American Literature Commons^™

Memory, Politics, And Literary Imagination In Viet Thanh Nguyen’S The Refugees, Jian Zhu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Despite the official conclusion of the Vietnam War, the struggle for remembrance and recollection endures. Within the pages of The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a transnational lens through which to examine the formation and contestation of collective memories between the United States and Vietnam. Despite its military defeat, the United States appropriated anti-communist ideology during the Cold War era to assimilate the refugee community, leveraging a discourse of “freedom and democracy” as a means to reshape historical narratives. In stark contrast, Vietnam commemorated its revolutionary struggle against imperialism through the establishment of museums, statues, and public cemeteries within …

The Modular Fiction Of Ken Liu, Elizabeth Lawrence

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Ken Liu is an influential translator of Chinese-language science fiction and an award winning author of original speculative fiction as well. His readers routinely observe that Liu draws on his Chinese heritage for world building and plot development. Less remarked upon are parallels between Liu’s creative process and modular production within Chinese literary and material culture. In this article, I explore these parallels through Liu’s wide-ranging fiction. The intent is not to pigeonhole Liu as a distinctly Chinese or Chinese American author – he has rejected such labels himself – but to universalize models of Chinese creative expression.

Course Design As Critical Creativity: Intersectional, Regional, And Demographic Approaches To Teaching Asian American Literatures, Thomas X. Sarmiento

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay offers a theoretical and reflective exploration of critically informed acts of creativity expressed in my course design for and teaching of Asian American literatures at a predominantly white, public land-grant, Midwestern university. I argue that teaching is both a creative and critical activity as it generates new ways of knowing and being through an assessment and curation of extant literary texts and scholarly discourses. Given my geographic, scholarly, and personal orientations, my course features intersectional, regional, and ethnically diverse perspectives that aim to queer what “Asian America/n” signifies. I hope my situated pedagogical insights inspire other scholar-teachers to …

David Henry Hwang’S Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography And Parody On Racial Stereotypes, Quan Manh Ha, Jacob Christiansen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization.

"Loving You No Matter What You Do": Ai's Dramatic Monologues, 1970s Asian American Feminisms, And Reproductive Justice, Catherine Irwin

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay makes visible the 1970s involvement of Asian American and Women of Color feminists in reproductive justice. Grounded in the Asian American feminist praxis of remembering, this essay analyzes how three dramatic monologues by the Asian American mixed-race poet Ai engage with the discourses of reproduce justice set forth by Asian American and Women of Color activists leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Using an Asian American feminist lens, this paper argues that the speakers in Ai’s monologues utilize these discourses circulating about abortion and women’s health care to construct images of the treatment of dispossessed …

In Praise Of Limes, Poets, And Mentors: A Conversation With Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Twelve: Counting Our Blessings, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 12, Joanne Lamb

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Every Tongue Got To Confess: Zora Neale Hurston As Afrofuturist, Nicole Huff

Third Stone

To understand Hurston’s influence on the black speculative practice and engagement in Afrofuturist practice, we must first understand the period she was working within— the Harlem Renaissance.

Visual Afrofuturism And Dieselfunk In The Works Of Tim Fielder, Justin Wigard

Third Stone

Tim Fielder is, first and foremost, a visual Afrofuturist. This distinction is significant in understanding Fielder’s corpus, who works as an illustrator, cartoonist, concept artist, and even animator. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi alongside Jim, his twin brother, Fielder has become an ardent advocate, pioneer, and creator in the 21st-century Afrofuturist movement, creating visual representations of Black people overcoming past, present, and future systems of oppression, all within fantastic and speculative settings.

Octavia Butler: What Is Vision But Speculation Persevering?, Michael Stokes

Third Stone

Octavia Butler ends her short essay on writing, “Furor Scribendi” with a single word: persist. Her work and contribution to science fiction broadly and afrofuturism has been her work envisioning a multiplicity of futures--and what is vision but speculation that persisted? This annotated bibliography tracks several of Butler’s novels and short stories which were written as acts of speculation and which have persisted as key narratives for authors at the intersection of disability studies and Black women’s speculative practices.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: Pioneering Environmental Policy Change, Katherine Hoffsetz

Sustainability Conference

Rachel Carson's groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, serves as a pivotal moment in the history of environmental advocacy. The book exposed the consequences of pesticide use on ecosystems and called for a reevaluation of human impact on the environment. This research project aims to comprehensively analyze the profound and enduring impact of Carson's work on environmental public policy. The research employs a literature review and analysis of legislation to trace the influence of Silent Spring on environmental advocacy in the government. A correlation is revealed between the release of Silent Spring and the enactment of key environmental …

Negative Estrangement: Fantasy And Race In The Drow And Drizzt Do’Urden, Steven Holmes

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This essay introduces the concept of negative estrangement to help understand current cultural interventions into the norms of depicting fantasy races. First, this essay builds on Shklovsky’s concept of estrangement to describe the literary practice of negative estrangement, wherein artists craft “more evil” foes based on hybridized amalgamations of stereotypes to create antipathy toward a subject, be it monster or fantasy race. This practice is sometimes used in service of confronting the issue of race and racism, despite seeming to reify or rearticulate racist stereotypes.

This essay builds on Tolkien’s argument in favor of creating “more evil” foes to exemplify …

Examining Ray Bradbury’S Dystopian Vision: A Philosophical Analysis Of His Literary Works And Their Nuanced Impact On Contemporary Realities, Anya S. Pant

Student Publications

This paper examines the philosophical implications of Ray Bradbury’s literary contributions and their impact on modern society. Through the analysis of two opposing articles that reference selective works, it explores Bradbury’s impact on ongoing philosophical discussions, specifically centering on themes such as censorship, conformity, and the preservation of individual identity and freedom. The contrasting viewpoints presented contribute to a compelling analysis of Bradbury’s ideas and their relevance in the context of today’s world.

“With A Pen In Her Hand”: Communities In Gloria Naylor’S Fiction And In Her Archives Conference, Sacred Heart University

Events

Conference held October 18-20, 2023, celebrating Gloria Naylor’s fiction and the return of her Archives to Sacred Heart University.

Her Precious White Body/Her Tender Black Flesh: The Gothic Link To Black Women's (Mis)Treatment In Real Life And On The Page, Madisty R. Thomas

English Theses & Dissertations

As a work in progress, this thesis explores the interplay between historical and contemporary devaluation of and violence against Black women, materially and discursively, including visual mediums and written text. Specifically, I focus on the gothic novel to illuminate the impact race-based inventions such as chattel slavery and human exhibitions, as well as the generic tropes of the Gothic, have had on Black women’s representation and lived experience via a wide-ranging introduction and close examination of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle. Additionally, the conclusion attempts to suggest how Black women and girls might survive in this antiblack world, thus escape …

Seeking Sabbath In Annie Dillard's Holy The Firm, Olivia Grace Dycus

English Theses & Dissertations

Annie Dillard’s third-ever publication, Holy the Firm, asks why an omniscient God allows natural evil to occur. In this deeply poetic and mystical series of essays, Dillard explores the relationship between time, artistry, and God in the face of devastating chaos. This thesis argues that Dillard’s emphasis on the importance of time reflects a Jewish notion of Sabbath as defined by Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel. Dillard offers time and creation as medium through which to commune with God just as Heschel does in his book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Heschel defines Sabbath as the coming …

"Exploring The Cuckoo's Nest:" A Study On American Fiction And Mental Health, Emily Smeds

Honors Projects

This is a study on American fiction and mental health. The project discusses the short stories "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, "Careful," and "Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver, and the novels One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. All of these works are discussed in how they relate to and portray the psychological disorders of schizophrenia, depression, substance abuse disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Review Of Bitstreams: The Future Of Digital Literary Heritage, Kara Watts-Engley

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Literary production has always been tied to specific developments in technology. This has become all the more apparent since the advent of personal computing and our digital media age. How might an awareness of technology’s impact then affect the future of literary creation, critique, and preservation? For Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage, this is among the core questions of literary, archival, and bibliographic studies in the contemporary digital media age.

“Pristine Truth” Ecopsychology: The Natureness Remedy

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

As was best seller predicted by ecological science experts in 1949, (2a) most educated people today recognize that in personal, social and environmentally hurtful ways our senselessly abused lives increasingly are breaking our world. Although no core cause or remedy for this catastrophe is known, this “Natureness” article makes both available. Sadly, by continually omitting its special “Pristine Truth,” all the knowledge in the world can’t stop modern humanity’s suicidal mismanagement of Nature’s life as it flows around and through us. (2) Instead, our present-day conquer-Nature worldview teaches us to excessively disconnect from, exploit and illegally war against Nature’s flow …