Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Beyond “Do Not Disturb”: Alternatives And Possibilities Of Feminism In Joyce Carol Oates's Babysitter, Emilie Heude

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

“Sympathize/don’t rage” was Joyce Carol Oates’s call as she concluded a tweet on the rights of people who are transitioning (20 February 2023). This statement could well be considered a prism through which we might see her work. Indeed, the author depicts a variety of characters handling situations very differently – and readers are left dealing with their own sympathy with them. Babysitter (2022) is a case in point in this regard: Hannah, the main female character, appears as a submissive figure replete with gender and class prejudice and lacking agency. As Oyinkan Braithwaite wrote in a review for The …

The Blinding Lights Of (Post)Feminist Empowerment In Joyce Carol Oates’S "Night, Neon”, Stéphanie Maerten

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Juliana, the protagonist of Joyce Carol Oates’s 2018 novella “Night, Neon,” is portrayed as a confident, empowered young woman who appears to embody the postfeminist ideal of “having it all”—autonomy, agency, and adherence to traditional feminine norms like marriage and motherhood. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes evident that Juliana’s sense of empowerment is largely performative, concealing deep-seated vulnerabilities and unresolved traumas. Through a series of flashbacks revealing Juliana’s troubled past, Oates critiques the postfeminist tendency to reinterpret traumatic experiences as tools for self-empowerment and resilience, suggesting that such a framework may obscure the systemic and pervasive nature of …

The Mudwoman In The Academia: The Spectral Presence Of Jane Eyre And Antoinette Cosway In Joyce Carol Oates's Mudwoman, Stéphanie Durrans

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

While Jane Eyre has been lauded as a feminist novel, its modernist prequel Wide Sargasso Sea clearly aims at recovering the lost voice of the much-maligned Bertha Rochester from an altogether different feminist perspective. In her 1985 essay on these two novels, Joyce Carol Oates highlights their dual relationship in terms of romance and anti-romance, regarding Rhys’s novel as “a reverse mirror image of Jane Eyre’s and Rochester’s England.” Commenting upon the brief encounter between Jane and Rochester’s first wife as depicted by Jean Rhys, Oates also points out that, “[i]nhabiting contrary worlds, one woman is a savage to the …

The 11-Year Itch: Exploitation As Sublimation In Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates, 2000; Andrew Dominik, 2022), Jocelyn R. Dupont

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

The goal of this article is to discuss Andrew Dominik’s much-criticized adaptation of Oates’ novel Blonde (2000), released on the Netflix streaming platform in September 2022. It aims at re-assessing the movie in the light of its literary hypotext, which appears to have been rather unfairly left out of much of the debate surrounding the release and critical reception of the film. In a first part, this article briefly addresses the stakes of Dominik’s adaptation, which are more complex than they might seem, notably on account of the extreme iconicity of its subject, even more so than its subject matter. …

Is Love A “Pathological Condition Of The Soul”? Joyce Carol Oates's Beasts And Rape: A Love Story, Nicolas P. Boileau

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This paper seeks to address the question of Oates’s relation to feminist and gender theories by looking at two novellas published consecutively, Beasts and Rape: A Love Story in the beginning of the 2000s. The short texts share a common storyline based on rape, which is far from uncommon in Oates’s fiction. However, I argue that there is something very specific in these two novellas in the way Oates chooses to handle the testimony of the rape, both overtly and covertly, both in graphic details and in repressed forms of expression, giving way to a reflection on women’s vulnerable position …

Joyce Carol Oates And Feminism: Facts Found And Foundered, Gavin J. Cologne-Brookes

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This essay explores the nuanced relationship between Joyce Carol Oates and feminism, distinguishing between Oates as an individual and “JCO” as the authorial process. Through analysis of novels like Babysitter, the essay argues that Oates’s fiction resists fixed labels, instead foregrounding ambiguity, interpretation, and the limitations of categorization. Drawing on philosophical and literary contexts, it contends that while Oates’s work invites feminist readings, her narrative style deliberately undermines definitive conclusions. Ultimately, the essay suggests that JCO’s writing stimulates inquiry and self-reflection, positioning art as a process of response rather than a vehicle for asserting categorical truths—including those of feminism.

Exploring Specters Of Feminism In The Work Of Joyce Carol Oates, Nicolas P. Boileau, Tanya L. Tromble

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This collection originates from the international conference “Specters of Feminism in the Work of Joyce Carol Oates,” held at Aix-Marseille Université in March 2024 as part of the broader project “Women and the F-Word: Thinking about Women’s Resistance to Feminism.” The introduction situates Oates’s vast and varied oeuvre within evolving feminist discourses, highlighting her ambivalent personal stance toward feminism and the critical consensus that her work engages deeply with feminist themes, especially sexual violence, trauma, and the complexities of gendered power. The essays gathered here explore how Oates’s stylistic experimentation, intertextuality, and representations of female agency and victimhood simultaneously reflect, …

Joanne Kyger And “The Kook Strain” In Olson: A Reading, Patrick James Dunagan

Gleeson Library Faculty and Staff Research and Scholarship

Jerome Rothenberg's "that dada strain" at once hilarious grandiose epic lyric historical and ever adventurous charts the highs discovered in his reading of the dada era. In like occurrence this writing seeks to poke around in the occult cupboards of Olson's mystical leanings. Looking not only at his work and assorted readings/engagements but delving also into the works of various others (Joanne Kyger, Jack Hirschman, Paul Blackburn, Gerrit Lansing, David Meltzer, Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, Robin Blaser et al) who fell in alongside as well as after his work's star-eyed haul. Loquaciously gifted as a talker, how much (if …

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars., Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. considering its relation to current social protests and previous works by the author.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Pursuit, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's Pursuit considering the elements of suspense, learned gendered behavior, and narrative strategy.

Photographic (Over) Exposures In The Nuclear Age In Joyce Carol Oates’S You Must Remember This, Sonia Weiner

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, You Must Remember This, examines themes of memory, time, and nostalgia through verbal descriptions of iconic and fictional photographs (such as Rocky Marciano, Holocaust Victims, Atomic Mushroom Clouds, Rita Hayworth). An analysis of the photographic imagery in the novel reveals discrepancies between surface appearances and embedded social and cultural ideological contexts within the work. Photographs are shown to undermine the overt conformity and conservatism of postwar America by exposing its underlying uncertainties and tensions. These tensions are explored through the perspective of a rebellious adolescent female, whose struggles highlight Oates’s critique of power, violence, and postwar …

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Hazards Of Time Travel, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel Hazards of Time Travel considering the genre of Young Adult and speculative fiction as well as how the novel relates to the author's own past.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Dis Mem Ber And Other Stories Of Mystery And Suspense, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's short story collection DIS MEM BER, considering the author's attention to psychological detail and experimental forms of narrative.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Night-Gaunts And Other Tales Of Suspense, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's short story collection Night-Gaunts focusing on the influence of H.P. Lovecraft and gothic fiction.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Beautiful Days, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's short story collection Beautiful Days considering how this fiction dramatizes confrontations with the "other."

The Art Of Stasys Krasauskas, Mykolas Sluckis, Stasys Krasauskas

Ontario Review

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With Margaret Atwood, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates

Ontario Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's A Book Of American Martyrs, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel A Book of American Martyrs considering her fiction's dialogue with controversial political issues in American society.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Soul At The White Heat, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's anthology Soul at the White Heat considering the author's prolific nature, approach to criticism and inspiration for the writing life.

Celestial Timepiece: Randy Souther Interviewed By Caroline Marquette And Tanya Tromble-Giraud, Randy Souther

Gleeson Library Faculty and Staff Research and Scholarship

An interview with the creator of the website Celestial Timepiece discussing Joyce Carol Oates's literary career and the web project documenting that career.

The interview was the basis for a chapter in the Joyce Carol Oates volume of the Cahiers de L’Herne—a French monographic series dedicated to the critical appraisal of world-renowned authors, and providing texts, letters, testimonies, and photographs as well as scholarly work by specialists in the subject. The aim of the series is to offer in-depth reference books on major authors and thus to contribute to a better understanding of the authors and their work in …

Severing Ties: A Lacanian Reading Of Motherhood In Joyce Carol Oates’S Short Stories "The Children" And "Feral", Uroš Tomić

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This paper approaches two of Joyce Carol Oates’s short stories (“The Children” and “Feral”) from a Lacanian perspective on the tripartite structure of personality in an attempt to analyze questions of motherhood and the parent-child separation process. Although published 35 years apart both stories deal with mothers who have trouble containing their maternal attitude and children who become elusive entities for their parents. Utilizing as well the concept of what Oates has termed “realistic allegory” in the analysis of characters situated within highly specific settings and circumstances, the paper aims to shed light on Oates’s vision of the workings of …

Witness: Reflections On Detention In Joyce Carol Oates's Work, Tanya L. Tromble

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Throughout her career, Joyce Carol Oates has resisted the urge of others to label her a feminist writer, insisting that she be considered a writer, independent of biological gender. As America’s “chronicler of the middle class,” she has given voice to countless invisible female character types, but this is only one concern among many. Oates is incredibly active, but rather than to actively incite, she uses her prolific pen to create testimonies to contemporary American life, seeking particularly to give voice to the voiceless among us. In spite of the notions of crime and justice being central to her fiction …

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's The Doll-Master And Other Tales Of Terror, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's book of short stories The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, focusing on elements of genre and the tradition of American storytelling.

Ideal Objects: The Dehumanization And Consumption Of Racial Minorities In Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie, April D. Pitts

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This essay explores the relationship between race and ideal democratic citizenship in Joyce Carol Oates's novel, Zombie (1995). It argues that in Zombie, white social status is depicted as dependent upon the dehumanization and consumption of racial minorities.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's The Man Without A Shadow, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel The Man Without a Shadow, focusing on the author's representation of consciousness in her fiction.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's The Lost Landscape, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's memoir The Lost Landscape, focusing on how the author's experiences have influenced her writing.

Deadly Girls' Voices, Suspense, And The "Aesthetics Of Fear" In Joyce Carol Oates's "The Banshee" And "Doll: A Romance Of The Mississippi", Pascale Antolin

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Abstract: this article focuses on deadly girls’ voices in "The Banshee" and "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi," two short stories taken from Joyce Carol Oates’s collection The Female of the Species, subtitled Tales of Mystery and Suspense. It shows that children are used as leading and focal characters not only to increase suspense but also to manipulate the readers’ traditional sets of ethical, semantic and literary references. Oates resorts to her favourite “aesthetics of fear” for it is a powerful means of putting horror and abjection at a distance, and it is associated with the question of meaning—"meaning is …

"I Know You!": The Implications Of Knowing In Joyce Carol Oates's Marya: A Life, Josephene T.M. Kealey

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Joyce Carol Oates’s Preface to the Franklin Library 1^st Edition of her 1986 novel Marya: A Life is a theoretical reading guide. In her explanations for the possible autobiographical components discernible in her book, Oates challenges readers to question their ability to know a character, to know an author’s intentions, even to know the self. Oates’s ideas about the fluidity of identity and the dangers of claiming “to know” an other or the self are explored in this story.

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's Jack Of Spades, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

A review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel Jack of Spades with an emphasis on her history of using pseudonyms and the mystery/thriller genres.

Whiteness As Cursed Property: An Interdisciplinary Intervention With Joyce Carol Oates’S Bellefleur And Cheryl Harris’S “Whiteness As Property”, Karen Gaffney

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This article begins with the assertion that now more than ever, in the aftermath of Ferguson and in a time when many believe our society to be post-racial, we need to bring together scholars and activists who care about racial justice, regardless of discipline, and build interdisciplinary tools for fighting racism. Furthermore, we need to understand and reveal how whiteness has been socially constructed because the power of whiteness lies in its invisibility, and that fuels the perpetuation of systemic racism. In making whiteness visible, we can see how it has been wielded as a weapon, which in turn will …