The images will be on their way to the editorial offices of W.W. Norton next Tuesday, Dec 6.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Last chance for Strange
The images will be on their way to the editorial offices of W.W. Norton next Tuesday, Dec 6.
Happy Holidays!
Classes are quickly coming to a close and final papers are looming on the horizon. Why not take a break from your studies and come celebrate with your fellow Englishers?
Join us next Tuesday, December 6 from 12:00 to 2:00 pm in the Seminar Room for a holiday celebration! Lunch will be served up along with some holiday cheer.
Hope to see you there!
Join us next Tuesday, December 6 from 12:00 to 2:00 pm in the Seminar Room for a holiday celebration! Lunch will be served up along with some holiday cheer.
Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Graduate Student Association Holiday Potluck
The Graduate Student Association (GSA) is hosting a Holiday Potluck Dinner on Thursday, December 1 -- co-sponsored by our very own English Department.
Date: Thursday, December 1
Time: 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Location: Sun Yat Sen Faculty Club
Please contact President Melissa Hernandez (sjugsa.president@gmail.com) if you are able to bring in food (it is a Potluck after all!) and/or perform a talent at the event. You can also bring donations of canned goods, which will benefit the City Harvest.
Find out more information on the GSA at:
Date: Thursday, December 1
Time: 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Location: Sun Yat Sen Faculty Club
Please contact President Melissa Hernandez (sjugsa.president@gmail.com) if you are able to bring in food (it is a Potluck after all!) and/or perform a talent at the event. You can also bring donations of canned goods, which will benefit the City Harvest.
Find out more information on the GSA at:
Monday, November 28, 2011
The Super Sad State: Shteyngart, Zamyatin and Dystopias
It would be beneficial to most, if not everyone, to read a dystopian novel at least once in their career as a graduate student whether he or she was exposed to the genre in high school or not. Out of them all, the novel Super Sad True Love Story is perhaps closer to reality than fiction. Shteyngart moves away from his two previous, more humorous novels and creates a world where this humor hangs by the gallows and transitions from being barely perceptible in the first few chapters to morbidity in the end.
Why dsytopian fiction? The word dystopia is the polar opposite yet synonymous form of the word utopia. The root of utopia comes from the Greek ou ‘not’ + topos ‘place’ word, literally meaning a place that does not and cannot exist. In literature, a dystopia is a construction of a utopian world made by man, thus unpleasant and malformed. Zamyatin’s We, inspired and anticipatory of the Soviet rule that was to come in Russia during the 1920s, expressed such a malformed utopia by projecting the social equality and machine-like hand of communist rule into a society without class, monitored by every eye as a means of keeping the machine stable, where relationships do not exist and sex is a mere registered act through government sanction and privilege, a narcotic to keep the masses in check.
The fascination with the world at large - culture, governments and political powers, technology, and the obsession with youth – drive these novels across the boundaries of the genre into a much too clear reality beyond the pages of storytelling. My experience with dystopia begins with Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury, respectively. What is unique about Shteyngart is that in his attempt at satirizing the future, he literally grasps for it - “you can smell Shteyngart sweating to stay one step ahead of the decaying world he's trying to satirize. It's an almost impossible race now that the exhibitionism of ordinary people has lost its ability to shock us” (Charles). In other words, the future is already here.
In the world of S.S.T.L.S the haunting genius of Shteyngart is his ability to anticipate a perceptible and eventual state of the U.S. and the global economy. “He's blended the competing nightmares of Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi to imagine the worst of both worlds, ruled by a bureaucratic monster called the Bipartisan Party” (Charles). The American Dollar has no value aside from it’s being pegged to Chinese Yuan. The youth are sunk in their äppärät - iphones on steroids with no off button, streaming data about sexual preferences, style and pornographic entertainment. What is humorous is that if anyone were to look at their facebook or youtube, or watch the news, this future is now and it only is going to get much worse and continue it’s plummet.
And what of our beloved books? Lenny Abramov, the protagonist, seems to be the only man left alive in New York City who reads them, moreover, owns a bookshelf. He keeps these treasures to himself not wishing to betray his “uncool” attachment to them, thereby betraying himself in his fight to stay young in the eyes of others and himself. Eunice, his significant other, is aghast as she describes to her media friend the time spent reading to her. "I was so embarrassed I just stood there and watched him read which lasted for like HALF AN HOUR." Her friend texts back: "Maybe you guys can read to each other in bed or something. And then you can sew your own clothes. HA HA HA." The literary culture is dead. Language is dead as well. Ads like “Switch to images today!” stream through the äppärät at blinding speeds encouraging the decline of literacy and the emergence of a truly image based culture.
The allure of dystopia is the exploration of the allure of a better tomorrow. Within the superfluous speeches of politicians, the promise of technology making life easier and forming connections of the world around us, and the hope that peace is possible, lies the very sad and true fact that humanity, in grasping for hope, only have themselves to hope in, and humans, as a rule, fall short continually. The office terms of presidents come and go with little accomplished nor with their word kept, the campaign trail now lackluster. Technology brings the darkest parts of our humanity into our homes and the pitch black of our desires are freely lived out, separating us and destroying our ability to relate to each other or even scratch the surface of each others' lives. War continues as man strives against man for power, dominance and wealth. The dystopia exists as a testament that utopia (paradise) cannot exist in this life, which is the saddest, but truest of love stories.
Charles, Ron. Rev. of Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. The Washington Post (2010). <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/27/AR2010072705665.html>
Thursday, November 17, 2011
CFP: In Progress Journal
Publishing is something that is on most grad students' minds right now, even if it's percolating on the back burner. I'm running through ideas for all my final papers right now, and for every idea I wonder if it's something I could submit for publication or for a conference. Submitting for publication is nerve-wracking as it is, so knowing that there is a journal like In Progress around is wonderful. This is an online, peer-reviewed journal that is by graduate students and for graduate students.
In Progress publishes pieces from across the disciplines. They encourage pieces that "address aspects of graduate study," but they also include book reviews and they publish one outstanding graduate research article each year.
They are currently accepting submissions for their second issue, due out in April of 2012. For their submission guidelines and formatting, follow this link. Submissions are due by February 17, 2012 to inprogresseditors@gmail.com.
In Progress publishes pieces from across the disciplines. They encourage pieces that "address aspects of graduate study," but they also include book reviews and they publish one outstanding graduate research article each year.
They are currently accepting submissions for their second issue, due out in April of 2012. For their submission guidelines and formatting, follow this link. Submissions are due by February 17, 2012 to inprogresseditors@gmail.com.
CFP: Tufts Univ Graduate Conference
Tufts University will be hosting its first annual Graduate Humanities Conference on "Curiosities." The conference will take place on Friday, February 17th, 2012 from 8:30am to 5:30pm, with a reception to follow. This new conference expands the long-standing Tufts English Graduate Organization (TEGO) conference to include interdisciplinary approaches and insights and is open to graduate students studying in programs in the humanities at institutions worldwide.
1st Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference
1st Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference
February 17, 2012
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Publication: the long and dusty road
I have been having a slightly surreal week. When I woke up yesterday morning, I had an email in my inbox informing me that my article had gone live. This is the coolest thing I've woken up to ... maybe ever!
Last year sitting in Dr. Mentz's Introduction to the Profession, I remember talking about publication. It seemed an impossible goal. Especially the goal of publishing twice while in school. I didn't think I'd ever be able to do this. I was sure my writing wasn't strong enough. My ideas weren't original enough. My thinking wasn't critical enough. Enter the St. John's English Dept Blog. Danielle posted a CFP for a French journal, which was looking for articles about Shakespeare and the rhetoric of violence. My seminar paper for Intro to the Profession was about Titus Andronicus (hello, violent!) and The Tempest, so I thought it wouldn't be too much trouble to skew my paper in that direction. So I wrote up an abstract and sent it in.
I absolutely could not believe it when I received an email in January that my abstract had been accepted, and the draft of my article would be due at the end of May. Working from my seminar paper and Dr. Mentz's very helpful comments, I submitted a new draft after the semester ended. My impression was that I wouldn't hear back for awhile about this draft, and in fact, I heard again in mid-September. The readers were pleased with the draft and had some recommendations for revision, which they gave me about a month to make.
To my article, I added some visual material - a photograph and two videos from performances of Titus Andronicus and The Tempest, which I directed last spring. I expanded on a few points and made some suggested corrections for tone, and back the draft went to France. As of yesterday, here is the final product.
Don't forget to share your noteworthy accomplishments with us! Are you presenting at a conference this year? Have you been accepted for publication? Received a grant or scholarship? Let us know, and we will post your accomplishments.
Last year sitting in Dr. Mentz's Introduction to the Profession, I remember talking about publication. It seemed an impossible goal. Especially the goal of publishing twice while in school. I didn't think I'd ever be able to do this. I was sure my writing wasn't strong enough. My ideas weren't original enough. My thinking wasn't critical enough. Enter the St. John's English Dept Blog. Danielle posted a CFP for a French journal, which was looking for articles about Shakespeare and the rhetoric of violence. My seminar paper for Intro to the Profession was about Titus Andronicus (hello, violent!) and The Tempest, so I thought it wouldn't be too much trouble to skew my paper in that direction. So I wrote up an abstract and sent it in.
I absolutely could not believe it when I received an email in January that my abstract had been accepted, and the draft of my article would be due at the end of May. Working from my seminar paper and Dr. Mentz's very helpful comments, I submitted a new draft after the semester ended. My impression was that I wouldn't hear back for awhile about this draft, and in fact, I heard again in mid-September. The readers were pleased with the draft and had some recommendations for revision, which they gave me about a month to make.
To my article, I added some visual material - a photograph and two videos from performances of Titus Andronicus and The Tempest, which I directed last spring. I expanded on a few points and made some suggested corrections for tone, and back the draft went to France. As of yesterday, here is the final product.
Don't forget to share your noteworthy accomplishments with us! Are you presenting at a conference this year? Have you been accepted for publication? Received a grant or scholarship? Let us know, and we will post your accomplishments.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Poetry Reading this Friday
Poetry Reading + Q & A
Wendy S. Walters
Friday, November 18th, 2011
12:30pm
Dr. Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery
Sunyat Sen Building
St. John's University
Queens Campus
Wendy S. Walters
Friday, November 18th, 2011
12:30pm
Dr. Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery
Sunyat Sen Building
St. John's University
Queens Campus
Call for Sessions from the BABEL Working Group
If you are interested in Medieval Studies and you're not yet familiar with the blog In the Middle, take a minute and head over there!
They recently posted about a Call for Sessions for the second biennial BABEL conference:
They recently posted about a Call for Sessions for the second biennial BABEL conference:
* * * CALL FOR SESSIONS * * *cruising in the ruins: the question of disciplinarity in the post/medieval university20-23 September 2012 Boston, Massachusetts
[co-organized by the BABEL Working Group, Boston College, Northeastern University, M.I.T., postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, and punctum books]
(In the interest of social networking, you can also like the BABEL Working Group on Facebook.)
A call for individual papers will follow. This call is for sessions only. Follow this link for much more information on their featured speakers, possible topics, and submission guidelines. Proposals for sessions are due December 15, 2011 to Kathleen Kelly and Eileen Joy at babel.conference@gmail.com. Get creative with your formats! They are not looking for the standard delivery with the 20-minute paper. Proposals must include a title, name(s) and contact information of organizer(s), and 250-500 word description of the session's aims, objectives, and format.
Here are few ideas from their website about session formats. My favorites: drag shows and séances.
Think about sessions as working groups, as demonstrations, speculations, drag shows, hypotheses, clinical trials, love letters, conservatories, plea bargains, theorems, performances, séances, salons, discographies, bills of sale, slams, manifestos, postcards, recording sessions, lab reports, embassies, mash-ups, and other experiments that aspire to make strange or re-estrange the chosen object of study via close-reading or any other techne currently practiced or yet-to-be-imagined: distance studies, the new materialism, materialist history, a demography of things, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, deconstruction, networkologies, genome mapping, hermeneutics, discontinuist histories, hypothesis, post-historicism, carnal phenomenology, vibrant materialism, guerilla metaphysics, morphology, Latourian sociology, anachronism, case study, queer touching, taxonomies,machine reading, dark ecology, eliminative nihilism, erotohistoriography, the fine arts, philology, science-technology studies, rhetorical readings, codicology, thin and thick description, flat ontology, new scholasticism, ludology, etc. — and let’s not forget the nominalists. And when in doubt, consult Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Don't forget today's event!
Please join us today for a talk with Professor Rachel Brownstein of the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. Her talk is drawn from her latest book Why Jane Austen? and focuses in part on Austen's novel Emma, and is entitled "Jane Austen and the Dawn of the Information Age."The event begins at 1:45 p.m. and will take place in the seminar room at the Institute for Writing Studies.
Cookies and coffee will also be served following the talk.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Advice from Dr. Amy King
On the first day of Dr. King’s “Jane Austen Today” class, I read over the syllabus and did a double-take. Sitting on the page next to a list of Austen’s novels and some articles by Austen scholars, sat the movie Clueless under a “Required Viewing” header. As in, Alicia Silverstone, “as if!” Clueless. I was psyched. I’ve dreamed of a remote-control closet my entire life. When we came to our discussion of Austen’s Emma and subsequently, the discussion of Clueless as an adaptation of the novel, it didn’t disappoint. We had a graduate-level conversation about the merits of the movie and the relationship between Cher and Emma. It was probably one of the weirdest and coolest seminar discussions I’ve had in my graduate career.
Friday, November 11, 2011
CFP: Northeastern U Grad Conference
Northeastern University
English Graduate Student Association Conference
March 31-April 1, 2012
Call for Papers
Special Topics Panel—Writing, Memory, and Teaching
As part of the sixth annual Northeastern University English Graduate Student Association conference, Memory Remains, we seek proposals for a special topics panel on Writing, Memory, and Teaching. The overall conference seeks to explore the integral role that memory and its remains play in our daily lives—both in public and private constructions of self and reality, as well as individual and communal narratives. Proposals for this Special Topic Panel might address the many ways that memory and its absence appear in the work of composition and rhetoric. Memory and recall have played a strong role in the methodologies of composition research, whether through archival research, interviews, ethnographies, or other retrospective accounts of teaching and learning in writing classrooms, writing centers, or other contexts. Memory has also been a long-standing feature of first-year writing classes with an emphasis on narrative description. Additionally, many influential accounts of t
eaching writing—for instance, Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary—powerfully connect one teacher’s memories of learning to write to larger issues of access, opportunity, and educational reform. Finally, several recent historical accounts of writing programs, methods of teaching writing, and influential composition scholars have attempted to revise (or “jog”) our disciplinary memory.
For this Special Topic Panel, we welcome submissions from graduate students focused on the role of memory, recall, and representation in writing research, writing classrooms, writing centers, and writing programs.
Please send 250 word abstracts to n.lerner@neu.edu by no later than December 16, 2011. Please include your name and university affiliation.
For the full conference CFP, see
http://www.northeastern.edu/
English Graduate Student Association Conference
March 31-April 1, 2012
Call for Papers
Special Topics Panel—Writing, Memory, and Teaching
As part of the sixth annual Northeastern University English Graduate Student Association conference, Memory Remains, we seek proposals for a special topics panel on Writing, Memory, and Teaching. The overall conference seeks to explore the integral role that memory and its remains play in our daily lives—both in public and private constructions of self and reality, as well as individual and communal narratives. Proposals for this Special Topic Panel might address the many ways that memory and its absence appear in the work of composition and rhetoric. Memory and recall have played a strong role in the methodologies of composition research, whether through archival research, interviews, ethnographies, or other retrospective accounts of teaching and learning in writing classrooms, writing centers, or other contexts. Memory has also been a long-standing feature of first-year writing classes with an emphasis on narrative description. Additionally, many influential accounts of t
eaching writing—for instance, Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary—powerfully connect one teacher’s memories of learning to write to larger issues of access, opportunity, and educational reform. Finally, several recent historical accounts of writing programs, methods of teaching writing, and influential composition scholars have attempted to revise (or “jog”) our disciplinary memory.
For this Special Topic Panel, we welcome submissions from graduate students focused on the role of memory, recall, and representation in writing research, writing classrooms, writing centers, and writing programs.
Please send 250 word abstracts to n.lerner@neu.edu by no later than December 16, 2011. Please include your name and university affiliation.
For the full conference CFP, see
http://www.northeastern.edu/
Thursday, November 10, 2011
CFP: Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at Stony Brook Univ.
Instrument, Image, Ekphrasis: Intersecting Genres of Knowledge
The English Department at Stony Brook University is proud to offer an interdisciplinary call for papers that asks graduate scholars to reflect on the instruments of their discipline, and to think about how ekphrasis speaks out about the intersection of instrument, image, and genre. What is "instrumentality" in literature, or art, or philosophy? How is it the same, or different, in the social and hard sciences? Does it imply a certain mentality, or construct a static "reader"?
Abstracts can be up to 250 words, and should be submitted by Friday, December 17th, 2011. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance shortly after the December deadline. This year's conference will feature a faculty-sponsored Best Paper/Presentation Award. Students interested in competing for the Best Paper Prize must submit a completed paper no later than January 16, 2012. Award will be announced at the conference. Direct submissions to SUNYSB.GradConf@gmail.com.
The conference will take place on Saturday, February 25, 2012 at Stony Brook's Manhattan Campus. The Keynote Speaker will be Professor Laura Kipnis.
For more information on location, awards, and registration, please visit:
Graduate Courses: Update to Dr. Geller's Course Description
English 170
Authorship, Ownership, Appropriation and the Remix
Tuesday, 7:10-9:10pm
In Authorship, Ownership, Appropriation and the Remix we will consider why everyone inside and outside of education seems so concerned about plagiarism. Central to developing a critical and theoretical stance on plagiarism is an understanding of authorship and textual ownership. We will consider how the boundaries of authorship are maintained or expanded as texts are created, owned, and exchanged. To fully explore authorship and plagiarism in education we’ll read My Word: Plagiarism and College Culture, which explores students’ varied experiences with texts inside and outside of school, and Who Owns This Text: Plagiarism, Authorship, and Disciplinary Cultures, which explores faculty experiences with authorship and plagiarism. Plagiarism: Alchemy and Remedy in Higher Education will prompt us to consider high profile plagiarism cases and the technology and the socioeconomics of plagiarism and cheating -- students pay to have their papers written by paper mills, institutions pay corporations to police students’ writing, and the public pays the media to distribute tantalizing stories of textual appropriation. And we’ll ask if plagiarism is the best lens for evaluating textual practices like remixing, sampling, Creative Commons licenses, appropriation in poetry and fiction, and piracy. Throughout the semester we’ll consider the responsibility educators at all levels have for starting and facilitating conversations about the ethical, moral, and socio-cultural-historical issues that always attend the creation and sharing of texts.
Writing during the semester will include investigation of the plagiarism policies on course syllabi and in institutional documents and a short position paper on plagiarism detection software. Students will also each contribute at least one article annotation to CompPile (www.comppile.org). Final projects may take on issues ranging from and including pedagogy (from all levels of classrooms to writing centers and libraries), creative writing, technologies, identity and authorship. This course is for students interested in texts and intertextuality, textual ownership and authorship (academic and creative), technology and research, and education.
Authorship, Ownership, Appropriation and the Remix
Tuesday, 7:10-9:10pm
In Authorship, Ownership, Appropriation and the Remix we will consider why everyone inside and outside of education seems so concerned about plagiarism. Central to developing a critical and theoretical stance on plagiarism is an understanding of authorship and textual ownership. We will consider how the boundaries of authorship are maintained or expanded as texts are created, owned, and exchanged. To fully explore authorship and plagiarism in education we’ll read My Word: Plagiarism and College Culture, which explores students’ varied experiences with texts inside and outside of school, and Who Owns This Text: Plagiarism, Authorship, and Disciplinary Cultures, which explores faculty experiences with authorship and plagiarism. Plagiarism: Alchemy and Remedy in Higher Education will prompt us to consider high profile plagiarism cases and the technology and the socioeconomics of plagiarism and cheating -- students pay to have their papers written by paper mills, institutions pay corporations to police students’ writing, and the public pays the media to distribute tantalizing stories of textual appropriation. And we’ll ask if plagiarism is the best lens for evaluating textual practices like remixing, sampling, Creative Commons licenses, appropriation in poetry and fiction, and piracy. Throughout the semester we’ll consider the responsibility educators at all levels have for starting and facilitating conversations about the ethical, moral, and socio-cultural-historical issues that always attend the creation and sharing of texts.
Writing during the semester will include investigation of the plagiarism policies on course syllabi and in institutional documents and a short position paper on plagiarism detection software. Students will also each contribute at least one article annotation to CompPile (www.comppile.org). Final projects may take on issues ranging from and including pedagogy (from all levels of classrooms to writing centers and libraries), creative writing, technologies, identity and authorship. This course is for students interested in texts and intertextuality, textual ownership and authorship (academic and creative), technology and research, and education.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Undergraduate Summer Research Opportunity
Attention Juniors! Here is an amazing opportunity for summer research offered through UCLA and the Bunche Center Summer Humanities Institute (SHI). This is an opportunity to work with faculty members at UCLA on a research project for eight weeks. The program is designed for students planning to pursue a PhD.
A stipend is offered, as well as an allowance for room and meals. Round-trip travel will be reimbursed up to $450. Some of the features offered through the program include seminars on career opportunities, GRE prep, information about applying to graduate school, and more.
Participating in the program means full completion of the eight weeks (from June 24, 2012 - August 18, 2012). Enrolling in other courses or working another job is not permitted. The research you will undergo requires a full-time commitment. Students will give an oral presentation and submit a 15-page report and a one-page abstract describing his/her research.
For complete information about eligibility, the details of the award and the program, as well as link to the online application, please visit this link. Although the early deadline for the application has passed, the program is continuing to accept applications until February 3, 2012.
You can also visit this link for general information about the program. Best of luck!
A stipend is offered, as well as an allowance for room and meals. Round-trip travel will be reimbursed up to $450. Some of the features offered through the program include seminars on career opportunities, GRE prep, information about applying to graduate school, and more.
Participating in the program means full completion of the eight weeks (from June 24, 2012 - August 18, 2012). Enrolling in other courses or working another job is not permitted. The research you will undergo requires a full-time commitment. Students will give an oral presentation and submit a 15-page report and a one-page abstract describing his/her research.
For complete information about eligibility, the details of the award and the program, as well as link to the online application, please visit this link. Although the early deadline for the application has passed, the program is continuing to accept applications until February 3, 2012.
You can also visit this link for general information about the program. Best of luck!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Reminder: Bookmarks and Registration
Graduate registration begins tomorrow, November 9 at 7:00 a.m. Make sure you have received your registration access number from Gina or Lana. Log in through UIS on St. John's Central and follow the "registration" links on the left-hand side of the window.
And join us on Thursday, November 10 for our first Bookmarks event of the school year!
Join us for a talk with Dr. Derek Owens on November 10 from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. at the Institute for Writing Studies. He will be discussing his most recent publication, Memory's Wake, with us.
Refreshments will be provided.
Join us for a talk with Dr. Derek Owens on November 10 from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. at the Institute for Writing Studies. He will be discussing his most recent publication, Memory's Wake, with us.
Refreshments will be provided.
She Leads a Lonely Life
My fellow students, we have hit November with a bang. Or maybe a whimper? We have successfully turned in our midterm papers and are anxiously awaiting our grades. For many of us -- these are our first graded assignments upon entering grad school. And the end of the semester feels like it will be on us in a moment. At least Thanksgiving break will be on us in a moment. In the spirit of the holiday, I have been doing some thinking on what I am thankful for this year.
I am thankful for the graduate community at St. John's.
I am thankful for the graduate community at St. John's.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Problems in Pride and Prejudice
Before I begin, I would like to clarify that I enjoy Jane Austen. By no means would I profess myself as a Janeite but I do take pleasure in her work, within which I find a plethora of issues and sentiments. With that said, my post today will be a negative critique of the novel. (Melissa wrote about the ubiquitous enthusiasm that continues to surround the novel, so I thought I would just take it the other way.)
Two weeks ago in Dr. Amy King’s class, we were asked to submit our papers, where the assignment was to write about a modern work inspired by Jane Austen’s novels and discuss why there seems to be a sudden surge in her popularity. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 but by 2011, we have endless filmic and television adaptations, parodies, comic strips, graphic novels, sequels, and other offshoots. Clearly, Austen’s popularity cannot be denied. Pride and Prejudice seemingly packages themes of romance, feminism, picturesque beauty, and economic practicality, all told in an elegant, ironic, and witty way. It’s for the masses and any one of these themes can resonate to a sizeable crowd. But besides economic practicality, are any of these themes really dominant in Austen’s novel?
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Pride and Prejudice Becomes Personal
A 2007 UK-based poll boasted Pride and Prejudice as the number one text, self-titled Janeites often claim it as their favorite of the Austen canon, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies increased its first print run from 12,000 to 60,000 copies, and Pride and Prejudice the Musical closed in New York last month. Why this relentless enthusiasm for the classic?
In a letter to her sister Cassandra immediately after the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Austen writes: "Upon the whole... I am well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade." Claudia Johnson, commenting on this remorseless high spirits in "Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness," asserts that "pursuing happiness is the business of life" (349) in all of Austen, but especially Pride and Prejudice, where we have personal and social wish fulfillment at its best: "a poor but deserving girl catches a rich husband" and "a conservative yearning for a strong, attentive, loving, and paradoxically, perhaps, at times even submitting authority" is affirmed (348). According to Johnson, Pride and Prejudice offers a conservative myth as the reader and Elizabeth look to Darcy--patriarchal figure writ large-- for happiness (the happy conclusion "affirm[ing] established social arrangements without damaging their prestige or fundamentally changing their wisdom or equity" [348]). But the counter-camp eagerly appropriates Austen as a more progressive model, arguing that the ending does not corroborate conservative myth because Austen parodies Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Darcy is the exception to the aristocratic, landed gentry class; and the latter's preference for the Gardiners (from the stigmatized trade class) over the Bennets and preference for Elizabeth over Miss de Bourgh serve to unsettle and chastise the indolence of sacrosanct rank and power.
In a letter to her sister Cassandra immediately after the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Austen writes: "Upon the whole... I am well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade." Claudia Johnson, commenting on this remorseless high spirits in "Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness," asserts that "pursuing happiness is the business of life" (349) in all of Austen, but especially Pride and Prejudice, where we have personal and social wish fulfillment at its best: "a poor but deserving girl catches a rich husband" and "a conservative yearning for a strong, attentive, loving, and paradoxically, perhaps, at times even submitting authority" is affirmed (348). According to Johnson, Pride and Prejudice offers a conservative myth as the reader and Elizabeth look to Darcy--patriarchal figure writ large-- for happiness (the happy conclusion "affirm[ing] established social arrangements without damaging their prestige or fundamentally changing their wisdom or equity" [348]). But the counter-camp eagerly appropriates Austen as a more progressive model, arguing that the ending does not corroborate conservative myth because Austen parodies Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Darcy is the exception to the aristocratic, landed gentry class; and the latter's preference for the Gardiners (from the stigmatized trade class) over the Bennets and preference for Elizabeth over Miss de Bourgh serve to unsettle and chastise the indolence of sacrosanct rank and power.
Landscapes of the Passing Strange
Check out some images from last Thursday's Landscapes of the Passing Strange. If you were as unlucky to miss this event as I was, come see the exhibit in the Institute for Writing Studies. Many thanks to Regina Duthely for taking over as photographer for this event!
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| About to start with Rosamond Purcell and Michael Witmore |
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| The images in the book, and on the IWS walls, are reflections bounced off these bottles |
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| Rosamond Purcell in front of the "war machine" |
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| Michael Witmore examines "Twenty Shadows" |
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| A portrait of the collaborators |
Jane Austen and the Dawn of the Information Age - 11/14
Please join us next Monday, November 14 for a talk with Professor Rachel Brownstein of the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. Her talk is drawn from her latest book Why Jane Austen? and focuses in part on Austen's novel Emma, and is entitled "Jane Austen and the Dawn of the Information Age." (This talk is especially of interest to those of you in Dr. King's "Jane Austen Today" class!) The event begins at 1:45 p.m. and will take place in the seminar room at the Institute for Writing Studies. If Jane Austen is not enough of a draw for you, cookies and coffee will also be served following the talk.Joseph Conrad Essay Contest
My friends over at the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program at Mystic Seaport have a great undergrad essay contest with a $500 prize. Deadline Nov 14. Fiction or non-fiction, but no poetry this year. Send your salty sea-stories or essays to
For more details, follow the link above.Williams-Mystic/Joseph Conrad Essay Contest, Williams-Mystic, Mystic Seaport Museum, 75 Greenmanville Avenue, Mystic, CT 06355 !
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