Graduate Work

Papers (and stuff) uploaded so far:

(For information about these papers, see below)

• “With Friends Like These: Authority and Analepsis in Charlotte Temple.” CHARLOTTE.DOC
• “The ‘Minority’ Figure in ‘Mass” Fiction: An Intermodern Reading of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.” massminority.doc
• Notes for “What is a Text: A Political History Of Texts From Gutenberg To Electronic Literature & Beyond”

CHARLOTTE TEMPLE, a.k.a the bane of my existence

Last Spring (2007), in Dr. Lisa Vetere’s course, The Cultural Work of Early American Texts, I wrote my seminar paper on Susanna Rowson’s 1794 novel Charlotte Temple.

I was not terribly enthused with the primary texts in this course to be honest: “it just isn’t my thing;” however, the secondary and theoretical texts for this class were AWESOME. (This is a common experience for me.) I picked Charlotte Temple as my primary text for two very basic reasons: 1. It is a novel rather than a travel account, captivity narrative, autobiography, etc.; 2. The amount of existing criticism was substantial enough to give me something to work with, but not too overwhelming to negate the possibility of my being able to read and address it in the time and page #’s I had available to me.

Though it caused me a few headaches, I am pretty pleased with the result. Although there is neither quite enough theoretical muscle nor enough historical information to completely sustain the argument, for a seminar paper, it works because it identifies a formal element of the text, the analepses, which has not been addressed in criticism, and posits a social, historical and formal importance for that feature.

So, my first posted paper is “With Friends like These: Authority and Analepsis in Charlotte Temple.” CHARLOTTE.DOC

Agatha Christie and F.R. Leavis, an unlikely pair?

In the Fall of 2007 I took Dr. Kristen Bluemel’s Intermodernism course. Because I am insane and very interested in cultural studies as well as the study of “middlebrow” literature, I read Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as a signpost of Leavis’ minority culture. My prompt to do this was, first, recognizing the correlation; and second, when I considered that it seemed a strange thing to explore, the conclusion that I inevitably reached was that it really only seemed strange due to how embedded distinctions like middlebrow/highbrow and mass/minority really are. From there, I further considered how these constructions affect the ways in which we portend to study, literature, culture, history, etc. over time.

It is pretty outside the box of something that I would normally undertake, and for that reason (and the fact that it provided a good excuse to revisit a lot of Raymond Williams), it was a worthwhile undertaking. I also think I gained a better understanding about the theorization and possibilities of Intermodernism than I would have if I had taken a more “traditional” approach and wrote about people like George Orwell or Mulk Raj Anand (although I do actually have a shorter paper on those two that I will probably add when I get around to it).

So, another paper: “The ‘Minority’ Figure in ‘Mass’ Fiction: An Intermodern Reading of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.” massminority.doc

And another random endeavor…electronic literature…

Below are my preliminary notes for the presentation I will do tomorrow with William Wend, “What is a Text?: A Political History Of Texts From Gutenberg To Electronic Literature & Beyond”

• William and I are collaborating in the community building spirit of the conference and other department events, but also because I bring a different perspective to this discussion of electronic literature.  As an “outsider” to electronic literature, I want to share how other materials we have all been studying and discussing relate to electronic literature.
• While the list is endless, the things that I want to make connections to today are literary studies of technology, reader-response and reception theory and cultural studies.

• In studying the democritization of print, Michael Warner, in The Cultural Mediation of the Print Medium, writes that “the change in print can not be explained as the expression of the individual and the people.  Instead it would signal a broad change in social and cultural systems” and that there is a “reciprocal determination…between a medium and its politics.”  In examining the matrix of the medium and the metapolitcis of the speech within it, Warner offers distinct clues as to one valuable approach to electronic literature. Faced, again,with a new medium, with a new matrix, it is time to endeavor on new analyses.  Of course, Warner is hardly an isolated renegade in studies of print; from David Hall’s Readers and Reading in America to Patrick Bratlinger’s The Reading Lesson and  Cathy Davidson’s Revolution and The World, mediums, platforms, attitudes towards reading and the function of texts continues to evolve historically as well as in academic study. Applying these methods of inquiry to electronic literature is only a further extension of the important work already being done in the field.
  

• In terms of narrative theory, Ian Watt’s seminal book, The Rise of the Novel, he, like Warner, includes an entire chapter detailing how changes in the reading public, printing, marketing and distribution simultaneously form and inform both novelist’s aims and reader expectations. Thus, if we consider Bahktin’s theory of the ever-evolving, cannibalizing genre of novel and incorporate reception theory, we can see that formal changes and expanded media, from online hypertext novels to further distributed narratives which employ a variety of platforms, can and do change interpretative communities and alter the horizon of expectations of audiences. 
  

• Like all forms and genres, electronic literature takes specific training and experience to read.  As Kirshenbaum’s definition explains, this literature “depends on the distinctive behavioral, visual, or material properties of computers, computer networks, and code for its composition, execution and reception.”  While this might seem scary at first glance, this is just another, further step, in the evolution of literature and literary study.  An example that I am dealing with in my own work at present is the critical reception of fiction written by women in America in the 19th century.  As many of you will know and probably either disdain or applaud, most popular fiction at this time was written by women and until the 1970’s was not included in academic study.  In Susan K. Harris’ important study, Nineteenth Century American Womens’ Novels: Interpretive Strategies, she utilized the journals and letters of contemporary readers to illustrate the various “levels” upon which reading was executed.  She further uses these levels to analyze women’s fiction and advocates this method for further study.  Along with Harris’ work, Jane Tompkins’ seminal Sensational Designs effectively illustrates the multifaceted process of critical acceptance. In relation to electronic literature, then, it seems obvious to me that the resistance to electronic literature is not at all surprising but will eventually be overcome through new levels of reading and the formation of new interpretative communities.

• For those,ahem, for whom this process is moving too slowly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) it is certainly unfortunate, but beyond mere idealism there are always pragmatic concerns. With decreasing budgets and masses of educated scholars without secure positions, it is unlikely that electronic literature will find its way into the mainstream any time soon.  Ideally, I would love to have encountered electronic literature and Jill Walker’s writing about distributed narrative in survey theory and novel courses, but considering that scholars must be highly specialized to be successful and are of course over-worked and underpaid as it is, it is not surprising that these new and vital mediums and ideas are trapped below the radar.  Keeping up with one’s own field of specialization is hard enough, to keep up with the discipline as a whole is impossible. 
  

• Still,when I read Franco Moretti claiming that the intellectuals are always a few steps ahead of the masses, it’s a little frustrating.  It may have that moment of comfort given by a Leavisite perspective, but it is not ultimately productive.  It is still a way of maintaining a false sense of superiority and security and the same mechanism that for over one hundred years claimed that popular women’s fiction was not worth critical attention.  Beyond the pragmatic concerns and the obvious fact that we simply can not include “everything” there is still an elitist notion and irrational fear that confronts scholars of electronic literature. I hope that through continued discussion and intervention critical communities will understand that electronic literature is not a break from traditional standards and methods, but simply a new branch.