Course Blog

World War 2 discussion with professor sweeney

  • 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 –this book discusses Propaganda

Frank Capra-The Nazis Strike- World War 2 (Film) and Battle of Britain (Film)

Peter Paret-Persuasive Images

Triumph of the Will (Film) by Leni Riefenstahl

Sigmund Froid, Civilization and its Discontents

  • 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.

  • be informed by 1-3 far-reaching keywords or key terms.
  1. Roosevelt Speeches
  2. Propaganda
  3. Nazi Rallies
  • 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 if they were alive to witness 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 Nazi 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 regular 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 Nazi Propaganda, Nazi rallies, and leaders.

 

 

 

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.

Reading List for Norse Religion, Sagas, and Mythology:

 

  1. Littleton, C. Scott. “The Comparative Indo-European Mythology of Georges Dumézil”. Journal of the Folklore Institute. Vol 1, No. 3. Dec. 1964, pp.147-166. JSTOR

 

  1. Baker, Peter S. Introduction to Old English. Wiley-Blackwell: Feb. 2012. Print.

 

  1. Hill, Thomas D. Sources of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies. University of Toronto: 2007.

 

  1. Byock, Jesse L. Viking Age Iceland. Penguin UK: Feb. 2001. Print

 

  1. Byock, Jesse L. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. UCLA Press: 1982. Print.

 

  1. Jakobsson, Armann, and Jakobsson, Sverrir. The Routledge Research Companion to Medieval Icelandic Sagas. Routledge: 2017. Print.

 

 

Journal: Vikings and Medieval Scandinavia. Brepols. http://vms.asnc.cam.ac.uk

 

Keywords: Translation theory, Vikings, Norse, Saga

 

In order to study the primary texts that I will use for my thesis, I need to first be able to read them. Since I cannot begin to decipher ancient Icelandic or Old English, I must be working from translations alone. Professor Skalak pointed out that I need to consider translation theory since I cannot close read the original text. Baker’s Intro to Old English will help me with Beowulf, and I’m going to look in the academic journal for help with the original sagas. Then, I want to break down the sagas and find common tropes or story patterns. Jesse Byock is an expert and a great writer, and I’ve read him before. I’m going to study at least two of Byock’s books. Part of the reason I am so interested by the Nordic gods is because they look nothing like the Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheistic god, or even the gods and goddesses of the other pagan religions. They are immoral and mortal.  They lie, have sex, fight with each other, and die. So, a question I had to frame my research is a more complex version of “what’s the point?” If the gods and goddesses, weren’t created for a didactic purpose, or to show people that believed in them how to live, what purpose did they serve? What real life application came out of the pantheon? What was the nature of mythology, and how did it form? What about the Christianization of the Scandinavian countries? How did the one religion give way into the other, and what was the effect of this transformation on the mythology, folklore, and legend? Depending on what direction my interest takes, I may also want to study shamanism. I will probably also look at the conceptions of masculinity, since it was such a “macho” society. Finally, I am considering re-watching the series Vikings on HBO for a modern-day recreation of the lives of the Vikings. Both myself and my professor of Nordic Mythology last semester found this series to be astonishingly accurate in its portrayal of the religion and shamanism. Sometimes I can tell which primary source the show-makers are getting their information from. I may study some of the film theory that we have been reading recently to apply this to my thesis.

Reading List: Japanese Feminist Lens in The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa

(I) Secondary/ Theoretical Works:

  1. The Columbia Journal of Modern Japanese Literature
  2. Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature
  3. The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing
  4. World Literature Today
  5. Eastlit
  6. Electric Literature
  7. The Uncanny, Freud

 

(II) Academic Journals:

  1. The Journal of Japanese Studies
  2. AATJ Journal: Japanese Language and Literature
  3. Brill’s Journal of World Literature

 

(III) Key Words:

  1. Gender
  2. Japanese/Literature
  3. Post-colonial
  4. Sexuality
  5. Psyche
  6. Grotesque

 

(IV) Paragraph:

For this reading list, I put together these sources with the help of Professor Menon. Although she has a similar background to what I’m looking to find, she apologized for not specializing and for not being familiar with East Asian literature. Despite this, we compiled a list of sources that compliment my argument quite well. I wanted to focus my secondary sources on what I am planning on using as my primary source, The Diving Pool, by Yoko Ogawa. A female Japanese author wrote this compilation of three novellas; all three novellas center around three different female protagonists. I plan to attack this through a feminist lens, and how the female body (and bodies in general) is portrayed in this book, and in addition I will attempt to add to the feminist lens by looking at the Japanese female perspective (The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing). I also found Yoko Ogawa’s book to have a unique sense of the grotesque attached to it, which is what inspired me to add Feud’s The Uncanny to the list, as well as the key words psyche and grotesque. I believe that not only with the Japanese female perspective compliment this text, but also to recognize the unique ability of Ogawa to portray the female body in both appealing ways and in disturbing ways. It is unclear whether or not she was attempting to bring to light the female body and make a statement about it, but for my research, I believe this would be an interesting way to look at it.

Charlotte Hayden, Reading List

Secondary Works

  1. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge, 2013. 3rd Print.
  2. David, Elizabeth. Spices, Salts, and Aromatics in the English Kitchen.
  3. Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Massimo Montanari, and Albert Sonnenfeld. Food: A Culinary History. Columbia University Press, 2013. Web.
  4. Grigson, Jane. Food with the Famous.
  5. Parasecoli, Fabio, and Peter Scholliers, gen. eds. A Cultural History of Food. Vol 1-6. Bloomsbury, 2016. Print.

Academic Journal

  1. Food, Culture, & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. Published quarterly. Routledge. Run by The Association for the Study of Food and Society.

Keywords and Key Terms

  1. “Food culture/society”
  2. “Food history”
  3. “Gastronomy”

Description

I compiled this list based on: two syllabi provided by my aunt, Professor Alison Anrather at Wagner College, who teaches classes on food history and society; stumbling upon books in the food studies section of the library; typing my keywords into Jumpstart; and a conversation with Prof. Su. Because I am not yet sure what portion of the world or segment of history I want to focus on in my thesis – though I am leaning towards Western Europe and perhaps focusing on nineteenth century English food consumption – I intentionally kept my list over-arching and broad. Food: A Culinary History, Food and Culture: A Reader, and A Cultural History of Food will act as sturdy frameworks to contextualize the gradually narrowing scope of my research. Spices, Salts, and Aromatics in the English Kitchen and Food with the Famous will offer more detailed explorations of English-oriented food research and literary traditions of food writing.

Many questions currently frame my inquiry, some academic (in an effort to gear my food hobby towards a researchable topic), and some originating from pure intellectual curiosity. Why has food become the central focus of societies, and why would I argue that it has? What historical events – wars, famines – or traditions signify that cultures operate around the production of food and the social aspect of eating it? What were the food “norms” in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Period, and the past two hundred years, and how do all those varying approaches to or treatments of food illuminate the state of a culture’s economy, commerce, or government? In summary, how does history support the notion that food is a cultural signifier? I realize the scope of history that I am exploring is extremely wide but I am excited to investigate my questions and hopefully emerge with a more detailed, exclusionary (in that it will provide specificity, not a limited perspective) focus for my thesis.

El Salvador: Of Homeland and Diaspora (?)

When I first began thinking about how my literary research interests could develop into potential topics for my senior thesis, I knew, broadly, that I wanted to focus on Latin American/U.S. Latinx literature. My desire to pursue this led to coursework on U.S. Latina/o Literature and further research on Latin American/Latinx literary traditions. As I read, I became aware of the scholarly focus predominantly on Mexico and the Caribbean (notably, Puerto Rico and Cuba) when discussing Latinxs. My specific interest in Central America and El Salvador has meant further refining my focus to search for these keywords within my findings on Latin American/Latinx literatures. Due to limited literary scholarship on Central American literatures, I maintain this broader category of Latin American/Latinx literatures as critical keywords––however, I aim to complicate this pan-ethnic category by also recognizing how it has dwelled on particular national narratives over others. I also aim to understand the role of Salvadoran literature within the two broader categories of Central American literature and Latin American/Latinx literatures.

 

As I have begun to focus more closely on Salvadoran literature, one of the binaries that emerged was writings of homeland versus writings of diaspora. These became keywords that I had identified as the two main groups of Salvadoran writings. What I came to realize later on, however, were the temporal attachments that I had begun to associate with each ‘branch’ of writing. I imposed a temporal restriction on writings of homeland as limited to pre-civil war, and writings of diaspora as strictly post-civil war. My interest in the civil war’s sociopolitical significance (including events leading up to the war and its aftermath) in shaping twentieth century Salvadoran literature led me to ignore the possibility of ‘diaspora’ before the war as well as to ignore the continuation of ‘homeland’ writings in the post-war area. As stated in Writing Analytically, “when you find a binary opposition in an essay, film, political campaign, or anything else, you have located the argument that the film, essay, or campaign is having with itself, the place where something is at issue,” (95). The binary opposition that I had identified revealed the tension in negotiating what happens to narratives and literatures when they inhabit different physical and temporal spaces. Specifically, the question that emerged was: what does Salvadoran literature look like at origin versus beyond the homeland, in ‘diaspora’?

 

I want to complicate ‘diaspora’ as a guiding keyword by thinking about how else we might refer to the experiences of people of Salvadoran origin living in the U.S. This is relevant to my literary research because these keywords will help me to select theoretical approaches. Some key terminology related to but distinct from ‘diaspora’ that come to mind are: immigrant, migrant, forced migration, exile, refugee. Many of these terms carry different political implications that affect the critical framing and context of how I will approach my discussion of Salvadoran literature.
Searching for definitions is useful here in gaining a better grip of what the terms specifically mean; for example, considering the differences between ‘migration’ and ‘immigration,’ in which the former refers broadly to movement across space and the latter implies a permanent move. While diaspora is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the state or fact of having been dispersed from one’s homeland or point of origin,” there is not necessarily a political implication in this term. On the other hand, ‘exile’ and ‘refugee’ have more political significances; exile is defined as “prolonged absence from one’s native country or a place regarded as home, endured by force of circumstances or voluntarily undergone for some purpose. Also: an instance or period of this.” The OED definition of a refugee is “a person who has been forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere, esp. in a foreign country, from war, religious persecution, political troubles, the effects of a natural disaster, etc.; a displaced person.” Considering the sociopolitical significances of these terms will enable a better analysis of my literary scope and raise specific questions for the primary texts I will consider. For example, one of the leading contemporary Salvadoran writers is Horacio Castellanos Moya, who has spent most of his life away from El Salvador, in exile. Does Castellanos Moya belong to homeland or to ‘diaspora’? Is ‘diaspora’ an appropriate word to use when we are referring to circumstances of forced migration? What do these literary texts gain or lose from being referred to as belonging to ‘diaspora’ to ‘homeland’ or to literature of ‘exile’/’refugee’ writing?

 

Bibliography:

“Diaspora.” “Immigration.” “Latino, Latina, Latin@.” “Migration,”  Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2007.

“diaspora, n.” “exile, n.1.” “refugee, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017.

David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.

Key Words “Power” and “Unconscious”

Throughout the last three weeks in English 403, the concept of power has emerged as a central theme in almost all of our readings and class discussions. Generally defined by Merriam-Webster as the “possession of control, authority, or influence over others,” the word “power,” as we have seen, is not only employed in order to demonstrate the strength of a person, group of people, or an entity, but is also utilized as a method for creating or bringing focus to a dichotomy that exists between those that possess power and those that face subjugation under that specific source of power (“Power”). For this reason, analyzing the ways in which different works engage with the concept of “power” and its effects allows individuals to identify the multiple, unique facets of various power dynamics and gain a better understanding of the seemingly universal precursors that must exist in order to enable the possession of societal power.

Two works that seem to make the most significant use of the word “power” include Judith Fetterley’s Introduction to the Resisting Reader and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Fetterley’s piece, she grapples with the idea that American society and literature feel a “commitment to the maintenance of male power” that directly causes and encourages “powerlessness [to] characterize women” (994, 992). Similarly, in Mulvey’s piece, she also describes a lack of power amongst women by analyzing how films have encouraged a reality based in “sexual imbalance” in which “the active power of the erotic look” is held solely by men (668, 671). Although both writers are concerned with the societal promotion of female powerlessness, it is their analysis of “power” in regard to different mediums that is most revealing. For Mulvey, “power” is a visual concept. She argues that films utilize women as “objects of sexual simulation through sight” by purposefully depicting women as sexual beings that exist solely for men’s visual enjoyment (672). In addition, it also a woman’s appearance, or “visually ascertainable absence of the penis,” that causes her to be relegated to the periphery and made powerless (672). In contrast, Fetterley is not focused on the visual aspects the define “power,” but rather, on the way in which education and literature determine “power.” For Fetterley, one’s power stems from the written works with which they interact and the authors that they are exposed to. For this reason, Fetterley believes women are powerless because they are taught through literature that they must think and act like men and become “intellectually male” (996). In this way, although Fetterley and Mulvey both point to a sexist societal hierarchy that renders men powerful and women powerless, their differing engagements with “power” enable one to understand the various ways in which person(s) achieve and maintain power at the societal level.

In addition, it is also significant to note the way in which the word “power” in both of these works is often accompanied by the word “unconscious” or “universal.” While Fetterley and Mulvey wrestle with different channels in promoting gendered power dynamics, they are unified in their assertion that people within society have been unconsciously molded by social formations into expecting and accepting a patriarchal society and its “universal” norms. By utilizing the words “unconscious” and “universal,” Fetterley and Mulvey not only emphasize the pervasiveness of male power, but recognize that power dynamics are often so ingrained in a culture that they are not fully recognizable or actively thought about by that culture’s members. In this way, Fetterley and Mulvey not only shed light on the tight link between “power” and culture, but stress that power can only be shifted if people recognize what societal institutions and conventions have enabled those powerful persons or entities to thrive.

Works Cited:

Fetterley , Judith. “Introduction to the Resisting Reading.” Reader-Response Criticism , pp. 990–998.

Mulvey , Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema .” Psychoanalytic Theory , pp. 667–675.

“Power.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2017 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power.

Literary and Non-Literary Canon. “Why Not Both?” with Ready Player One (2011)

Canon can be defined as more than just literary but possibly it’s polar opposite of non-literary media. Gasp! How could I say such a thing as that as a scholar of literature? For Jonathan Culler, author of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, there is a considerable debate between literary and non-literary canon. A definition from the Oxford English Dictionary dated from 2002 suggests it is a, “A body of literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant, and worthy of study”, but I find this definition only correct as far as “body of literary works”, while the rest presumes too much. I say literary canon is now on-track to fuse with popular canon, as I look at an entertaining read in Ready Player One (2011) a novel by Ernest Cline. The first few chapters can be found online. The science fiction story focuses on a virtual reality contest in 2044 based around a teen’s 1980’s-inspired scavenger hunt that describes popular culture as it’s own shared consciousness canon. What all three can agree on is that the definition of literary canon is going to need to expand though they need to also include non-literary popular culture multimedia formats.

Jonathan Culler believes that literary canon may be endangered to its diametrically opposed popular culture non-literary canon counterparts, but can still be seen equal rivals. While cultural studies may be “all encompassing”, literary canon has an exclusive division of quality. I can relate to his argument that some works in the literary canon have also eclipsed the more ‘minor’ works compared to larger works such as Shakespeare’s plays. Culler summarizes that the two canons may not need to compete, in that, “close reading of non-literary does not imply aesthetic valuation of the object,” a statement that holds true in the enjoyment of Ready Player One.(Culler, 55) If anything, I happen to agree with Culler’s analysis of the binary.

In Ready Player One, the main character Wade Watts competes in a videogame-based scavenger hunt designed in a canon of popular culture references from the 1980’s, which in itself is a kind of commentary on canon. After the death of James Halliday, founder of the first total virtual reality experience, a post-mortem online video challenges the world to follow his challenge in order to secure his inheritance. As a result, “The Hunt, as the contest came to be known, quickly wove its way into global culture.”(Cline, 7) In a way, a popular culture canon is a kind of contest in which we put effort into committing works to memory as a kind of trivia. The global aspect is also fascinating, in that popular culture has permeated more global spheres than traditional literature. Thus, “Fifty years after the decade had ended, the movies, music, games, and fashion of the 1980’s were all the rage again.”(Cline, 7) This obsession with the 1980’s mirrors realities obsession with deciphering Shakespeare’s plays and historical background. The Bard, while rough 400 years old, has the same affect on our world as Halliday in Cline’s. As the contest continues, movies and music references abound. Cline’s fiction novel reads like a love letter to a bygone popular culture canon filled with Matthew Broderick and Harrison Ford films alongside Wham! And Rush. While very little of the references are tradition literary text in format, the new media and the spirit of canon remains.

In honesty, I fill this blog post may have taken too many liberties with canon as a concept in literary theory. The definition from the OED would find my close reading of Ready Player One a misuse of the word, but I insist that canon’s definition is not broad enough. To only suggest the most academic works deserve canonization is a disservice to the potential of new minor works in the future. Like Culler either side of this debate has a legitimate point.

The Weirdest Part of ‘Illinois’

Disclaimer: While it would be untrue to say that the text I’m covering has nothing to do with my research, this has more to do with the forgiving definition (or lack thereof) of the current range of my inquiry than the focused attention I’ve laden on this artist. That being said, I do think of this text and its author quite a lot, so I may try to work them in somehow (but I’m highly dubious that I’ll actually put serious effort into doing so).

Disclaimer Two: I could probably pontificate at an unwilling listener about this album for the literal duration of my natural life, so while I’m going to knowledge that I’m barely going to scratch the surface here in hopes that I don’t try to do more, I’m going to try and just set up the connections without synthesizing them to avoid going over the word limit.

For a while, I would skip over “The Man of Metropolis Steal our Hearts” whenever I would listen to Illinois (Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 concept album about the state). I fucking loved the album, it was (and still is) my favorite album hands down, but I had no idea why he went from singing poignant ballads about wrongheaded teenage misanthropic, childhood sweethearts with cancer, and old ladies painfully reminiscing, to devoting a (six minute) song to Superman. It totally threw off my whole idea of the album and so I decided to just try to forget about it.

About a year after I first heard of the album, I saw a video of Stevens performing “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades” (the one about the old lady [maybe — the gender of most of his narrators isn’t specified] I mention above). He and his bandmates stood on stage, all wearing the kind of fairy wings that parents buy for particularly girly girls. My first reaction when I saw the wings and saw the light sort of glitter off of what appeared to be glitter on his face was: “oh, that’s… oddly effeminate” — which I immediately regretted having thought, even while acknowledging that it was the most succinct phrasing of my genuine reaction.

To gloss briefly over that offputting statement (I swear I’ll come back to it): at the end of the introductory monologue, Stevens says, “maybe this is one of our theme songs for this tour, ’cause that’s why we all have wings on, it’s sort of to overcome my fear of flying things.” When I heard that, pieces immediately started to click together. When I began to think about it, I saw that flight was one of the main motifs on the album. From the UFOs on the opening track, to the Black Hawks on the next one, to the metaphorical “flight” of escape on “Chicago,” all the way to the predatory wasp of the song at hand (if you want to browse the full track listing to identify more instances, here it is), and, of course, to Superman (who’s even pictured flying on the album cover).

I then began to realize there were some more parallels between “The Man of Metropolis….” and “The Predatory Wasp…” Specifically, the former song espouses some pretty bold (though ironic/non-literal) statements about masculinity (“only a real man can be a lover… / only a steel man can be a lover”), while the latter stands in a very fragile relation to conceptions of gender (the narrator wears leg warmers, but Sufjan sings the song from his perspective / it’s not clear whether the love between the characters is a romantic or kindred one or even which gender the narrator is either way).

So, I began to associate flight with this struggle with masculinity, and then I realized that the motif of faith intersects with flight on “Casimir Pulaski Day” (“And the cardinal hits the window / … All the glory that the Lord has made / and the complications when I see His face / in the morning in window”) and with masculinity on “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders” (the person referred to by the title being God… need I say more?) and “Casimir Pulaski Day” (The song’s namesake was a most likely transsexual military general / the indeterminate genders of the characters). Then, I realized fate and flight intersect on the title track with the UFO delivering the holy spirit unto some lowly cornfield.

With that simple guiding directive to focus on a specific element on the album, so much other shit just immediately popped out and began to intersect and this album that I knew and loved took on this vast, richer life in a matter of moments.

It was one of those spasmodic, beautiful moments of rapid-fire entanglements that overpower you with this overwhelming sense of density and scale. I stopped skipping “Man of Metropolis…” after that and, more importantly, I stopped trying to confine the import of someone else’s album to what made sense to me.

Chicken and Egg: Mechanics of Exclusion in the Literary Canon

As I work toward defining my interests and nailing down the characteristics I would like to study and eventually organize a thesis around, I find that my reading history is punctuated by extreme interest in works that surprise me. I do not mean that they surprise me through their plot twists, but rather that they do not fit in with the works that typically are associated with their era of origin. I am interested in works and authors who are not part of the definition of their literary eras, which are time separations controversial in their own right. I am drawn to works by overlooked demographics, particularly members of those demographics who were not actually separate from the literary establishment during their lives, but who were forced to remain outside the prominence of their peers. Two key terms that I think define my thoughts so far are canon formulation and defying assumptions about a period through gender, race, and sexuality.

Defying assumptions in my case applies to the preconceived notions about what defines a period of literature and the women and queer individuals in eras and movements of literature who do not fit them. Though these periods and genres are very different in time and style, the individuals I am interested in are all excluded almost entirely from the accepted canon they are taught from. While their work is not included in the keywords of their periods, women and queer individuals were often present and influential in the circles that produced works, authors, and relics of their time. From the work of women in to establish literary salons in eighteenth century England whose are mostly left out of that era’s history, to the women who pioneered the novel as a genre which was only validated when men adopted it as a forum for quality narratives.

Nella Larsen’s work is read but not widely read, despite her role in the Harlem Renaissance influencer group. She worked on publications including the Opportunity, and The Brownie Book. She was friends with key influencers including Du Bois, and her first novel, Quicksand, was popular and acclaimed at its time. Despite all of this, her work was left out of curriculum and association with both Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance until very recently. Similarly, Jessie Fauset was ignored as a producer at the time, thought she was very present in the social circle where the Harlem Renaissance mission and characteristics were debated and cemented.

Something that unites many authors I am interested in is their fleeting prominence at the time they were producing. As in all things, women and minorities must reach near perfection to be acknowledged along with majority member counterparts. In the Harlem Renaissance, Larsen was accused later in her career of plagiarism. Despite being the first African American woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship, she was almost entirely forgotten after the scandal. She was only mentioned in regards to that stain until fairly recently when critics and readers returned in greater numbers to her work, including Quicksand and Passing.

This process of exclusion and how the definitions of sections of the literary timeline are a source of interest for me. In my discussions with professors, I have pinpointed that as the historical side of what I am looking at. As I look into the works and their creators that interest me, I find that there are usually reasons that have been used to defend their exclusion from the teaching and acclaiming body of texts. The Larsen example is one of many, including Zora Neale Hurston, whose work has surged into much greater prominence, but who was also excluded for controversial views despite her key role in the movement along with male leaders who were never rejected from the group the academy focuses on.

The keywords I have focused on are tightly twined together, and something that also interests me is that connection. As I move forward, I want to explore the three mentioned reasons that the excluded works are treated thus (race, gender, sexuality). I am interested in finding out whether the canon was defined before the works were excluded, or if part of defining literary eras has been purposefully constructing them to achieve that purpose. This is important if one wants to change the future of literary and cultural studies. Whatever cause and effect took place in early canon formation set a legacy that affected the Harlem Renaissance writers I focused on here, and that if left untouched, will continue in our current time and into the future. In the age of technology, it will become much more difficult to determine the pattern and to alter it. I think I’ll be looking at analysis of canon formation and more primary texts moving forward. While simply forcing more inclusion in literary study is an important part, the historian part of my mind leads me to believe that without focusing on what has happened, meaningful understanding and change cannot be made.