Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
English Language and Literature Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- African American Literature (1)
- Bibliography (1)
- Black Feminism (1)
- Black Feminist theory (1)
- Book history (1)
-
- Book/Bestseller/Essence/Bibliography/Essence Book Project/Black (1)
- Cherrie Moraga (1)
- Citation (1)
- Codicology (1)
- Communion (1)
- Community (1)
- Depths (1)
- Embodied practice (1)
- Feminist bibliography (1)
- Literary Analysis (1)
- Paper (1)
- Premodern trans studies (1)
- Sula (1)
- Surface reading (1)
- Textual practice (1)
- Theory (1)
- Toni Morrison (1)
- Transgender studies (1)
- Watermarks (1)
- Xicana Codex (1)
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh
When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh
Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research
When women dare to self-actualize they frequently face barriers that tear their spirits down, leading to guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. For the lineage of women in Toni Morrison’s Sula, these consequences are fatal for everyone. As these factors thwart fundamental social development, communal collapse becomes easier, leaving entire cultures vulnerable to erasure. Whether self-determination is expressed through promiscuity or properness, paradoxical moralism leaves no room for either. This essay explores how Morrison offers a retrospective look from the graveyard of a town while illustrating the impact of the loss of friends, lovers, and communities.
What Could A Trans Book History Look Like? Toward Trans Codicology, J D. Sargan
What Could A Trans Book History Look Like? Toward Trans Codicology, J D. Sargan
Criticism
This article draws on critical trans studies and queer archival practice to propose a book historical mode that extends what we know about the premodern trans experience beyond the recovery of individual biographies. Instead of turning to textual sources for the identification of transness, the author looks to Susan Stryker’s call for the “recuperat[ion of] embodied knowing as a formally legitimated basis of knowledge production.” Bibliography, he suggests, makes claims of objectivity that engender a particular reluctance to respond to such calls. But the lived reality of archival research is one of affective embodiment. Affect theory is an area that, …
“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson
“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson
Criticism
Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …
Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project, Jacinta R. Saffold, Kinohi Nishikawa
Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project, Jacinta R. Saffold, Kinohi Nishikawa
Criticism
On October 27, 2021, the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) sponsored the first in a series of virtual interviews about the Essence Book Project. Founded by Jacinta R. Saffold, the BSA’s inaugural Dorothy Porter Wesley Fellow, the Essence Book Project is a database of the books that appeared on Essence magazine’s bestsellers’ list from 1994 to 2010. In talking about the project with Kinohi Nishikawa, Saffold highlights how Black best-selling books contribute new paths of inquiry to bibliographical scholarship and explains why it is important to archive contemporary Black print culture. Presented in this article is a modified version of …
Surface Reading Paper As Feminist Bibliography, Georgina Wilson
Surface Reading Paper As Feminist Bibliography, Georgina Wilson
Criticism
This article models a mode of feminist bibliography by “surface reading” paper. Taking Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall (1605) as a case study, this article reads watermarks as reminders of paper’s three-dimensional materiality, whose surfaces and depths model the more and less legible forms of labor which contribute to paper’s making. Watermarks here become a creative and critical prompt to recover the interventions of John Spilman (the papermaker whose output was used for Sejanus), Spilman’s workers, and especially his female ragpickers. This article fuses close reading of literary texts and archival sources with bibliography and theory to demonstrate fresh …
Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd
Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd
Criticism
A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe L. Moraga. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. 280, 9 illustrations. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.