Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Sanctified ‘Adultress’ And Her Circumstantial Clause: Bathsheba’S Bath And Self-Consecration In 2 Samuel 11, J. D'Ror Chankin-Gould, Derek Hutchinson, David H. Jackson, Tyler D. Mayfield, Leah Rediger Schulte, Tammi J. Schneider, E. Winkelman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Bathsheba's actions in 2 Sam. 11.2-4 identify crucial aspects of her character. Past commentators interpret these words in connection with menstrual purification, stressing the certain paternity of David's adulterine child. This article demonstrates that the participles rōheset and mitqaddesšet and the noun mittum'ātāh do not denote menstrual cleansing. Bathsheba's washing is an innocent bath. She is the only individual human to self-sanctify, placing her in the company of the Israelite deity. The syntax of the verse necessitates that her action of self-sanctifying occurs simultaneously as David lies with her. The three focal terms highlight the important legitimacy of Bathsheba before …

Women And Technology: Reversing The Trends Of Attrition And Obtaining A Balance, Gondy Leroy, Kristin M. Tolle, Linda Perkins

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Many reports and technical news bulletins presented by organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) highlight that few female and minority college students are choosing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields of study or careers. For those who choose STEM fields, attrition both during education and in the workplace is pervasive. NSF reports in its 2006 Science Indicators that women account for only 27% of the bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences. And although the …

Sex, Drugs, And Mingling Spirits: Teaching Nineteenth-Century Women Poets, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Book abstract:

Twentieth-century modernism reduced the list of nineteenth-century American poets to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and (less often) Edgar Allan Poe. The rest were virtually forgotten. This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching marks a milestone in the resurgence of the study of the rest. It features poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who were famous in their day, as well as poets who were marginalized on the basis of their race (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alexander Posey) or their sociopolitical agenda (Emma Lazarus, John Greenleaf Whittier). It also takes a fresh look at poets …

Book Review: Musa W. Dube, Ed., Other Ways Of Reading: African Women And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review.

Book Review: Ed. Musa W. Dube, Other Ways Of Reading: African Women And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

I take great delight in having the opportunity to review this collection ofthirteen essays having to do with contemporary African women and their engagements of the Bible. Ably edited and introduced by Musa W. Dube, Senior Lecturer in the New Testament in the Department ofTheology and Religious Studies at the University ofBotswana, the essays have been long awaited. They fill a tremendous need--among and beyond the women of Africa. They inform and challenge and inspire communities far beyond the circle ofthe discussants in the book. They make a dramatic statement about the powerful voices and sentiments and creative impulses of …

Reading Elizabeth Bishop As A Religious Poet, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Elizabeth Bishop is usually described as a modernist poet with a skeptical mind. This essay contests the critical tendency to dismiss religion as a serious concern in her poetry, by first challenging the widespread dismissal in the United States of all religious approaches to modern poetry and then challenging the tendency to disclaim attempts to read Elizabeth Bishop in religious terms. The essay includes a close reading of “The End of March” as a text which invites intertextual commentary from a Christian perspective.

Antimodern, Modern, And Postmodern Millay: Contexts Of Revaluation, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this chapter, Walker examines questions concerning renewed scholarly interest in Edna St. Vincent Millay toward the end of the twentieth century. Specifically, these questions center on whether to rethink the principles of establishing the canon of American literature--indeed, whether the poet changes literary fashions or literary fashions change the poet. Walker's answer is the latter, and her essay examines how Millay is different received through three different periods: antimodern, modern, and postmodern. She argues that whether a poet becomes central to literary study has less to do with the "quality" of the poetry than with complex cultural factors that …

The Female Body As Icon: Edna Millay Wears A Plaid Dress, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

The female body has never been so prominently displayed or so critically examined as it is today under the dominance of late capitalism. The results of this display, we can now see, have been mostly negative: women regard themselves at best self-consciously, at worst with disgust. Given this emphasis on self-scrutiny, it comes as no surprise that middle-aged women experience a reduction of self-confidence regarding their physical presences and a concomitant increase in self-dissatisfaction. It is also worth noting that a querulous tone often afflicts them as they grow older, suggesting that they are at odds not only with others …

Teaching Dickinson As A Gen(I)Us: Emily Among The Women, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this article, Walker argues that those who teach the poetry of Emily Dickinson should not only compare her to other recognized and lauded American poets, such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore. This method offers no cultural context to provide ligature. It views high art as to be only about language and, on the score of tropological discourse, any two poets could be connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance. While it's useful for students to see how elements of her work connect her not only …

Persona Criticism And The Death Of The Author, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

The difficulty with doing biographical criticism today is that the figure of the author has increasingly come under attack, almost as if the author's portrait, which at one time routinely accompanied critical works, were being atomized, dissolved in an acid bath of scorn and distrust. Though "death of the author" critics have made a number of important points about the rigidity and naiveté of certain earlier forms of biographical criticism, I find that in my own practice I am loath to give up all vestiges of the author. The strategy I have chosen is what I would call persona criticism, …

Women Writers Of The French-Speaking Caribbean: An Overview, Marie-Denise Shelton

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

The concept of Caribbean literature is relatively recent, validated by the growing awareness in the Caribbean of a common historical, cultural, and geopolitical experience that transcends national diversity. To state that there is a Caribbean literature is to recognize the existence of a certain relationship with language and the world which constitutes what some have called the Caribbean discourse.

Feminist Literary Criticism And The Author, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In the course of this essay I wish to reopen the (never fully closed) question of whether it is advisable to speak of the author, or of what Foucault calls "the author function," when querying a text, and I wish to reopen it precisely at the site where feminist criticism and post-structuralism are presently engaged in dialogue. Here in particular we might expect that reasons for rejecting author erasure would appear. However, theoretically informed feminist critics have recently found themselves tempted to agree with Barthes, Foucault, and the Edward Said of Beginnings that the authorial presence is best set aside …

A Feminist Critic Responds To Recurring Student Questions About Dickinson, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Book abstract:

The life and the range of topics and tones of Emily Dickinson suit her to be included in such courses as American literature, Romanticism, realism, nineteenth-century culture, and women’s literary traditions. Her poetry poses numerous challenges for readers because of its compressed style, indeterminacy, and constant surprises; her biography fascinates students and critics alike.

This volume emphasizes instruction of Dickinson’s poetry at the undergraduate level. Like other volumes in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, it is divided into two parts. The first, “Materials,” discusses editions of Dickinson’s poetry, aids to teaching, reference works, biographies, critical …

H. D. And Time, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

From the introduction to the volume:

"Cheryl Walker presents the work of poet H.D. as a paradigm for the changed relationship to history women have undergone during the modern period: H.D.'s early period is characterized by an avoidance of chronological time..."