American Studies Commons^™

Who Is A Southern Writer?, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

Richard Ford’s response to a questioner at the University of Mississippi symposium—that he is a “southerner” but not a “southern writer”—makes him only the latest in a long line of distinguished writers who grew up in the South, but have refused to be corralled into a regional stall. Other contemporary writers from the South, feeling “left out” of a potentially profitable niche market, have sought to broaden the definition of “southern literature.” Instead of worrying about who qualifies as a “southern writer” or rigidly delimiting “southern literature,” we might more fruitfully ask questions about who is writing about the U.S. …

Katrina And Her Poets, John Gery

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Satanic Whitman: Woman, Nature And The Magic Of Four, D. J. Moores

English Faculty Publications

Had the Romantics lived in the twentieth-century and maintained their Romantic sensibility, they might have been Jungians, which is to say, there are a considerable number of parallels between Jungian theory and Romantic aesthetics. According to Jung the aim of all psychoanalytic work is to help the analysand become conscious of his or her entire Self, which includes conscious as well as disowned, unconscious elements. In Jungian theory when ego (conscious awareness) confronts and assimilates shadow (unconsciousness), the result is a revitalization and expansion of Self. Romantics longed for this expanded Self in their frequent transcendent yearnings, concerned as they …

Atanarjuat And The Ideological Work Of Contemporary Indigenous Filmmaking, Monika Siebert

English Faculty Publications

Ilanaaq is the latest North American example of “playing Indian” (Deloria 1998), a practice with vast historical precedent. With ilanaaq, Canada joins a host of nations who have turned to symbols of local indigeneity to assert their national distinctiveness. Such appropriation presents indigenous artists with a dilemma. The current flowering of indigenous letters, art and cinema in North America is generally taken as evidence that Canada and the United States, as thriving multiculturalist democracies, have broken with an earlier history of the expropriation and displacement of the Americas’ indigenous peoples. The art bears witness to a new historical period, in …

At Home In The City: Urban Domesticity In American Literature And Culture, 1850-1930, By Betsy Klimasmith, Cara Erdheim

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Cara Erdheim.

Klimasmith, Betsy. At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity in American Literature and Culture, 1850-1930. Durham, New Hampshire: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005.

"When A Killer Body Isn't Enough": Cross-Gender Identification In Action-Adventure Video Games, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality created by the cinematic animation of the game produces an environment for male-to-female cross-gender identification, a topic that has received little critical attention. The sense of identification intended in this chapter comes from psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, who describe identification as a "psychological process in which a subject assimilates an aspect, a property, a characteristic of another and transforms himself [or herself] totally or …

"It'll Pass": Nypd: Blue's Sipowicz And Mundane Masculinity, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The development of the character of Det. Andy Sipowicz, on the ABC drama, NYPD: Blue, effectively demonstrates that the obstinance of traditional forms of masculinity may ultimately be a key factor in their undoing. Rather than effecting a superficial change based on consumer choice, as concurrent characters do, Sipowicz undergoes a transformation of his social behavior. Sipowicz regularly behaves in a manner consistent with Robert Connell’s definition of “hegemonic masculinity”: he resorts to violence, he resists change and he resents women and minorities (131). His alcoholism and quick temper tend to hinder his ability to adapt. However, change …

The Southern Family Farm As Endangered Species: Possibilities For Survival In Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

At the same time some southern studies scholars are positioning the U.S. South in a larger cultural, historic, and economic region that encompasses the Caribbean and Latin America, some southern environmentalist writers, such as long-time essayist and novelist Wendell Berry and activist-turned-memoirist Janisse Ray, are finding a pressing need to focus on smaller bioregions and the locatedness of the human subject. These writers believe that agribusiness and consumer ignorance are driving small farmers out of business and that clear-cutting timber and farming practices dependent on chemicals are threatening local ecosystems. Best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver has joined their ranks. With her …