Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Introduction: How American Literature Understands Poverty, Clare E. Callahan, Joseph Entin, Irvin Hunt, Kinohi Nishikawa

English Faculty Publications

Together, the essays in this issue of American Literature stage what is at stake in how literature understands poverty, elucidating not only the problem of poverty but also, and especially, the problem of how we see it. To see poverty differently, they might conclude, is not only a matter of what we see. It is a matter of reflecting on how we see.

The Insidious Culture Of Fear In Indian Courts, Nidhi Shrivastava

English Faculty Publications

On 20 March 2020, the four adult convicts of the 2012 Delhi rape case were executed after a long debate regarding the punishment for their crime. The Delhi rape case, unlike others, was also given to the fast track court because of the worldwide outrage India received in its aftermath. Otherwise, most rape survivors rarely speak out and if they do, their lives are often endangered and threatened, depending on the severity of the case itself and the perpetrator's rank in the society. Through the analysis of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's, 2016 film Pink, and Ajay Bahl's film Section 375 …

Section Iii: Gender-Based Violence And Society, Gavin Patrick Gray, Nidhi Shrivastava, Deepesh Nirmaldas Dayal

English Faculty Publications

This chapter is a transcript of an open-ended discussion that occurred between the authors when they met to discuss the subject matter of the third section of the book, which focuses on cultural and normative attitudes toward the problem of gender violence. As with the previous introductory dialogues, the discussion takes place after preliminary drafts have been completed and the authors share their thoughts on the subjects that they will each discuss in more detail in the following chapters. These include the culture of silence surrounding rape in India, the way masculine gender norms impact the treatment of women in …

India – Rape And The Prevalent Culture Of Silence In Indian Cinema And Television, Nidhi Shrivastava

English Faculty Publications

In this chapter, I explore two media texts, Imtiaz Ali's Highway and Alankrita Shrivastava's Netflix original series Bombay Begums (2021). I contend that recent filmmakers have begun to arguably reframe the narratives of rape victim-survivors and disrupting the cultural of silence described above. They offer progressive and multi-faceted representations of these experiences, such that there is an opportunity for a dialogue within both private and public spheres. What I mean when I say that they are ‘progressive representations’ is that the rape victim-survivors are not merely reduced to helpless women in distress, nor painted as vengeful, aggressive characters. Instead, their …

Section I: Gender-Based Violence, Gavin Patrick Gray, Nidhi Shrivastava

English Faculty Publications

This chapter is a transcript of an open-ended discussion that occurred between the authors when they met to discuss the subject matter of the first section of the book, which focuses on areas where serious ongoing problems of gender violence are receiving insufficient attention. The discussion took place after preliminary drafts had been completed and the authors share their thoughts on the subjects they will each discuss in more detail in the following chapters – including the cultural representation of historical gender violence in India, the treatment of women in Japan's sex industry and attitudes towards LGBTQ+ groups in South …

"Fuck Tha Police": The Poetry And Politics Of N.W.A., Sandra Young

English Faculty Publications

No one withdrew after syllabus day. In the semester I piloted a first-year seminar course, the “Rhetoric of Protest Songs,” on the first day of class, I introduced the topic of the class and myself. However, before I gave students the syllabi, I confessed that I knew little about music. I told them I Googled and YouTubed, and read our text to gain knowledge about protest songs. I told them the “Rhetoric of Protest Songs” was a writing class, and rhetoric means persuasion. “In this class, you’ll write academic essays about protest songs. And we’ll listen to some music.”

My …

Sacrificial Women: The Unlikely Heroes Of Uwem Akpan's Stories, Mary L. Bauer

English Faculty Publications

This paper examines whether the female characters in Fr. Uwem Akpan’s short story collection Say You’re One of Them accurately portray the challenges that African women face in the post-colonial era, particularly when faced with challenges of poverty and violence that threaten the lives of their loved ones. It investigates how these women use the limited devices available to them -- including transactional sex, voluntary starvation, and giving their own lives to protect others – to carry out the traditional role of African women in caring for dependents, including younger siblings. It highlights the impact of societal norms, such as …

Aging Athletes, Broken Bodies, And Disability In Jack London's Prizefighting Prose, Cara E. Kilgallen

English Faculty Publications

Jack London's name often conjures up images of dogs plowing through Alaska's desolate wilderness, or of robust men journeying into the wild; however, pictures of broken bodies struggling for survival in a boxing ring less readily come to mind. Few think of London as a sports writer, yet his illustrations of prizefighting reveal an author interested not only in able bodied athletes but in disabled and weakened ones as well. Although he is best known for his Klondike stories, nautical adventures, and socialist sentiments, the author's fascination with fitness shows that sport and the body are just as central to …

Nature, Domestic Labor, And Moral Community In Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours And Elinor Wyllys, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

Cooper's argument for a domestic ideal situated within a rural setting reinforces the importance of community connections through a shared sense of morality, as well as understanding of the natural world. Community alone—the human connections—never seems to be enough in Cooper's formulation, but must always exist with an awareness of the world outside the narrow confines of one's own domestic sphere. Concern for one's fellow-beings necessitates a concern for the world in which these beings live, and Cooper understands that when any bonds are broken—such as the bonds that connect us to the natural world—other bonds are threatened. Thus, when …

Blood Culture And The Problem Of Decadence, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

This paper examines the commodification of hunting practices via the deterritorializing function of capitalism described by Deleuze and Guattari. It also studies counter trends-- predicted by or consistent with Deleuzean theory--that indicate a subtending authenticity displayed by certain hunting practices apparently resistant to commercial exploitation. "Blood culture" is my term for inauthentic hunting activity--a distinction drawn directly by Deleuze in his televised interviews with Claire Parnet. Aspects of "becoming-animal" and other transversal and cross-disciplinary flows of thought are also of course in play. As in some of my former work, I again argue for a Deleuzean cultural mechanics of the …

The Aridity Of Grace: Community And Ecofeminism In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams And Prodigal Summer, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

In both Animal Dreams and her later novel Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver constructs narratives of community inhabited by characters with a vivid awareness of the natural world and the threats to that world; furthermore, both novels feature strong female characters who long for a more harmonious life within nature. The novels develop and present forthright ecofeminist themes, with the women in the texts representing ideals of ecologically sensitive living who seek to educate their communities about threats to the environment and the defenses against those threats.

Kingsolver's ecofeminist vision, however, is frequently complicated and contradictory; just as the desert landscape …

Beyond 'Hot Lips' And 'Big Nurse': Creative Writing And Nursing, Sandra Young

English Faculty Publications

This essay describes a special topics creative writing course designed for nursing students, and argues that creative writing strategies work to improve nurses' compositional skills. Also discussed are other potential benefits from creatively writing patients' lives, notably, the blending of arts and sciences, and the ways in which medical schools are encouraging their students to study the humanities, especially literature and creative writing. The essay includes student creative writing samples.

The essay also discusses the depiction of nurses in popular culture. M*A*S*H*, Richard Hooker’s black comedy about the antics of doctors and nurses during the Korean War, gave us “Hot …

Writing The Lives Of Others: The Veterans Project, Sandra Young

English Faculty Publications

This essay describes an advanced composition course in which the students studied the ethics, politics, history, and rhetorical strategies involved in writing the lives of others. The heart of the course was a service-learning project that introduced college juniors and seniors to veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The students interviewed, wrote brief biographies, and transcribed the wartime stories of a group of veterans from a local American Legion post and its women’s auxiliary. The stories were collected in a volume made available to local American Legion posts, veterans hospitals, and libraries in Connecticut.