Category: 2021 Blog Posts

To create this reading list, I talked to five professors: Prof. Todd Nordgren (Sexuality Studies), Prof. Moffat (English; Queer Biography), Prof. Sarah Kersh (English; Queer Studies), Prof. Sheela Menon (English; Asian American Lit), and Prof. Adrienne Su (Creative Writing; Asian American Poetry). The parentheses denote their disciplines and/or their fields that I sought out and thought relevant for my inquiry.

I want to study the writer Ocean Vuong’s oeuvre up to date, which includes a poetry collection and a novel; the two works examine a queer diasporic Vietnamese American mode of being; and perhaps not just Vuong’s oeuvre, but his intentionality and impulses behind his writing as well, because he himself, in numerous interviews and talks, has enunciated and insisted on the unbreakable tie between his authorship and the content of his work, how his identities continue to inform what he writes–how he keeps coming back to the same questions of queerness, diasporas, kinship because these subjects are never exhaustive and inextricable from his body and the bodies in his familial genealogy. His novel On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous revisits the same subjects of his first poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and so is another poetry collection of his upcoming in April 2022.

I’m interested in form, the form of his texts, in their queer diasporic aesthetics—how his multilingual poetics + multimodal/fragmentary narrative form can inform about a queer diasporic Asian American subject, a mode of being already alternative, hybrid, and multiple; and subsequently inform us how to live in the 21st century onwards (this is broad; I’ll keep it so for now). The fields of diasporas studies, of queer Asian America studies, are quite new, branching only over 30 years of scholarship. Prof. Menon made me a list of introductory readings to these fields and within which I would have to situate my inquiry and my findings. My job now is to read and try to situate myself and Vuong’s texts in the tradition of the field but also to figure out how we can enrich and even constitute a movement of our own.

Update: Regarding the whole monographs that I listed before, I will now acquiesce to reading only their introductions and will decide if I want to read more into the monographs later on. As for primary texts, I listed Vuong’s  debut poetry collection and novel; I include also the most recent interview of his at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and also an article he wrote, illuminating on the form of his novel and the literary works that helped him write it; of course, there’re a myriad of other fruitful interviews I’ll select and add to the list.

Thesis Reading List

Boone, Joseph Allen. “Preface: Re-orienting Sexuality”. The Homoerotics of Orientalism. Columbia UP, 2014.

Eng, David L. “Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies.” Social Text, no. 52/53, Duke UP, 1997, pp. 31–52, https://doi.org/10.2307/466733.

Eng, David L., and Alice Y. Hom. “Introduction”. Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Temple UP, 1998.

Eng, David L. “Introduction: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy”. The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy. Duke UP, 2010, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv113186m.

Gopinath, Gayatri. “Introduction: Archive, Region, Affect, Aesthetics.” Unruly Visions : The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora. Duke University Press, 2018.

Lowe, Lisa. “Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique.” Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, Duke UP, 1996.

Lien, Vu Hong, and Peter Sharrock. “Introduction.” Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger : A History of Vietnam, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2015. 

Muñoz, José Esteban. “Introduction.” Cruising Utopia : the Then and There of Queer Futurity. 10th Anniversary edition., New York UP, 2019.

Manalansan, Martin F., and Alice Y. Hom, and Kale Bantique Fajardo, editors. “Introduction.” Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America. Temple UP, 2021.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Race & Resistance Literature & Politics in Asian America. Oxford UP, 2002.

Parikh, Crystal, and Daniel Y. Kim. The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature. Cambridge UP, 2015.

Pelaud, Isabelle Thuy. “Introduction.” This Is All I Choose to Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature. Temple UP, 2011.

Wang, Dorothy J. “Introduction.” Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry. Stanford UP, 2013.

 

Primary Texts:

1. Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Books, 2019.

2. Vuong, Ocean. “Reading and Conversation with Ocean Vuong.” Harvard Radcliffe Institute, 16 Apr 2021. Reading. https://youtu.be/KSoRF61n0ZQ

3. Vuong, Ocean. “Ocean Vuong: the 10 Books I Needed to Write My Novel.” Literary Hub, 1 October 2019.  https://lithub.com/ocean-vuong-the-10-books-i-needed-to-write-my-novel/

4. Vuong, Ocean. Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Copper Canyon Press, 2016.

Journals to survey:

1. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (I’ll survey this one mainly)
2. MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-ethnic Literature of the United States
3. Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Keywords:

1. Queer
2. Asian American
3. Diasporas
4. Multilingual poetics; aesthetics; form

Primary Sources:

• New Living Translation of the Holy Bible (Tyndale House Publishers)
  • Genesis
  • Psalm
  • Exodus
  • Proverbs

Secondary Sources:

• Van Hecke, Pierre. Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. Belgium, University Press, 2005.
• Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. Basic Books, 2011. 
• Avis, Paul. God and the Creative Imagination: Metaphor, Symbol and Myth in Religion and Theology. London, Routledge, 1999.  

Academic Journal: 

• Christianity and Literature
  • https://www.jstor.org/journal/chrilite?refreqid=excelsior%3A26bf87d72c664ee6f57ab369650bbdf1

Key Terms: 

1. Metaphors 
2. Typology 

Essay:

For my thesis, I intend on diving into the Bible or a specific book of the Bible. I am fascinated by how the stories rely on metaphors, symbolism, etc. More particularly, to specify my interests, I think looking at a few instances of God as a metaphor (e.g., a bird, fortress, Father, etc.) throughout the text would be exciting and revealing. 

In meeting with Professor Liber and Professor Skalak, they pointed me to Robert Alters’s piece, The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alters’s book has been cited over three thousand times and will give me a strong representation of the Bible as a narrative. Next, Paul Avis’s book engages more specifically with the metaphorical and symbolic aspects of the Bible while drawing on a wide range of literary theories. Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible will also give me a more narrowed look at metaphors in the Old Testament. Another aspect that may be necessary to analyze, which came up in my discussion with Professor Skalak, is how interpretations of the Bible constantly shift and how the meanings of specific images change over centuries. I do not know if this is necessary for what I want to achieve in my thesis, so I will monitor the development of my interests and look for a source on this topic when I deem it appropriate. Finally, the Christianity and Literature journal should give me great insight into the current discussion of the Bible and the faith’s connection with literature.

My interest in writing about the Bible comes from my own unique experiences with religion and faith. I have always wrestled with the idea of God, and I believe that views expressed in the Bible are so woven into our culture that they mustn’t be lost. Moreover, with the rise of the self-help genre, I believe that reinterpreting biblical metaphors can illuminate some universal truths in which every person can find comfort and solace.  

Update:

I have added the books of Genesis, Psalm, Exodus, and Proverbs to my primary source list. The books in themselves are composed of many smaller stories, so I plan to break this primary source list down even further at some point. For example, in the book of Genesis, the creation story and the story of Abraham and Issac interest me greatly. In the book of Psalms, the metaphorical language and poetic nature of the book are interesting and full of metaphors that I plan to explore. And in the book of Exodus, the word “God” can be explored as a metaphor in itself.

Key Terms

1. Gender
2. Feminism
3. Power

Primary Sources

1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
2. The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
3. One of Ours by Willa Cather
4. Passing by Nella Larsen
5. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
6. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Secondary Sources

1. Layder, Derek. Intimacy and Power: the dynamics of personal relationships in modern society. Macmillan, 2009.
2. Hodgson, Dorothy Louise. The Gender, Culture, and Power Reader. Oxford UP, 2016.
3. Krekula, Clary. “The Intersection of Age and Gender: Reworking Gender Theory and Social Gerontology.” Current Sociology, 55, no. 2, 2007, pp. 155-71.
4. Wisker, Gina. “Dangerous Borders: Daphne du Maurier Rebecca: shaking the foundations of the romance of privilege, partying and place.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 2003.
5. Giles, Judy. “‘A Little Strain with Servants’: Gender, Modernity, and Domesticity in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Celia Fremlin’s The Seven Chairs of Chelsea.” Literature and History, vol. 12, no. 2, 2003, pp. 36-50.
6. Westkaemper, Emily. Selling Women’s History: Packaging Feminism in Twentieth-Century American Popular Culture. Rutgers UP, 2017.
7. Green, Barbara. “Recovering Feminist Criticism: Modern Women Writers and Feminist Periodical Studies.” Literature Compass, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 53-60.

Academic Journal

• Sexualities, Evolution, & Gender. Vol, 1, no. 1-3, 1999.
• Modernism/Modernity. Vol 6, no. 1-3, 1999.

Essay

I have chosen to focus my thesis research on gender, feminism, and power as these areas have been long interests of mine throughout my academic career.  I am interested in questioning our understanding of gender and identity and the way that these institutions impact every facet of life.  Literature has a particularly rich way of offering truths about gender and identity through different characterizations, which often prove the ways that different identities imbalance power and impact one’s actions and beliefs.  Often, it highlights the priorities of a society or community as well.  I have not narrowed down a specific author or time period, but I am interested in more modern literature, particularly in the 20^thcentury.  I am leaning toward working with one author and analyzing multiple of their works, but I am really open to any area that sparks my curiosity.  Since I have taken multiple classes with her that have focused on this time period, I plan to meet with Professor Seiler, and probably Professor Phillips, to talk through ways to narrow my interests more.  Since I don’t have a super specific text or author selected yet, the sources I have found focus mostly on gender and power in a more abstract way, such as in personal relationships or alongside age analysis.  With more wide-spread sources, luckily, I will be able to apply this knowledge to any text I end up with.

Update:

I have added a bunch of primary sources to my reading list that I am thinking about for my thesis.  I have previously read two of them and I really connected with them, so I think they deserve another read and reevaluation.  The others on my list were recommended to me by professors based on my thematic interests, so I will slowly begin sifting through those and figure out how I may rank them amongst each other.  I changed my academic journal and added a few more secondary sources that I felt were a bit more literary or literature-based and those that provided some historical context.  I had a lot of sociology sources in the first submission of the reading list, and so I needed to move back to research rooted in literature.

 

Original Description:

I am primarily interested in exploring the work of James Baldwin. I am not quite sure which aspect of his work I would like to focus on. If I focus on his fiction, I am interested in applying queer theory. In his essays, I am intrigued by the applicability of his discussions of masculinity and race to modern discussions of the same topics. Because I am unsure, I want to begin by broadening my focus as much as possible.

First, I wanted to center myself on some far-reaching keywords. I used a list from NYU’s “Keywords for African American Studies” and settled on “diaspora” “race” and “gender”. In my experience so far, these keywords all serve as central themes in Baldwin’s work.

Next, I consulted with Professor Nadia Alahmed from the Africana Studies department. In Spring of 2020, I took Professor Alahmed’s course “James Baldwin Studies Renaissance: Reflections of a Radical”. In her studies of Baldwin, she focuses heavily on Baldwin as a political figure. She is especially interested in his stance on specific topics such as Israel. It makes sense, then, that she grounds herself in his essays, interviews, and debates. She recommended that I revisit the entirety of “The Fire Next Time”. She also suggested that I read a secondary source by Douglas Field titled “James Baldwin’s Life on the Left”. This source is a biographical analysis of Baldwin’s development as a scholar and increasing radicalism as a political figure.

The other two sources that I included on my reading list are pieces that I have come across in my own research. “James Baldwin’s Vision of Otherness and Community” by Emmanuel Nelson looks at Baldwin’s fiction and non-fiction to decipher his statements on identity. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” is an essay by Langston Hughes. This essay calls on the negotiation of identity necessary for the Black artist. Hughes, here, asserts that the Black artist cannot, and so should not attempt to, escape being Black. Sources such as these would help me better understand Baldwin’s work surrounding race and identity, for himself as a Black artist and for the characters he creates.

The journal that I have selected to survey is The James Baldwin Review (JBR). This year the journal published its seventh volume and includes various essays on both his fiction and nonfiction.

Update:

While my approach has, in some ways, broadened since my original reading list, my intention remains elementally the same. I still am focusing on the work of James Baldwin. With my initial reading list, I focused only on secondary sources- essays that both build on Baldwin’s work and critique it. In the past few weeks, I’ve been instead focusing on grasping as much of Baldwin’s primary work as I can to see what I notice. I’ve revisited sections of his major essays, and have begun to explore his fiction; primarily, Giovanni’s Room. Those essays and novels have been added to this updated list. While “Nobody Knows My Name” consists of many potent pieces, upon re-reading I am most interested in “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter From the South”, in which Baldwin explores the implications of race, sexuality, and identity when a Black man raised in the North visits the South. From “No Name in the Street”, I am focusing closely on “To Be Baptized”. In this piece, Baldwin includes a reflection on an old friend, another Black man, who was wrongfully imprisoned. This piece is a raw and devastating discussion on what it means to be a Black man in the United States. “Notes of a Native Son” marks many of Baldwin’s early essays, and will perhaps serve as a baseline to mark his development as a scholar, writer, and political figure. “The Fire Next Time” is a call for the end of the “racial nightmare” in the United States and for the recognition of the intricacies of Black beauty. Regarding the novels, I am most interested in Baldwin’s explorations of love and desire. I intend to meet with Professor Seiler soon per Professor Kersh’s recommendation.

 

Primary Sources:

Baldwin, James. If Beale Street Could Talk. Dial Press, 1974.

Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Vintage Books, 1956.

Baldwin, James. “Nobody Knows My Name.” James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, The Library of America, 1998, pp. 237-269.

Baldwin, James. “No Name in the Street.” James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, The Library of America, 1998, p. 349.

Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, The Library of America, 1998, pp. 5-117

Baldwin, James. “The Fire Next Time.” James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, The Library of America, 1998, pp. 291-296.

Secondary Sources:

Field, Douglas. “James Baldwin’s Life on The Left: A Portrait of The Artist as a Young New York Intellectual.” ELH, vol. 78, no. 4, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, pp. 833–62, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41337556.

Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The Langston Hughes Review, vol. 4, no. 1, Langston Hughes Society, Penn State University Press, 1985, pp. 1–4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26432664.

Nelson, Emmanuel S. “James Baldwin’s Vision of Otherness and Community.” MELUS, vol. 10, no. 2, Oxford University Press, Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), 1983, pp. 27–31, https://doi.org/10.2307/467307.

1 academic journal:

James Baldwin Review (JBR):

https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/journals/jbr/jbr-overview.xml

1-3 far reaching keywords

1. diaspora
2. race
3. gender/sexuality

ENGL 403 Reading List

Key Terms:
1. Ecocriticism
2. Ecofeminism

Explanatory Essay:
I have chosen to use ecocriticism or ecofeminism as my guiding key terms and lenses because this field has interested me throughout my career as an English major. I have always liked analyzing how the natural world is portrayed in literature and how it can function as a device and provide deeply rich metaphors. Looking at the environment in literature in conjunction with gender has also interested me, as it reveals the way stories can subvert or undermine the male/society and feminine/nature binary, to complicate the way we see natural landscapes as gendered spaces. Ecofeminism is a fascinating field that combines my passions for feminist research on gender equality and environmental analysis, which is also interesting to me because of my background as an Environmental Studies major. When it comes to applying these key terms, I am more flexible and open minded as to where; right now, I am considering the works of Virginia Woolf as a key feminist writer who I have some experience with, as well as perhaps some of her peers and staying within the modernist era. However, I have found several sources on ecofeminist poetics within Victorian poetry as well (including the works of Micheal Field, among others). I plan to use this reading list to determine which time period (modernist or victorian) and genre (novels or poetry) to apply an ecocritical lens.

Updates: I chose to get rid of of source on Victorian Poetry as, although I am interested, I am leaning more towards modernist novels. I added a source specific to Willa Cather and Ecofeminism so that I have all of my potential primary source authors represented somewhere in my reading list. My conversation with Professor Moffat about eco-criticism and Virginia Woolf shaped my thinking on focusing on her texts as a whole and encouraged me to add Between the Acts, which is set in the English countryside. She also brought up how time and modernism can play into Woolf and ecofeminism, which was interesting to me in relation to the Kristeva reading for class a few weeks ago. Tomorrow I will be speaking with Dr. Schweighofer to talk about ecofeminism as a theory and applying it to literature more broadly which will greatly help me get a sense of what current ecofeminist dialogue looks like. My primary texts include many works of Virginia Woold because of my experience in writing about nature and gender in Orlando and other secondary sources I’ve found on ecofeminism and her works. I included Jeaneatte Winterson because of my conversation with Professor Kersh and her name coming up also in my secondary research. Willa Cather I have read and have seen connections to ecofeminism, and after some research chose to include Oh Pioneers and  My Antonia.

Primary Texts:

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918.

Cather, Willa. Oh Pioneers. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913.

Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. New York, Knopf Press, 1992. 

Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. London, Hogarth Press, 1941.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. London, Hogarth Press, 1925.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. London, Hogarth Press, 1928.

Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. London, Hogarth Press, 1931.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. London, Hogarth Press, 1927.

3-5 Secondary or Theoretical Works:
Adams, Carol J. Ecofeminism and the Sacred. Continuum, 1993.
https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/15ac0tc/alma991002382109705226

Campbell, Andrea. New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2008.https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/1d86qtd/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9781443809221

Kostkowska, J. Ecocriticism and Women Writers: Environmentalist Poetics of Virginia Woolf, Jeanette Winterson, and Ali Smith. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013,
doi:10.1057/9781137349095. https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/1d86qtd/cdi_proquest_ebookcentral_EBC1249636

Murphy, Patricia. Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women’s Poetry. University of Missouri Press, 2019. https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/1d86qtd/cdi_proquest_ebookcentral_EBC5632621 

Madsen, Deborah L. “Gender and Nature: Eco-Feminism and Willa Cather.” Feminist Theory and Literary Practice, Pluto Press, 2015, p. 122–. https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/1d86qtd/cdi_jstor_books_j_ctt18fs482_8

Vakoch, Douglas A. Feminist Ecocriticism Environment, Women, and Literature. Lexington Books, 2012. https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/15ac0tc/alma991007274682505226

Chosen Academic Journal for Year of Issues:
Environmental Humanities. Environmental Humanities Programme, University of New South Wales, 2012.
https://dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DICKINSON_INST/m40n5f/alma991007033610605226

Primary Texts:

1. Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 2011.  
2. Tipton-Martin, Toni. The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2015. 
3. Mukerjee Furstenau, Nina. Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2013.  
4. De Loup, Maximilliam. The American Salad Book. G. R. Knapp, 1899. 
5. Witt, Doris. Black Hunger Soul Food and America. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2004.  
6. Madavan, Vijay. Cooking the Indian Way. Minneapolis, Lerner Publishing Group, 2002.  
7. Wood, Bertha M. Foods of the Foreign-Born In Relation to Health. Boston, Whitcomb & Barrows, 1922.  
8. Long, Lucy M. Ethnic American Food Today. Maryland, Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2015.   

Secondary/Theoretical Works:

1. Slocum, Rachel. “Race in the Study of Food.” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 35, no. 3, SAGE Publications, 2011, pp. 303–27, doi:10.1177/0309132510378335.
2. Williams-Forson, Psyche and Jennifer Cognard-Black “Where Are the Women in the Food Studies Classroom? Ruminations on Teaching Gender and Race in the Food Studies Classroom.” Feminist Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, 2014, pp. 304-332.  
3. Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 3–24, doi:10.1017/S0010417500015024. 
4. Witt, Doris. Black Hunger Soul Food and America. 1st University of Minnesota Press ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
5. Fretwell, Erica. “Black Power in the Kitchen.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food, edited by J. Michelle Coghlan, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 182-196. 
6. Long, Lucy M. “Constructing an Imagined Dinner Table: Culinary Nationalism and the ‘Ethnic American Cooking’ Cookbook.” Western Folklore, vol. 80, Western States Folklore Society, 2021, 45-81. 
7. Roth, LuAnne. “Do the [White] Thing: What Oppositional Gaze Narratives Reveal about Culinary Nationalism and Whiteness.” Western Folklore, vol. 80, Western States Folklore Society, 2021, pp. 81-117.  

Academic Journal:

1. Food, Culture, & Society. Association for the Study of Food and Society, 2004.

Keywords or Key Terms:

1. Critical Race Theory
2. Postcolonialism
3. Diaspora
4. Ethnic
5. American
6. Gender

Explanatory Essay:

I had a hard time even trying to choose a topic because there are so many topics that I want to research, but I finally settled on the significance of race in cookbooks. I spoke with Professor Phillips via email, as I had my first-year seminar, Gender and Food Culture, with her and the connection of race and cooking came up briefly. Professor Phillips offered an extensive list and I selected some texts from it and others in my own time that I think would help open up my research about race and cookbooks. I only included one cookbook as of right now because I wanted to look at articles that examined this connection to see existing scholarly work and find where I could offer a unique argument/addition to the field. I am still not quite sure as to what exactly I want to do, but I think it could be interesting to read cookbooks written by Americans who are a part of the Asian, Latin American, or African ethnicity or race, because the cultural conflicts and diaspora that these communities experience as not just being American, but also having cultural heritage can have a large impact on what they include or decide to write in their cookbooks. Cookbooks are an interesting genre of literature, as they include a lot of personal narration, which could answer these questions around how race, particularly being American and of cultural heritage, and how that affects one’s journey, decisions to include certain recipes over others, and how food impacted their life.

Update:

I decided to exclude the “postcolonialism” keyword because my research of primary texts did not include nor focus on the presence on colonialism and its effects. I decided to instead include gender, as it cannot be excluded in the discussion of food and cooking, but more importantly the words “ethnic” and “American”. In my research of various cookbooks, the binary between “cultural/ethnic” food and “American” food has appeared many times, and I would like to focus on these two terms to see how the meaning of these words affect the discussion of cultural food and the experience of Americans of various races and ethnicities.

The cookbooks I found thus far focus on the cuisine and experience of African-American and  Indian-American individuals, but I have found two interesting sources from the late 1800s and early 1900s to see how “ethnic” food and “American” cuisine were defined during these times, to see how if these perceptions have had lasting effects on the discussion of food and cooking in the United States.

Reading List_Meaghan Mullins

Key Terms: Medieval Romance, Medieval, pastoralism, metamorphosis, animal personification

Theoretical Works:
1. Crane, Susan. Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain, Philidelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. http://doi.org/10.9783/9780812206302.
2. PUTTER, AD. “PERSONIFICATIONS OF OLD AGE IN MEDIEVAL POETRY: CHARLES D’ORLÉANS AND WILLIAM LANGLAND.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 63, no. 260, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 388–409, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23263670.
3. Little, Katherine C. “Medieval Traditions of Writing Rural Labor” Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry. University of Notre Dame Press, 2013, pp. 15–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj79zn.5.
4. Fyfe, Daniel. “Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and the Christian Influence in Old Medieval English Poetry.” Philologica Canariensia, vol. 1, 1995, p. 77–.
5. Flannery, M.C. Gower’s blushing bird, Philomela’s transforming face. Postmedieval 8, 35–50 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0036-9.
6. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – York University.” Translated by W.A. Neilson, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, York University, 1999, www.yorku.ca/inpar/sggk_neilson.pdf.
7. The Green Knight. Directed by David Lowery, Ley Line Entertainment, Bron Creative, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Sailor Bear, 2021.

Academic Journal:

1. The Medieval Review (formerly the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review). Currently published by Indiana University. Publishing since 1993.

My sophomore year I took a class titled Angels and Demons on the Early English Stage class. Reading the plays in this class that seemed to be the inspiration for so many other literary works, sparked my interest. Later, I read Spencer’s first book of The Faerie Queene, I have become attached to medieval and early modern works like this. I went to see the film the Green Knight based on the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and I became inspired to approach the structure and context of these epic poems through my thesis. In particular, I liked delving into the quests that popped up along the way and were seemingly irrelevant to the main journey. They always yielded some insight into some aspect of medieval life and I want to learn more about the significance of the poem in medieval England through the stores its people wove together.

Upon further research and consultation with professors in the field, I have decided to focus on the genre of Medieval Romance in particular as they represent my interest in poetic and lyric structure while also satisfying my need to study quest narratives and animal encounters/metamophosis.