Professor Sweeney about World War 2. Before our discussion I was very fixated on figuring out if Human Nature played an impact in World War 2. I was also curious to think about what John Locke and Thomas Hobbes would have thought about human nature after witnessing this war. After I had my discussion with Professor Sweeney I wanted to focus more of my studying on trying to figure out how emotions played a role in World War 2. Specifically I wanted to focus more on how leaders, Nazi rallies, and propaganda may have had an emotional influence on the way that it impacted the German people. Professor Sweeney recommended that I look more into the Nazi rallies and specifically propaganda signs to see how the Nazi’s played into the emotional piece of how Germans viewed the Jews daily after seeing these advertisements on a daily basis. She also discussed with me that leaders such as Hitler and Musselini hated liberal democracy so these two leaders played into the idea that if people emotionally became attached to them as leaders than they could carry out drastic plans as they knew that the people would follow their every move. Professor Sweeney also brought up another great point which was to compare how American Propaganda was different from German Propaganda and if there was any emotional pieces that the United States government or German government did to play into the lives of its people. Some of the questions that I asked her were, “Is there any films that you think I should watch for my research? Were there any other leaders that had a big influence on its people other than Stalin? Do you think that human nature played a part in World War 2?” Overall, after talking with Professor Sweeney I was able to narrow some of my focus down on selecting a few broad topics to choose from and dive more deeply into my research about them.

Update:

After doing more research I want to focus more in on how propaganda influenced one group of society to perceive their enemy as being. I want to specifically research propaganda photos and seek out what the government wanted to make their people feel like when they looked at these propaganda photos of the enemy. Overall, I still have the same interests and ideas that I had before the only difference is that I want to find actual newspapers and documents that show how the media and the government made their people perceive the enemy as being. I think the newspapers also played a significant impact in the way that they influenced their own people to view the enemy.

Updated Reading List: Looking at 19th Century Short Stories Through an Intersectional Lens

(i) Secondary and Theoretical Works

-Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot : Design and Intention in Narrative. New York : A.A. Knopf, 1984., 1984.

– Feminist Theory: A Reader, ed. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Fourth Edition (2013). (Specifically looking at pieces on intersectionality.)

– Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2000., 2000.

– Killick, Tim. British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale. Ashgate, 2008.

– Korte, Barbara. The Short Story in Britain: A Historical Sketch and Anthology. Francke, 2003. (Historical context on the short story.)

– Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color : Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2003], 2003.

– Węgrodzka, Jadwiga. Characters in Literary Fictions. Frankfurt am Main ; New York : Peter Lang, 2015., 2015. Mediated fictions: volume 9. (Reading for information on the “ficelle.”

(ii) Primary Works

Anthologies- (Still working through these)

Denisoff, Dennis. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories. Broadview, 2004. (still narrowing these)

– Devine, Harriet. Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Women: A Routledge Anthology. London ; New York : Routledge, 1998., 1998. eBook Academic Collection.

Specific Short Stories-

– “Eveline’s Visitant,” (1862) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon found in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories

–  Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. Cousin Phillis. [Auckland]: The Floating Press, 2010.

– Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. EBL, [Auckland, N.Z.] : Floating Press, c2009., 2009.

– Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. Lois the Witch: and other tales. 1861. (Contains five short stories)

– “The End of Her Journey” by Lucy Clifford, found in Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Women: A Routledge Anthology

– “The Spell of the White Elf” by Mary Chavelita Bright (Pseudonym: George Egerton) found in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories

– “The Three Damsels” by Mary Diana Dods (Psyeudonym: David Lynsay) found in  Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Women: A Routledge Anthology

(iii) Journals

–Victorians Institute Journal. Norfolk, VA : Old Dominion University

– Victorian Literature and Culture, published by Cambridge University Press

– Victorian Studies, published by Indiana University Press

 

(iii) Key Words
Intersectionality, 19th-century short stories, transatlantic, mental health (?), colonialism

(iv) My Topic
As of right now, my topic for my English senior thesis is somewhat broad. At first, I planned to look solely at Victorian short stories with an intersectional lens, focusing on supporting characters otherwise known as the “ficelle.” These characters are often described in racial terms within Victorian literature which make them rich and thus allowing me to analyze how the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class work together within these characters to affect their status and role. Furthermore, certain patterns have been popping up as I began my research. Issues of mental health, especially in terms of the ‘mad’ or ‘hysterical’ woman have been showing up as I begin my studies. I was convinced I wanted to focus only on Victorian short stories, however, after speaking further with Professor Seiler, I am now interested in a transatlantic focus. I might shift my focus to both American and British 19th century short stories, drawing connections between the two. This will open up my research to African American literature as well. Overall, my studies will mainly follow feminist literary analysis, while also considering scholarly work on race, class, and sexuality. Toni Morrison’s “Playing in the Dark” will be a particularly useful text to me as I continue my studies, and even was a recommendation of Professor Seiler’s.

My thesis is driven by numerous questions. What does it mean for me to use an intersectional lens to analyze a text created in a time prior to the coining of this term? How do the characters in 19th century short stories represent an intersectional experience, even if this term did not yet exist? What patterns can I note throughout these stories that are related to identity? How does the form of the short story contribute to feminist policies and ideals? How are the intersections of different identities present within these texts?

 

Update on Progress:

While my project has not changed much in terms of the ideas I plan to pursue, I have expanded on many of my sources. After having a productive meeting with Professor Kersh, I have found several secondary sources that might provide insight into my topic of women within the 19th-century. I have added two journals that focus on the Victorian period, which I plan to use largely for their historical/cultural context. I have also added a few secondary texts to my reading list, one of which being Peter Brooks’s Reading for the Plot : Design and Intention in Narrative. I plan to use this source to explore the form of the short story and its narration, especially how it can be used to provide a social commentary. I have also added Sandra Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination as a means of analyzing the intersections of gender and mental health. Even if I decide not to pursue the avenue of mental health, this text will help me in understanding the position of women within the Nineteenth-Century and the role literature played in this position.

As of right now, my thesis is still broader than I would like it to be. I am currently digging through several different anthologies that contain numerous 19th-century short stories. In doing so, several questions have arisen for me. Do I want to focus on short stories written only by women? Or do I want to use stories written by male authors to incorporate another perspective on the role of 19th-century women? As of right now, I am leaning towards the latter, although this does broaden my pool of primary sources quite a bit. I also want to ensure that I allow space for otherwise ignored female 19th-century voices, as one of the goals of feminist literary analysis is to study texts written by those who are marginalized. I am also concerned about my transatlantic focus being too broad. As it might be gathered by my somewhat disorganized list of primary sources, it has been difficult for me to narrow my sources. This may be a result of my lack of commitment to a specific, narrowed topic. Currently, my primary texts focus on female 19th-century authors, especially within the Victorian period. I have found myself drawn to these stories; however, I am allowing myself room to find more American 19th-century short stories as I continue working on this project.

Despite my lack of full clarity in terms of my primary focus, the trajectory of my thesis remains the same. I am still most interested in looking at 19th-century short stories with a feminist lens; however, I find myself being torn in two directions. One direction involves using an intersectional lens to track how these short stories deal with gender, race, and class, especially against the backdrop of colonialism.  Another direction I may pursue is focusing more on the intersections of gender and sexuality, which may involve a closer look at mental health in these texts. Although I have not yet officially decided on either path, I find myself most interested in a focus on gender and sexuality. My main question right now is: can I find a way to combine these two paths to create a coherent, specific thesis that can go in depth into each theme? I believe that as I continue to dig through my primary texts,  the answer to this question will become evident.

Updated Reading List: Apocalypse And Me: Jonah Adler Thesis Reading List

Secondary Works:

Mythen, Gabe. Ulrich Beck: A Critical Introduction to the Risk Society.    LONDON; STERLING, VIRGINIA, Pluto Press, 2004. JSTOR,                              www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18fs3c4.

Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: towards a New Modernity. Sage, 2010.Tate, Andrew. Apocalyptic Fiction. London, UK ; New York, NY, USA: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017., 2017. 21st century genre fiction series.

Szendy, Peter. Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015., 2015. College Complete.

[NEW ADDITION]Robinson, Douglas. American Apocalypses; The Images of the End of the World In Literature. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Robert Torrey, author. “Apocalypse Then: Benefits of the Bomb in Fifties Science Fiction Films.” Cinema Journal, no. 1, 1991, p. 7.

 

Primary Works:

Dir. Blaustein, Julian. The Day The Earth Stood Still. Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment, 1951. Film.

Cline, Ernest. “0001” Ready Player One. Broadway Books, 2015, pp. 13–26.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. “e) a Citizen.” New York 2140, Orbit, US., 2018, pp. 32–36.

Dir. De Jarnatt, Steve. Miracle Mile. Columbia Pictures and Hemdale Film Corporation, 1988.

Doctorow, Cory. Walkaway: a Novel. Head of Zeus, Tor Books, 2017.

Ellison, Harlan. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” The Hugo Winners V2, 01 Jan. 1901.

King, Stephen. “Night Surf (1974).” American Supernatural Tales, Oct. 2013, pp. 356-364.

Dir. Trier, Lars von. Melancholia. Nordisk Film, 2011. Film.

Dir. Reeves, Matt. Cloverfield. Paramount Picture, 2008. Film.

Wells, Herbert George. The Time Machine. [Electronic Resource]. Floating Press, 2008. eBook  Academic Collection (EBSCOhost).

Wells, Herbert George.. The War of the Worlds. [Electronic Resource]. Floating Press, 2008. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost).

 

Literary Journal:

Cinema Journal published by University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies.

 

Key Words:

  1. “Apocalyptic Fiction / Risk Society”
  2. “Post Apocalypse”
  3. “Genre”
  4. “Film Studies”
  5. Gender Studies?
  6. Apocalypse Film (Standalone)
  7. Ideology

 

My thesis idea currently stands as a more general genre study of apocalypse fiction, with possible connections to society and disaster. From the The Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction, Third Edition by Levine, LePan, and Mather, genre is defined as a class or type of literary work with different levels of generality. I intend to create a genre “map”, that is, a comprehensive study of changing ideas in current works of Apocalypse fiction literature and film. I want to discover latent links between film, television, and literature in the genre. I focuses currently on one critic, Ulrich Beck, while also on several films and novels. Beck fits my interest in the post disaster or apocalypse genre with his book “Risk Society”, which is also a concept he loosely defines as everyday risks our society takes in the name of progress, such as nuclear science disasters. Risk society sub-genres, as I like to label them, also include natural, epidemic, technological, transportation-related, and conflict-based disasters. This text is in conversation with Gabe Mythen, which may prove to be a valuable secondary source. In my discussion with Professor Malchic, we discussed films such as “Children of Men” (2006), The Day The Earth Stood Still and “Melancholia” (2011). I was drawn on my own to the short book called Apocalypse Cinema by Peter Szendy, as well as Andrew Tate’s Apocalypse Fiction for their insight into works such as these. I believe it is likely that I will need to find more critics and articles of the genre in literature or film to talk about.

For now I have framed my working thesis on: Why does the apocalypse genre always focus on “irreversible” tragedies? What does apocalypse fiction say about our current state of the zeitgeist? What are some aspects of “risk society” that have not been explored in fiction yet?

Update:

Progress in selecting my primary sources and reviewing my secondary sources has proven that I must be more specific in my approach to genre and ideology. The thesis idea now stands between two central concepts: Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse. Post-Apocalypse is considered the genus, while Apocalypse is the sub-genre beneath it. I have made progress in answering my questions previously held questions in the reading list. Through Melancholia and Peter Szendy’s Apocalyptic Cinema came the concept of “the end” as it is placed in the narrative.  However, this lead me to more questions about the conversations within the film about depression and patriarchy. These two ideologies are an example answer to my previous question: “What does apocalypse fiction say about our current state of the zeitgeist?”. This is only one example of ideology pervasive in a narrative, which I hope to further explore in novels such as Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway  In Walkaway, Doctorow creates a future world in which much of the world has exiled-itself from the brutally efficient society of the ultra-rich. The exiles, or “walkaways”, attempt to create a pacifist post-scarcity civilization that prizes creativity and freedom, which becomes targeted  by the zillionaires who fear their radical ideology. Where Melancholia is a classic apocalyptic film for cutting to black when the world ends, works like Walkaway have a cultural interest in post-disaster society that should be praised more in Apocalyptic cinema in addition to literature. There were another nine films and texts I chose in addition to Doctorow’s novel, Including the similarly-themed Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which features corporate power out of control within a civilization in apocalyptic decline. The further sub-genres of apocalypse also include fantasy elements, such as alien invaders, in such works as the films The Day The Earth Stood Still, Cloverfield, and Herbert George Wells War of the Worlds (Wells also piqued my interest in The Time Machine). As seen with author of Risk Societies Ulrich Beck, sub-genres of nuclear and biological societal risks must also be accounted for with such works as the film Miracle Mile and the short story “Night Surf”, Stephen King’s precursor to his series “The Stand”. The same can be said of the Environmental apocalypse in the Global Warming wracked Manhattan in Robinson’s New York 2140 and the Artificial intelligence-themed work of Elison’s short story I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Biological, Nuclear, Environmental, and A.I. sub-genre works all have the potential to shed light on more potential ideological backgrounds, as well as answer whether there is a “risk society” subgenre that has not yet been explored. What else is there that has not been classified that can be called an Apocalyptic narrative? Do any of these sub-genres have American folklore or Christian Old Testament links? These questions directly lead me to seek out Douglas Robinson’s American Apocalypses; The Images of the End of the World In Literature.as another complementary secondary source devoted to defining Apocalypse. It is worth noting I found his work upon reading Susan Bower’s Beloved and the New Apocalypse.  After I read several more of these works and have a clearer picture of the ideologies and sub-genres that appeal to me, I believe my project will take a more specialized form. Utilizing my knowledge in creative writing fiction, I believe it is possible my project will become a guide of sorts to understanding the ideology of the end.

Updated Reading List: Of Monsters and Men

**Primary Works

  1. Frankenstein, Mary Shelly
  2. Dracula, Bram Stoker
  3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  4. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
  5. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

**Secondary/Theoretical Works

  1. Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001. Print.
  2. Carroll, Noël. “Ethnicity, Race, and Monstrosity: The Rhetorics of Horror and Humor.” Engaging the Moving Image, Yale University Press, New Haven; London, 2003, pp. 88–107. JSTOR,
  3. Malchow, H. L. “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Past & Present, no. 139, 1993, pp. 90–130. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/651092.
  4. Lancaster, Ashley Craig. “From Frankenstein’s Monster to Lester Ballard: The Evolving Gothic Monster.” Midwest Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2, Winter2008, pp. 132-148.
  5. Smith, Andrew, and William Hughes, editors. The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
  6. [Addition to List] Iskandar, Adel and Hakem Rustom. Edward Said. [Electronic Resource] : A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation. Berkeley : University of California Press, ©2010., 2010. Academic Complete (Ebook Central).
  7. [Addition to List] Johnson, Robert. British Imperialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dickinson/detail.action?docID=3027518.
  8. [Addition to List] Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: ‘Dracula’ and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1990, pp. 621–645. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3827794.

**Academic Journal(s)

  1. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
  2. Victorian Literature and Culture

**Key Terms

  1. Monstrosity
  2. Intersectionality
  3. Normativity
  4. Grotesque
  5. Gothic
  6. [Addition to List] Imperial Gothic
  7. [Addition to List] British Imperialism/Colonialism

**How This List Was Formulated/Questions Framing My Inquiry

In preparing to construct this preliminary reading list, I had to first frame my thoughts around the central questions of “What constitutes a monster?” and “Why have monsters been created within literary works, particularly those of the Victorian era?” Working with both Professor Seiler of Dickinson College and Professor Claire Broome-Saunders of Oxford University, I discerned that it would be in my best interest to not only broaden my selected time period from the Victorian era to the 19th century in order to gain a more holistic view of the concept of monstrosity, but to look at monsters as beings that possess both a displeasing aesthetic, as well as an assumed set of moral characteristics that are largely derived from the monster’s outward appearance. Furthermore, through my discussions with professors and classmates and my engagement in literary research, I also began to gain a better understanding of the ways in which literary monsters of the 19th century existed as more than just vehicles for entertainment – they largely served as figures or symbols of the societal fears of their times. For this reason, I have framed this reading list not only around the way in which monsters were constructed and evolved within the 19th century (see “From Frankenstein’s Monster to Lester Ballad”), but also around the way in which monsters embodied 19th century fears regarding race, ethnicity, religion, and gender.

Because this topic offers me the chance to shed light on the ways in which society and its cultural, aesthetic norms lead to the construction of an “other,” it is also important that my thesis touch on “normativity” and what were considered societal and aesthetic norms within 19th century. By outlining what internal and external characteristics are concerned “normal,” I will be able to better outline why people of the 19th century feared and rejected certain members of society.

Lastly, it is also important to note that much of this reading list originated from my love of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the way in which it engages with the concept of monstrosity in relation to gender (monster and creator are often feminized), religion (societal fear of Godlessness), and the cruelty of society (arguably the monster begins as the kindest being in the novel). By using Frankenstein as a starting point, I have had the ability to digress into the ways in which the themes in Frankenstein are present in other 19th century literary pieces and begin to explore the ways that monsters have been represented on the stage and in film.

In the upcoming weeks, I plan to further develop this reading list by speaking with Professor Menon about the concepts of colonization, resistance, and “the other’ and speaking with Professor Moffat about the overarching Victorian era.

 **Update On My Thesis:

 Towards the beginning of my thesis journey, I focused most of my secondary resources on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein due to the fact that this was the novel that sparked my desire to write about monstrosity for my thesis. While I still believe that Frankenstein is a worthwhile primary text for my topic (and is a text that I have included in my primary reading list), my engagement in further research and analysis has allowed me to see that I have been placing too much emphasis on this single text alone and have consequently ignored other novels and themes that might be beneficial to my pursuit of writing a dynamic thesis. By expanding my research to include other gothic novels of 18th and 19th century Britain, as well as other potential lenses and areas of criticism related to gothic novels and the concept of monsters, such as feminist, sociological, psychological, and historical criticism, I have determined that I am most interested in engaging with the overlap that exists between monsters and British imperialism/ colonialism. Because many of the monstrous figures in gothic novels are defined as being racially, biologically, and aesthetically different from the citizens of England, I hope to explore why these concepts were utilized by authors to inspire fear among British audiences. More specifically, I have narrowed my focus to identifying how monsters in 18th and 19th century British gothic novels possess an “otherness” that is directly related to Britain’s existence as a conquering Empire.

Due to this shift in focus, it has/will continue to become necessary for me to have a firm overview and  understanding of British imperialism and the ways in which it shaped the perspectives of the citizens of England and their national conception of the “other.” For this reason, I have expanded my secondary source list to include works, such as Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and Robert Johnson’s British Imperialism, so that I may begin to gain insight into Britain’s history as a conquering nation. In addition, I have added the words “Imperial Gothic” and “British Imperialism/Colonialism” to my key words list to reflect the fact that I am seeking to uncover the ways in which Britain’s pursuit of global domination affected its people, its literature, and its societal fears.

As a whole, I have selected these five primary texts for my thesis because I feel that they each offer valuable, unique contributions to the idea of the imperial Gothic monster. For example, Frankenstein and Dracula focus on mythical monsters and their inability to assimilate within English society, while Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights directly associate humans of non-English ancestry with monster-like qualities. While I have not read a majority of my primary texts, I plan to continue to research and read for my thesis with the hope of constructing a final work that links literary, Gothic monsters with the societal fears of Britain.