Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901607
Pilar DiPietro
Abstract:Around the time Butler wrote Kindred the prevailing theories of African American literary criticism involved conflicting views of the genre—views that previously supported historical narrative but that were progressively evolving toward deeper, more evocative criticisms. This developing narrative, at a distanced view, perhaps offered a mirrored understanding of then-contemporary African American concerns. Often these newer criticisms pitted black women against black men, yet Damian Duffy and John Jennings's graphic novel adaptation of Butler's Kindred melds the identities of male and female in Dana, the androgynous protagonist of the story. Dana represents the struggle of a mixed American who, fostered by the time travel paradigm, embodies a heroic woman grappling with the side of herself that is white. In this article, I base my argument on the African American critical theories of Hortense J. Spillers and Jonathan Brennan. Joining the ideas of these two African American theorists adds credence to my contention that the character of Dana not only must accept the white side of herself but must escape the oppression of her past by leaving a part of her body, a physical dismemberment, behind as proof of freedom from the confines of the situation, of the page, and even of herself.
{"title":"The Necessity of (Dis)memberment: The Intersection of Mixed-Race, Gender, and Hero in Duffy and Jennings's Adaptation of Butler's Kindred","authors":"Pilar DiPietro","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901607","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Around the time Butler wrote Kindred the prevailing theories of African American literary criticism involved conflicting views of the genre—views that previously supported historical narrative but that were progressively evolving toward deeper, more evocative criticisms. This developing narrative, at a distanced view, perhaps offered a mirrored understanding of then-contemporary African American concerns. Often these newer criticisms pitted black women against black men, yet Damian Duffy and John Jennings's graphic novel adaptation of Butler's Kindred melds the identities of male and female in Dana, the androgynous protagonist of the story. Dana represents the struggle of a mixed American who, fostered by the time travel paradigm, embodies a heroic woman grappling with the side of herself that is white. In this article, I base my argument on the African American critical theories of Hortense J. Spillers and Jonathan Brennan. Joining the ideas of these two African American theorists adds credence to my contention that the character of Dana not only must accept the white side of herself but must escape the oppression of her past by leaving a part of her body, a physical dismemberment, behind as proof of freedom from the confines of the situation, of the page, and even of herself.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"53 1","pages":"83 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77211846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901606
Rachel Lea Tharp
Abstract:Separating the Merchant's Prologue from his tale leaves the Merchant's character incomplete. Without considering the Merchant's motivation for telling a fabliau, his tale remains a mere addition to the well-established tradition of anti-feminist medieval literature. Merchants held a tenuous position in the three-estate system after the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 challenged the traditional social hierarchy. They were viewed as inherently sinful by the Christian clergy, and their conspicuous wealth allowed for social mobility, threatening the aristocracy and the static estate system. In his tale, the Merchant mocks January, a representative of the nobility, for his foolish, sinful behavior, revealing that the second estate is no better than the others.
{"title":"\"Under This Yok of Mariage Ybounde\": Aristocratic Husbands and Authoritative Wives in The Merchant's Tale","authors":"Rachel Lea Tharp","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901606","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Separating the Merchant's Prologue from his tale leaves the Merchant's character incomplete. Without considering the Merchant's motivation for telling a fabliau, his tale remains a mere addition to the well-established tradition of anti-feminist medieval literature. Merchants held a tenuous position in the three-estate system after the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 challenged the traditional social hierarchy. They were viewed as inherently sinful by the Christian clergy, and their conspicuous wealth allowed for social mobility, threatening the aristocracy and the static estate system. In his tale, the Merchant mocks January, a representative of the nobility, for his foolish, sinful behavior, revealing that the second estate is no better than the others.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"294 1","pages":"61 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73478180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901609
M. Cusato
Abstract:Two female Algerian revolutionaries, Djamila Bouhired and Djamila Boupacha, both members of the Front de libération nationale (FLN), were captured by French troops in Algeria, tortured, tried, and sentenced to death, approximately three years apart. After their sentencings, both their cases would go abroad, moving from Algeria to France and from France elsewhere. It is the movement of these women themselves—as well as their legal cases, the associated press campaigns, and the ways that writers, lawyers, artists, journalists, and activists in France represented both the cases and the women at their center—that interests us in this article. Indeed, the cases and faces of both Bouhired and Boupacha became the canvases upon which French media and intellectuals reflected on Algeria and the Algerian question: existential questions of freedom and constraint, nuances of second-wave feminism, and even France's own nationhood and identity. And what began as the literal confinement of two young female Algerian revolutionaries would emerge and evolve as a challenge to cultural confinement and hierarchy on the levels of gender and colonial status alike.
{"title":"The Djamila Phenomenon: How the Confinement of Two Algerian Revolutionaries Was Translated for a French and Global Public, 1956–1962","authors":"M. Cusato","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901609","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Two female Algerian revolutionaries, Djamila Bouhired and Djamila Boupacha, both members of the Front de libération nationale (FLN), were captured by French troops in Algeria, tortured, tried, and sentenced to death, approximately three years apart. After their sentencings, both their cases would go abroad, moving from Algeria to France and from France elsewhere. It is the movement of these women themselves—as well as their legal cases, the associated press campaigns, and the ways that writers, lawyers, artists, journalists, and activists in France represented both the cases and the women at their center—that interests us in this article. Indeed, the cases and faces of both Bouhired and Boupacha became the canvases upon which French media and intellectuals reflected on Algeria and the Algerian question: existential questions of freedom and constraint, nuances of second-wave feminism, and even France's own nationhood and identity. And what began as the literal confinement of two young female Algerian revolutionaries would emerge and evolve as a challenge to cultural confinement and hierarchy on the levels of gender and colonial status alike.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"28 1","pages":"121 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84043360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901608
Brian McCarty
Abstract:Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe dramatizes the extent to which the racism endemic to colonialist discourse mediates the titular character's interactions with his island environment, thus precluding the empiricism valued during the eighteenth century. While scholars often assert that Crusoe's discovery of the footprint initiates a drastic change in how he perceives the island, the footprint merely reinscribes the positionality that has dictated his mode of relating to this setting all along. The nature of the danger confronting Crusoe becomes evident in the semiotic transfer of cannibalistic signifiers to the structures he constructs to safeguard him from them. These structures, designed to replicate English enclosure, impose onto the island an artificial order that, by neglecting its topographical particularities, transform it into a discursive space, especially when considering that fear of "savages" motivates his interactions with his environment. The cannibal trope employed by colonialist rhetoric to justify exploitation of New World inhabitants and resources alike dictates virtually every decision he makes after landing on the island and serves to render illegible both the island and the Other. Indeed, the novel participates in a more pervasive discourse whereby the era's privileging of empiricism conflicts with representations of cannibalism and savagery in cartographical and literary representations of the New World. This epistemological dissonance manifests in "Great Newes from the Barbadoes," a report of a failed slave revolt; the document emphasizes its veracity, which it unintentionally conflates with violence, while employing racist stereotypes. As evinced by Crusoe's refusal to abandon his fortified home despite concerns over its structural integrity, it is this ideological construction of the Other that endangers him, rather than any threat posed by New World "savages." What disturbs Crusoe about the footprint is that it compels him to confront the contradictions of a racist dialectic that constructs alterity according to conflicting Christian, capitalist, and feudal paradigms, each of which seeks to justify further imperialist pursuits. Defoe thus explores the interiority of the interpellated self, using the footprint to foreground the challenge of circumventing biases in order to arrive at an empirical understanding of the spaces one inhabits and traverses.
{"title":"Finding Oneself in Print: Robinson Crusoe, Metonymy, and the Ideologically Constructed Self","authors":"Brian McCarty","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901608","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe dramatizes the extent to which the racism endemic to colonialist discourse mediates the titular character's interactions with his island environment, thus precluding the empiricism valued during the eighteenth century. While scholars often assert that Crusoe's discovery of the footprint initiates a drastic change in how he perceives the island, the footprint merely reinscribes the positionality that has dictated his mode of relating to this setting all along. The nature of the danger confronting Crusoe becomes evident in the semiotic transfer of cannibalistic signifiers to the structures he constructs to safeguard him from them. These structures, designed to replicate English enclosure, impose onto the island an artificial order that, by neglecting its topographical particularities, transform it into a discursive space, especially when considering that fear of \"savages\" motivates his interactions with his environment. The cannibal trope employed by colonialist rhetoric to justify exploitation of New World inhabitants and resources alike dictates virtually every decision he makes after landing on the island and serves to render illegible both the island and the Other. Indeed, the novel participates in a more pervasive discourse whereby the era's privileging of empiricism conflicts with representations of cannibalism and savagery in cartographical and literary representations of the New World. This epistemological dissonance manifests in \"Great Newes from the Barbadoes,\" a report of a failed slave revolt; the document emphasizes its veracity, which it unintentionally conflates with violence, while employing racist stereotypes. As evinced by Crusoe's refusal to abandon his fortified home despite concerns over its structural integrity, it is this ideological construction of the Other that endangers him, rather than any threat posed by New World \"savages.\" What disturbs Crusoe about the footprint is that it compels him to confront the contradictions of a racist dialectic that constructs alterity according to conflicting Christian, capitalist, and feudal paradigms, each of which seeks to justify further imperialist pursuits. Defoe thus explores the interiority of the interpellated self, using the footprint to foreground the challenge of circumventing biases in order to arrive at an empirical understanding of the spaces one inhabits and traverses.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"15 1","pages":"120 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76815532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901610
Victoria Vygodskaia-Rust
Abstract:The period from 1928 to 1933 represents a decisive break in which both the political culture and the socioeconomic circumstances of the Weimar Republic changed dramatically and thus had a pronounced impact on the discourse about women's role in society. While the seductive and androgynously clad flapper dominated the image of modern femininity in the early 1920s, by the late 1920s and into the early 1930s this icon gradually transitioned into a less provocative type with reenforced traditional attributes. As seen in the fashion publications and beauty contests around 1930, more feminine fashions and images of motherhood accompanied the representation of women. In popular literature, urban liberal writers such as Vicki Baum created "New Women" who combined progressive elements with more conservative aspects.Taking these considerations as a starting point, this paper investigates Baum's vision of domestic space and marital relations as seen in her novel Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel (1930). While best known for her poignant novels about professionally employed women in the Weimar Republic (stud. chem. Helene Willfüer, Pariser Platz 13, and others), especially in their depictions of modern public spaces such as hotels (Menschen im Hotel) and retail shops, in Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel Baum features a provincial housewife. I argue that with this novel Baum proposes her view of a reformed marriage by drawing attention to the psychological and emotional effects of her heroine's confinement—in a dilapidated house, in an unromantic marriage, as well as in a small town. In addition, I explore how the novel interweaves the contemporary debates about the modern kitchen and the New Woman with the so-called maternalist ideology in order to devise the parameters for motherhood and domesticity, thus capturing the shifting feminine ideal on the eve of the Nazi takeover.
摘要:1928年至1933年是魏玛共和国政治文化和社会经济环境发生巨大变化的决定性转折时期，这一时期对妇女社会角色的论述产生了显著影响。在20世纪20年代初，性感的、雌雄同体的飘逸女郎主导了现代女性的形象，但到了20世纪20年代末和30年代初，这一形象逐渐转变为一种不那么撩人的类型，强化了传统特征。从1930年左右的时尚出版物和选美比赛中可以看出，女性的形象越来越女性化，女性的形象也越来越女性化。在通俗文学中，像维姬·鲍姆这样的城市自由主义作家创造了“新女性”，她将进步元素与更保守的方面结合起来。本文以这些思考为出发点，考察鲍姆在小说《落在洛温克尔》(1930)中对家庭空间和婚姻关系的看法。虽然她最出名的是关于魏玛共和国职业女性的辛酸小说(种马)。化学。Helene willf， Pariser Platz 13等)，特别是在他们对酒店(Menschen im Hotel)和零售商店等现代公共空间的描绘中，在Lohwinckel Baum的Zwischenfall中刻画了一位乡土家庭主妇。我认为，在这部小说中，鲍姆提出了她对改革婚姻的看法，她把注意力集中在女主角被囚禁的心理和情感影响上——在一个破旧的房子里，在一个不浪漫的婚姻中，以及在一个小镇上。此外，我还探讨了小说如何将当代关于现代厨房和新女性的争论与所谓的母性主义意识形态交织在一起，以设计母性和家庭生活的参数，从而捕捉到纳粹接管前夕不断变化的女性理想。
{"title":"Housewives as New Women: Marital Relations and Domesticity in Vicki Baum's Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel (1930)","authors":"Victoria Vygodskaia-Rust","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901610","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The period from 1928 to 1933 represents a decisive break in which both the political culture and the socioeconomic circumstances of the Weimar Republic changed dramatically and thus had a pronounced impact on the discourse about women's role in society. While the seductive and androgynously clad flapper dominated the image of modern femininity in the early 1920s, by the late 1920s and into the early 1930s this icon gradually transitioned into a less provocative type with reenforced traditional attributes. As seen in the fashion publications and beauty contests around 1930, more feminine fashions and images of motherhood accompanied the representation of women. In popular literature, urban liberal writers such as Vicki Baum created \"New Women\" who combined progressive elements with more conservative aspects.Taking these considerations as a starting point, this paper investigates Baum's vision of domestic space and marital relations as seen in her novel Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel (1930). While best known for her poignant novels about professionally employed women in the Weimar Republic (stud. chem. Helene Willfüer, Pariser Platz 13, and others), especially in their depictions of modern public spaces such as hotels (Menschen im Hotel) and retail shops, in Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel Baum features a provincial housewife. I argue that with this novel Baum proposes her view of a reformed marriage by drawing attention to the psychological and emotional effects of her heroine's confinement—in a dilapidated house, in an unromantic marriage, as well as in a small town. In addition, I explore how the novel interweaves the contemporary debates about the modern kitchen and the New Woman with the so-called maternalist ideology in order to devise the parameters for motherhood and domesticity, thus capturing the shifting feminine ideal on the eve of the Nazi takeover.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"343 1","pages":"157 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78109160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901603
Justin V. Hastings, S. Derby
{"title":"Introduction: Confinement","authors":"Justin V. Hastings, S. Derby","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901603","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"107 1","pages":"13 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84732460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mml.2021.a901605
Caresse A. John
Abstract:In 1957, Leon Festinger published his findings on cognitive dissonance, and subsequently his theory became an important staple in social psychology. However, the concept of cognitive dissonance has not often been applied in the field of literature. Nella Larsen's Passing makes a strong case for the usefulness of cognitive dissonance, particularly when it comes to teaching our students not what to think but how to think in our current complex conversations about race and the multiplicity (and often conflicting nature) of our lived experiences. Passing narratives often show how the act of passing allows individuals access to certain freedoms typically unavailable to them; but Passing, by being imbedded within Irene's troubled cognitive space, also shows us the confining nature of a world in which passing acts as one of the only pathways to these freedoms. Teaching our students how to use cognitive dissonance—both the dissonance that exists within the story and the dissonance that can come from the story—is a way toward freedom: a freedom that does not transgress boundaries but destroys them altogether.
{"title":"Cognitive Dissonance in Nella Larsen's Passing","authors":"Caresse A. John","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.a901605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.a901605","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1957, Leon Festinger published his findings on cognitive dissonance, and subsequently his theory became an important staple in social psychology. However, the concept of cognitive dissonance has not often been applied in the field of literature. Nella Larsen's Passing makes a strong case for the usefulness of cognitive dissonance, particularly when it comes to teaching our students not what to think but how to think in our current complex conversations about race and the multiplicity (and often conflicting nature) of our lived experiences. Passing narratives often show how the act of passing allows individuals access to certain freedoms typically unavailable to them; but Passing, by being imbedded within Irene's troubled cognitive space, also shows us the confining nature of a world in which passing acts as one of the only pathways to these freedoms. Teaching our students how to use cognitive dissonance—both the dissonance that exists within the story and the dissonance that can come from the story—is a way toward freedom: a freedom that does not transgress boundaries but destroys them altogether.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"1 1","pages":"33 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90860620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew T. Lambert, Joel Wendland-Liu, Joseph C. Hansen, Stephanie R. Gates, B. W. Capo
Abstract:The Oak Openings documents, reproduces, and enforces a textual racial formation that strives to reconstruct and reshape a Native sovereign space of Anishinaabewaki into West Michigan. For Cooper, the transformation of the land, from “empty” to productive, anticipated a necessary conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity and assimilation of white civilization that forms the plot trajectory of his novel. Despite drawing on a discourse of an empty wilderness and providentially- and racially-ordained expansion, The Oak Openings, like many of Cooper’s so-called Indian novels, is compelled to address ongoing Native presence and the Anishinaabeg’s determined struggle for sovereignty. For Cooper, a bee discourse proved an effective fictional device to operationalizes whites’ imagined superiority as an ethical justification for settler-colonial process of land expropriation, mass killings, removal, and subjugation. Native history and culture prove unfriendly to the seeming inevitability of this settler colonial logic. Anishinaabe societies preferred alliances through mutually beneficial relations over violent confrontations. What has been read by scholars as subjugation through the supplanting of traditional Indian cultural values, in the context of Anishinaabewaki, should be regarded as the long-held cultural practice of resilience and resistance to subjugation.
{"title":"Introduction: Race, Ethnicity, and the Environment","authors":"Matthew T. Lambert, Joel Wendland-Liu, Joseph C. Hansen, Stephanie R. Gates, B. W. Capo","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Oak Openings documents, reproduces, and enforces a textual racial formation that strives to reconstruct and reshape a Native sovereign space of Anishinaabewaki into West Michigan. For Cooper, the transformation of the land, from “empty” to productive, anticipated a necessary conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity and assimilation of white civilization that forms the plot trajectory of his novel. Despite drawing on a discourse of an empty wilderness and providentially- and racially-ordained expansion, The Oak Openings, like many of Cooper’s so-called Indian novels, is compelled to address ongoing Native presence and the Anishinaabeg’s determined struggle for sovereignty. For Cooper, a bee discourse proved an effective fictional device to operationalizes whites’ imagined superiority as an ethical justification for settler-colonial process of land expropriation, mass killings, removal, and subjugation. Native history and culture prove unfriendly to the seeming inevitability of this settler colonial logic. Anishinaabe societies preferred alliances through mutually beneficial relations over violent confrontations. What has been read by scholars as subjugation through the supplanting of traditional Indian cultural values, in the context of Anishinaabewaki, should be regarded as the long-held cultural practice of resilience and resistance to subjugation.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"8 1","pages":"101 - 101 - 15 - 17 - 42 - 43 - 5 - 64 - 65 - 93 - 95 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77036527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“All-Electric” Narratives: Time-Saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945–2020 by Rachele Dini (review)","authors":"B. W. Capo","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"67 1","pages":"95 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89754472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The process of urbanization creates a social reality of estrangement from the land and natural world. In the 1940s Mexicans abandoned rural spaces in dramatic numbers; this era exemplifies this modern condition of separation from nature, and its repercussions appear in Mexican cultural productions from this era. Now regarded as a masterpiece of Mexican Cinema, the film María Candelaria (1943) directed by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández addresses this experience in a striking way: the film is at once socioculturally specific to post-revolutionary Mexico yet speaks to the viewer on a deeper and universal level through the depiction of the shared experiences of identity construction, social masks, perceptions of beauty, and, most importantly, separation from and loss of homeland. The film’s allure lies largely in its ability to spark emotions of the collective unconscious and this loss of homeland, and by extension a loss of culture, is central to this effect. The space of Xochimilco and its representation in the film serve as an alternate way of thinking about lo mexicano, as part of a symbiotic connection of land and self, harkening back to the Aztec and indigenous manners of thinking about the humanity and the environment. This article traces the historical context of the film under the Ávila Camacho presidency, then turns to artistic precursors to Maria Candelaria, following with a close reading of the characters’ relation to the film and their implications for the realities of the physical Mexican landscape.
{"title":"Homeland Lost: Threats to the Subject-Land Continuum in Emilio Fernández’s María Candelaria (1943)","authors":"Stephanie R. Gates","doi":"10.1353/mml.2021.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2021.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The process of urbanization creates a social reality of estrangement from the land and natural world. In the 1940s Mexicans abandoned rural spaces in dramatic numbers; this era exemplifies this modern condition of separation from nature, and its repercussions appear in Mexican cultural productions from this era. Now regarded as a masterpiece of Mexican Cinema, the film María Candelaria (1943) directed by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández addresses this experience in a striking way: the film is at once socioculturally specific to post-revolutionary Mexico yet speaks to the viewer on a deeper and universal level through the depiction of the shared experiences of identity construction, social masks, perceptions of beauty, and, most importantly, separation from and loss of homeland. The film’s allure lies largely in its ability to spark emotions of the collective unconscious and this loss of homeland, and by extension a loss of culture, is central to this effect. The space of Xochimilco and its representation in the film serve as an alternate way of thinking about lo mexicano, as part of a symbiotic connection of land and self, harkening back to the Aztec and indigenous manners of thinking about the humanity and the environment. This article traces the historical context of the film under the Ávila Camacho presidency, then turns to artistic precursors to Maria Candelaria, following with a close reading of the characters’ relation to the film and their implications for the realities of the physical Mexican landscape.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"58 1","pages":"65 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74071192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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