9,895 research outputs found
Out of the Dark Confinement! Physical Containment in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature
Most scholarship on American protest literature tends to focus on the protest literature of specific, politically marginalized groups, such as black protest, womenâs protest, or working class protest. My project redefines how we read nineteenth-century American protest literature by investigating the connections between the protest texts of these three marginalized groups. In particular, I argue that mid-nineteenth-century protest authors incorporate images of physical confinement and entrapment within their texts to expose to privileged readers the physical and ideological containment and control marginalized subjects encounter in their daily lives. Drawing from rhetorical theories of argumentation and audience engagement, and incorporating historical and cultural contexts, I analyze three protest texts that respond to the contentious debates of the 1850sâa decade marked by increasing tensions over issues of race, class, and gender: Harriet Wilsonâs Our Nig (1859), Rebecca Harding Davisâs âLife in the Iron Millsâ (1861), and Harriet Jacobsâs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).
Along with analyzing these authorsâ use of images of physical confinement, I also study the use of direct address and reader engagement in protest texts in order to show how authors foster an empathetic connection between privileged readers and marginalized characters. I show how protest literature further uses these formal modes to critique and advocate for change within the status quo. By drawing attention to the rhetorical techniques of Wilson, Davis, and Jacobs, I advance beyond the current scholarly interests in genre to investigate how these authors forge connections among such movements as womenâs rights, workersâ rights, and abolition
On Trial: Restorative Justice in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley Family Fictions
William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary and Percy Shelley wrote during an era of democratic possibility and intense legal and penal reforms, when changes to criminal justice procedures were adopted that would have far reaching consequences, even for contemporary practices. Their fictions - Caleb Williams (1794), Maria: Or the Wrongs of Woman (1798), Frankenstein (1818), Falkner (1837), and The Cenci (1818) - raise questions and seek answers to questions at the heart of these reforms: What happens to individuals falsely accused of a crime without the resources to defend themselves? What happens to victims of crimes associated with guilt or shame or who suffer from crimes unacknowledged by the justice system? If direct testimony doesn\u27t guarantee truth, then what good is it? Should criminal procedures seek retribution, deterrence, reform, rehabilitation, or perhaps restoration?
Proceeding chronologically through their texts, my project considers the ways that this literary family addressed these questions. I use the contemporary notion of restorative justice as my frame, attempting to place their works within their own historical eras as well as reflect on how they underscore issues that may be pertinent and pressing - though different - today. Uniquely colliding with both an era of criminal justice reform and an age of democratic revolution, I argue their fictions advocate for individuals disenfranchised from the justice system and imagine alternative models of justice. They imagine criminal procedures that prioritize the victim\u27s, the accused\u27s, and the community\u27s participation in often complex and convoluted truth-seeking processes. They envision outcomes that attempt to repair harm through dialogue, accountability, and consideration of social disparities, rather than merely punishing offenders or deterring individuals from committing future crimes. I suggest, finally, that motivated by a similar desire for equitable, participatory, and restorative conditions, their fictions offer strategies for imagining justice that are both historically progressive and currently relevant
Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance
Gothic Modernism: Revising and Representing the Narratives of History and Romance analyzes the surprising frequency of the tones, tropes, language, and conventions of the classic Gothic that oppose the realist impulses of Modernism. In a letter F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about The Great Gatsby, he explains that he âselected the stuff to fit a given mood or âhauntednessââ (Letters 551). This âstuffâ constitutes the âsubtler meansâ that Virginia Woolf wrote about when she observed that the conventions of the classic Gothic no longer evoked fear: âThe skull-headed lady, the vampire gentleman, the whole troop of monks and monsters who once froze and terrified us now gibber in some dark cupboard of the servantsâ hall. In our day we flatter ourselves the effect is produced by subtler meansâ (âGothic Romanceâ 133). This project, therefore, identifies a âGothic Modernismââa strain of Modernism that makes use of the well-established language and conventions of the Gothic terms in order to express recognizably Modernist concerns about the nature of subjectivity, temporality, language, and knowledge. But, I argue, though these texts call upon and refer to the language and conventions of the classic Gothic, they also find ways of transforming and adapting them for a new historical era.
In chapters covering ghosts and hauntings, and other revised conventions of the classic Gothic, I continue the work begun by John Paul Riquelmeâs Gothic and Modernism that begins to reveal how âhistory, as part of the condition of modernity, [has] become Gothicâ (1). This project analyzes the gothicization of two narratives through which humans are expected to make sense of their livesâhistory and romance. Despite more than a century separating the classic Gothic from Modernism, the Gothic continues to be so useful to Modernist writers because, while these genresâ authors represent the nature of their anxieties as a result of specific socio-historical circumstances, there is a striking continuity between the types of anxieties expressed. Thus, this project contributes to Modernist Studies by expanding the boundaries of our conventional understanding of the genreâs thematic concerns and stylistic commitments, and the way in which it frames key narratives
The Immorality of Eating Meat
Unlike other ethical arguments for veganism, the argument advanced is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have a right to life, nor is it predicated on some highly contentious metaethical theory which you reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. Simply put, the argument shows that even those of you who are steadfastly committed to valuing humans over nonhumans are nevertheless committed to the immorality of eating meat and other animal products, given your other beliefs
Putting Age into Place: John Mightonâs Half Life and Joan Barfootâs Exit Lines
This paper addresses cultural constructions of old age in two contemporary Canadian care home narratives. While John Mightonâs play Half Life (2005) is set in a prison-like long-term care facility that is represented as a site of homogenization, oppression, and infantilization, Joan Barfootâs novel Exit Lines (2008) plays in a hotel-like retirement lodge for wealthy customers that, despite its authoritarian manager, functions as a site of meaningful identity development and intragenerational relationships. What both texts have in common, however, is that they focus on residentsâ individual resistance, subversion, and agency, thus opposing the ageist stereotype of decline and deconstructing prevailing norms and negative images of old age as merely physical decrepitude and disease. How is the space of the care home narrated in these two contemporary Canadian texts, and what role do aspects of space and place play for the narrative construction of old age? In this paper, I argue that the spatiality of aging is a category that needs to be incorporated into both an analysis of literary representations of the âfourth ageâ and an exploration of critical issues of space and place. The juxtaposition of two caregiving institutions in recent Canadian fction contributes to revealing how old age is imagined at the beginning of the twenty-frst century
A Survey of Plasmas and Their Applications
Plasmas are everywhere and relevant to everyone. We bath in a sea of photons, quanta of electromagnetic radiation, whose sources (natural and artificial) are dominantly plasma-based (stars, fluorescent lights, arc lamps.. .). Plasma surface modification and materials processing contribute increasingly to a wide array of modern artifacts; e.g., tiny plasma discharge elements constitute the pixel arrays of plasma televisions and plasma processing provides roughly one-third of the steps to produce semiconductors, essential elements of our networking and computing infrastructure. Finally, plasmas are central to many cutting edge technologies with high potential (compact high-energy particle accelerators; plasma-enhanced waste processors; high tolerance surface preparation and multifuel preprocessors for transportation systems; fusion for energy production)
Book Reviews
Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions (Linda S. Kauffman) (Reviewed by Shari Benstock, University of Miami)The Old French Fabliaux (Charles Muscatine) (Reviewed by Mary Jane Schenck, University of Tampa)Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth Century England (John Bender) (Reviewed by Simon Varey, University of California, Los Angeles
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