Course Blog

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.

Updated Reading List : What’s Left Out of the Canon but Worked Within the Harlem Renaissance

3-5 Secondary Sources:

  1. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. Taylor and Francis, 2002.
  2. DuCille, Ann. “Phallus(Ies) of Interpretation: Toward Engendering the Black Critical ‘I.’” Callaloo, vol. 16, no. 3, 1993, pp. 559–573. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2932256.
  3. Ezell, Margaret. Writing Women’s Literary History. Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
  4. Gates, Henry Louis. “’What’s Love Got to Do with It?’: Critical Theory, Integrity, and the Black Idiom.” New Literary History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1987, pp. 345-62. JSTOR, doi: 2307/468733.
  5. Hyot, Eric. “On Periodization.” On Literary Worlds.” Oxford UP, 2012.

 

Journal:

Callaloo (An African American Literature and Criticism Journal that focuses more on moderating canon inclusion, see DuCille’s piece above.)

Primary Sources:

  1. Fauset, Jessie Redmon. Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral. Beacon, 1990.
  2. Huges, Langston and Zora Neale Hurston. Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. Harper Perennial, 1991.
  3. Lewis, David Levering, editor. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Penguin, 1994.
  4. Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Negro Universities Press, 1969.
  5. Toomer, Jean. Cane. 3rd, Norton, 2011.

Keywords:

  1. Canon Formation
  2. Category Definition v. Reality
  3. Harlem Renaissance

 

Explanatory Essay:

For this assignment, I met with Professors Harris and Seiler because they have a lot of experience in the era I am fascinated by at this moment and would like to explore. I am interested in canon formation in general and the authors who do not fit the defined characteristics and subjects that have been accepted as that era’s hallmarks. While this can be applied to any time in literary history, the Harlem Renaissance is uniquely interesting for a few reasons. I am interested not only in canon as formulated by elites of the general literary establishment, but also the elites within nontraditional literary movements. Women played a huge role in the Harlem Renaissance movement through working with periodicals, writing, and bringing other artists together to those gatherings a current audience knows were sources of amazing inspiration and the germ for works we study today. The Harlem Renaissance was recent enough to provide a decent record of these women’s contributions, and I want to know how they were simultaneously accepted in the social scene and excluded from the list of names associated with this time’s work. What were their interactions with their male peers, who sometimes served as colleagues at publications? How did so many women get defined by one scandal, such as Larsen’s possible later-career plagiarism, as justification for not acknowledging their work’s quality? What do authors like Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jessie Redmane Fauset’s works say about other issues and themes than we see in black male narratives that traditionally make up the definition for that movement. I am starting here with some theory about canon formation from newer, black critics and more recursive ones. From there, I anticipate reading some of the movement’s own authors’ writing about the politics of the time along with their fictional work and its breadth of subject matter and emotional exploration. I want to explore the way other authors might change our understanding of the period and who was active within it. The formulation of the canon affects the writing of generations who study it, so what effect might a reformulation have on future writers reading and studying this period today?

 

Update:

My blog posts, particularly my examination of Henry Louis Gates’ piece, led me to add Ann DuCille’s article to my Secondary source list. I think that comparing their conflict to that of similarly gender-based racial disagreements of the Harlem Renaissance is interesting. One of my primary texts, Mule Bone is a joint effort by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, and the edition includes essays and letters that show their arguments and tension I think allowed for some of the exclusion of black women’s writing from the initial pattern. It also speaks to the record of women’s deep involvement in the literary elite, which contradicts their initial representation in works remembered from that time. I include Nella Larsen and Jessie Redmon Fauset as two women who are still lagging in notoriety compared to Hurston, but that were similarly integral to the Harlem Renaissance elite. Jean Toomer’s Cane is an extremely woman-centric novel, and Toomer’s groundbreaking formal style and content which was very queer and sexual, was not met with common acceptance at its inception and has grown to prominence today. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader is a great source for shorter works and essays from key Harlem Renaissance figures and those who were overshadowed. I want to explore the themes, tropes, and literary strategies of these fictional works to identify what textual elements suppressed them and what led some to rise later, as well as the case study presented by the relationship between Hurston and Hughes.

Updated: Reading List for Norse Religion, Sagas, and Mythology

Secondary Texts:

 

  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.

 

 

Primary Texts:

 

  1. Translated by Seamus Heaney. Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th ed., vol. A, Norton, 2012. pp. 41-108.
  1. The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, translated by Jesse L. Byock. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Print.
  1. The Saga of Grettir the Strong, translated by George A. Hight. London: Dent, 1965. Print.
  2. The Saga of Erik the Red, translated by J. Sephton, Icelandic Saga Database, Sveinbjorn Thordarson (ed.), URL = <http://www.sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en>
  3. Egil’s Saga, translated by W. C. Green, Icelandic Saga Database, Sveinbjorn Thordarson (ed.), URL = <http://www.sagadb.org/egils_saga.en>
  4. The Story of Burnt Njal: From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga, translated by George W. Dasent. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1911.

 

 

I am taking a different approach to thesis research than I was planning on. I felt as though my early decision to study Beowulf was starting to limit my scope of texts to read, because I was trying to select texts that I thought Beowulf was most identifiable with. This severely limited my thesis topic, because I was not sure how everything was going to relate and connect to one another. So instead, I decided to consult Dr. Christine Schott, who is professor of English at Erskine College, and who was recommended to me by Professor Skalak. She suggested that I read Grettir’s Saga, and pointed out a relation to Beowulf, which was my original plan. I decided to broaden my scope of research and include sagas that I might previously have overlooked, since they aren’t clearly connected to Beowulf. Instead of starting with a plan and finding books to fit that plan, I want to read a whole range of sagas, particularly fornaldarsaga (legendary sagas), and islendingasogur (family sagas). I am going to start reading these sagas soon, since I have no particular direction or things I am looking for (yet). I want to read the legendary and family stories early on and find patterns, similarities, differences, or things I find otherwise strange, and not think (yet) about their connections to Beowulf. After I read all five sagas, some of which are pretty short, I’ll start planning my argument, or something new that I bring to the scholarly discussion. I think this will broaden my horizons of research, as well as train me to adapt to changes in my writing process.

 

 

Updated: On Salvadoran Diaspora, the Salvadoran Civil War, and Resistance: a reading list

(i) Secondary & Theoretical Texts

  1. Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador’s Civil War (2017) Joaquín M. Chávez.
    Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago and Jeffrey L. Gould. “Memories of La Matanza: The Political and Cultural Consequences of 1932.” To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932. (2008)
  2.  U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (2017) ed. Karina O Alvarado; Alicia Ivonne Estrada; Ester E. Hernández.
  3.  Arias, Arturo. “Central American-Americans: Invisibility, Power and Representation in the US Latino World.” Latino Studies (2003): 1.1.
  4. Rodriguez, Ana Patricia “Diasporic Reparations: Repairing the Social Imaginaries of Central America in the Twenty-First Century” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (2013):. 37: 2.3
    Rodriguez, Ana Patricia. “’Departamento 15′: Salvadoran Transnational Migration and Narration.” Dividing the Isthmus: Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures and Cultures. University of Texas Press, 2009
  5. Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options.
    Cárdenas, Maritza/ “From Epicentros to Fault Lines: Rewriting Central America from the Diaspora,” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: Vol. 37: Iss. 2, Article 8. 2013.
    (ii) Academic Journal
    Latino Studies.     ed. Lourdes Torres. Palgrave Macmillan UK, ISSN: 1476-3435 (Print) 1476-3443 (Online)

(iii) Key terms
Central American Civil Wars, Salvadoran Diaspora, Transnational Migration

(iv) Primary Texts

Primary texts:

  1. Javier Zamora, Unaccompanied. Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
  2. Alexandra Lytton Regalado, Matria, Black Lawrence Press, 2017.
  3. William Archila, The Art of Exile. Bilingual Review Press, 2007.
  4. Yesika Salgado, Corazon. Not a Cult Press, 2017.
  5. Javier Zamora, Selected Poems: “El Salvador,” “Saguaros,” Poetry Foundation.
  6. Yesika Salgado, Selected Poems: “Translation,” “Brown Girl,” “On The Good Days,” YouTube.
  7. The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. ed. Leticia Hernández-Linares, Rubén Martínez, and Héctor Tobar. Tia Chucha Press/Northwestern University Press, 2017.
  8. Kalina: Theatre Under My Skin, Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry / Teatro bajo mi piel, poesía salvadoreña contemporanea. ed. Alexandra Lytton Regalado. Editorial Kalina, 2014.
  9. Manlio Argueta, Un Dia en La Vida. (1980) UCA Editores.

My research process thus far in compiling this list has built upon the following logic: If I am setting out to write a thesis focusing on literature of Salvadoran diaspora, then I cannot do so without also thinking critically about immigration. And if I am to discuss Salvadoran immigration in my thesis, then I cannot do so without centering the 1980’s Civil War as a main cause of influxes of Salvadoran refugees fleeing El Salvador to immigrate to the U.S. Joaquín M. Chavez’s book will provide a more contextual background of both general and specifically literary resistance relating to the events leading up the Salvadoran civil war. Otherwise, the next three sources on my list are texts that provide contextual understandings and summaries of how the twentieth century civil wars in Central America have shaped the Central American diaspora in the United States. I spoke with Professor Vazquez about these sources, with the goal of narrowing down to select texts that will enable me to understand the current critical/scholarly conversation on “Central American-Americans.” I have also specifically selected scholars whose work engages directly with literature or who have otherwise done research or written about Central American literature, both in homeland and diaspora. As I browse through journal issues of Latino Studies I also aim to maintain my focus on what critics are saying about Latino literature as a whole, or aspects/regions that I could study in comparison to Central American/Salvadoran literature.

Ultimately, I want to study the ways in which Salvadoran literature is informed by historical contexts including legacies of colonization and U.S. neoliberal intervention, which is precisely where Mignolo’s writings on decoloniality in Latin America will help provide a more theoretical backing to my work. Further, I want to specifically examine how Salvadoran writers use story as a means of resistance in opposition to wider systemic oppressive frameworks. Some of the questions I am beginning to raise are: How do writers of Salvadoran origin use their literary work to engage with and comment politically on key political events in the twentieth century (specifically, the 1932 uprising and the 1980’s civil war) and their aftermath? How do Salvadoran writers use story as a means of resistance, and what, specifically, do their stories resist? What happens to Salvadoran writing when it moves beyond Salvadoran borders, and what does this writing reveal?

Research update 10/23/17:

The updated changes and additions to my reading list are motivated primarily by my efforts to continuously refine my research topic. As I expand my knowledge on Salvadoran literature, I have been conscious of selecting sources that are as close and specific to the questions I seek to address. I aim to focus on Salvadoran poets writing in the United States and examine the ways in which their writing reflects resistance and/or resilience. As previously mentioned in my original post, in order to do this, I know that my research and analysis needs to maintain a consciousness for the conditions of migration and the related historical contexts. For this reason, I have sought out sources that directly discuss Salvadoran migration and Salvadoran literature in diaspora.

While Joaquín M. Chavez’s book provides a comprehensive analysis of the events and movements that led up to the Salvadoran Civil War, I realized that what I was most interested in was studying the catalyzing event: the 1932 indigenous uprising; so, instead of reading Chavez’s work, I selected a critical article that specifically analyzes the effects of that revolution in regard to the way it is remembered in Salvadoran communities. Rather than trying to understand all the complexities of the twentieth century historical contexts (an impossible task, given my research time frame), I am making efforts to select specific significant events, so as to use my understanding of those events to shape my analysis of their lasting impact. I swapped out one of Ana Patricia Rodriguez’s articles on Central American migration for one that focuses more specifically on Salvadoran migration to the United States. Finally, when I began to read through Walter Mignolo’s book, I realized that although his theoretical framework on decoloniality will be useful, it is not as relevant to the specific questions I am raising regarding diaspora. I intend to keep his work in mind and refer to it if and when applicable, but I opted to swap this source out in order to focus on one that deals more critically with what it means to write from Central American diaspora.

My primary texts feature the poetry collections of four key Salvadoran poets writing in the United States (Zamora, Regalado, Archila and Salgado), as well as a few additional poems from two of them(Zamora and Salgado). I have included two videos of Salgado’s work as a poet and performer in U.S. poetry slam communities. Her performances of her poems add a new layer of analysis, particularly in considering her impact in popularizing Salvadoran narratives via her powerful social media presence. In addition to these works, two other primary texts are anthologies of Central American writing and Salvadoran writing respectively. The only work on my list written by a “homeland” Salvadoran writer is Manlio Argueta’s Un Dia en La Vida and I am most interested in its representation of U.S. intervention in the Salvadoran Civil War.