DOCSLIB.ORG

American Fiction and the Sexual Politics of US Civic

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
American Fiction and the Sexual Politics of US Civic UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Time’s Citizens: American Fiction and the Sexual Politics of U.S. Civic Membership, 1886-1929 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by William Stoughton Clark 2018 © Copyright by William Stoughton Clark 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Time’s Citizens: American Fiction and the Sexual Politics of U.S. Civic Membership, 1886-1929 by William Stoughton Clark Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Christopher J. Looby, Co-Chair Professor Richard A. Yarborough, Co-Chair “Time’s Citizens” explores how American fiction shaped the public classification of sexual identification and civic membership in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During a period when discourses of anti-progressive deviance were used for purposes of civic exclusion, “Time’s Citizens” argues that a subset of novelists deployed the qualities ascribed to queers in order to claim civic presence. As critics have shown, the U.S. novel in both its realist and its romantic incarnations has long depicted heterosexual life to underwrite civil belonging. The novels of my study—Henry James’s The Bostonians, William Dean Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes, Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Nella Larsen’s Passing and Quicksand—expose and critique this formation through their depiction of racial, sexual, and gendered exclusion. Even as the modern ii sexual binary was coming into articulation, these novels show queer modes of belonging that did not assimilate to the heteronormative model standardized in the law and assumed in most literature. “Time’s Citizens” claims that this strain of U.S. fiction reveals the limitations on rights for subjects who did not contribute to the narrative of national progress, which was associated with marriage, reproductive futurity, property ownership, and the regulated time of the industrial economy. In dialogue with current trends in queer theory and historiography, “Time’s Citizens” suggests that the novel was uniquely positioned to register the political stakes of queer difference. Deploying the temporal deviance used to represent queer subjects and their relation to, antagonism toward, or erasure by the progressive, reproductive state, the novel was able to represent modes of civic presence that were becoming impossible under U.S. social and legal regimes. To explore the relation between politics and the novel, “Time’s Citizens” works at the intersection of legal studies, critical race theory, and the investigations of queer time to show how marginal figures of a variety of identities relate to the ongoing struggle for equal rights and representation. When taken together, the novels of this study question the presumption of normativity and view queerness as a mode of identification deeply tied to civic structures and local politics. Instead of carving a separate sphere for queer being, these texts sought relations to citizenship not predicated on conformity but able to accommodate more diverse modes of expression and identification. iii The dissertation of William Stoughton Clark is approved. Yogita Goyal Carrie Leah Hyde Joan Waugh Christopher J. Looby, Committee Co-Chair Richard A. Yarborough, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv For family, the ones who got me here, and those I found along the way. v Contents Acknowledgments vii Vita ix Introduction 1 1 | Their Own Times and Places: Narrative Time and the Construction 35 of the Queer Citizen in Henry James’ The Bostonians 2 | A Deceitfully Permanent Present: Realism and the Limits of 86 Reproductive Futurity in William Dean Howells’ A Hazard of New Fortunes 3 | Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition and the Racialization of 141 Progress 4 | Queer Backwardness and the Nativist Impulse: The Case of Willa 196 Cather 5 | Expatriate Longings: Finding Queerness Elsewhere in Nella Larsen’s 255 Passing and Quicksand Coda | James Baldwin and Discovering Love Beyond the Nation 312 Bibliography 322 vi Acknowledgments So many contributed to the writing of this project, it seems impossible to do those contributions justice. First, this dissertation wouldn’t have happened without my committee, whose guidance, care, intellectual rigor, and encouragement kept me curious and engaged throughout its research and writing. Chris Looby helped me to write with exactness and clarity, but also to see the importance of compassion and collegiality in our profession. Dialogue with Richard Yarborough always encouraged me to see intellectual challenges as opportunities and left me more excited to tackle conceptual knots than when I started. I am so grateful to be counted as one of the many students both have mentored through graduate school and beyond. Yogita Goyal, without fail, pushed me to the limits of my conceptual framing, helping me to see the broadest stakes and implications of this project where I couldn’t. Thank you for always motivating me to reach beyond what I can yet see in my work. Carrie Hyde has proven an interlocutor one can only dream of, especially for thinking about the particular legal history this project traces; the force and clarity of her scholarship have proven motivational, and her guidance in even the most granular concepts and levels of writing have made me a better scholar. Thanks to all of you I have completed this project feeling vitalized, grateful for what I’ve learned in the process, and eager to start its next phase. The UCLA English Department has been more of a home that I ever could have imagined when I took my first class as an undergrad; from poetry workshops to grad seminars to teaching classes myself, I cannot imagine my life without this department. The department’s generous staff, and superb faculty have made the rigors and difficulties of graduate school something that I will always look back on with respect and pride. Jeanette Gilkison, Janel Munguia, Michael Lambert helped me through the process of grad school on the administrative side; I remember and am thankful for all that help. Thanks for the many conversations with Joseph Bristow, Michael Cohen, Helen Deutsch, Raphael Pérez-Torres, Marissa López, Reed Wilson, Justin Torres, and Uri McMillan; your advice, conversation, and perspective have always been invaluable. The Americanist Research Colloquium proved an extraordinary place to share work, as well as to learn from other scholars from all stages in their careers; I’m also grateful for the attentive readers of the 20/21 Reading group. Chris Mott, you’ve made our teaching environment the envy of the university; whatever I know about instruction is thanks to you. Not by any means least, our department has devoted essential resources to its graduate students that have made my research and progress possible in an environment of scarcity; as a recipient of multiple Department fellowships, including the Grace M. Hunt Award for Archival Research, I have benefited greatly from the department’s generosity. I am grateful to have learned in and been supported by such a place as this. But most importantly, I cannot imagine a more supportive, generous, incisive, and inspiring community of scholars and friends than those I have met, learned from, and collaborated with during my graduate career. The list cannot but feel limited, but especially thanks to Kirsten Lew, Sujin Youn, Jay Jin, Grant Rosson, and Caitlin Benson for being interlocutors, reading many drafts, and always offering a wise word. Eric Newman has been my comrade in arms; for sharing so much of our writing and for all our conversations about queer theory, thank you. These last few years would have been inconceivably impoverished without the friendship, companionship, vii and scholarly engagement of the Normandie Ave crew, Angelina Del Balzo, Ben Beck, and Sam Sommers, always ready for a discussion about C18-19 or life more generally at a coffee shop or over a beer. Thanks to Shir Alon for long writing sessions under the orange tree and to Sydney Miller, my compatriot at the Huntington, who made the last year bearable. To Jonathan Kinkaid, Abraham Encinas, and Efren Lopez, thanks for keeping it real. I could not have grown as a writer or an instructor without Jackie Ardam, Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Renee Hudson, and Amy Wong, whose example helped me to learn elegance and care in writing, whose friendship and wisdom I couldn’t do without. To Kate Bergren, Justin Eichenlaub, Katherine Isokawa, and Adrienne Posner, thanks for your friendship across many years and places. The members of my cohort have always inspired me in their work, both academic and otherwise; special appreciation goes to Lindsay Wilhelm, Sharon Tran, Medaya Ocher, Claire Kim, Maggie Howell, Sharon Chon, Erin Conley, and Gabriel Mehlman. Thanks also to Whit Strub, now at Rutgers, and to Comfort Azubuko-Udah, Gabriela Valenzuela, and Jené Pledger, good luck, keep them honest. The department alone is but a part of my experience at UCLA, and I also want to thank the many other people I have met and collaborated with, from UAW 2865 to the Undergraduate Research Center and the Graduate Writing Center, especially Yvette Martinez, Andrea Slater, Calvin Ho, Michael Moses, and Billie Buchanan. I’m proud of all of you. Without the support of many dear friends, especially Stephanie Ding and Nathan Brown, the rough parts of grad school that inevitably come would have seemed unnavigable. Los Angeles wouldn’t be the same place to me without Ann Tsueng, and Paula Schaffer, thanks for always being there through thick and thin for so, so many years. Samara Weiss and Patrick Jones, I’ve learned so much from you both as intellects, writers, friends, and travelers. Thanks to the Hammarskjold crew, especially Jenn Chen, Abhay Sukumaran, and Diederik Marius and Julia Schmitt, for all the back-country adventures, bike rides, and shared meals over the years; thanks to the 24th and Bryant set, Susan Kim, Bryce Esch, the Maki family and Linh Phu for all those years of good food, drink, and conversation.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Realist Magic in the Fiction of William Dean Howells STEPHANIE C
    Realist Magic in the Fiction of William Dean Howells STEPHANIE C. PALMER 14LHEN the character Bartley Hubbard in William Dean Howells's A Modern In­ stance (1882) brags that the ideal newspaper would solicit "an account of suicide, or an elopement, or a murder, or an acci­ dent" from "every fellow that could spell, in any part of the country," he voices Howells's own misgivings about the sensa­ tional aspect of communication through mass culture.1 Rather than fostering cognitive and emotional connections between diverse social groups for the purpose of preventing further suf­ fering, newspaper accounts of personal calamities or large- scale industrial accidents in the late nineteenth century tried to thrill readers solely for the purposes of prestige and circula­ tion. Howells was not committed to determining how to pre­ vent suicide, murder, or industrial accidents, but he had a deep interest in determining what—if not sensational tales of for­ tune and disaster—would inspire people from different eco­ nomic, political, and religious backgrounds to see each other as respected members of a human community. Howells's key Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 210-236. ISSN: 0891-9356. © 2002 by The Regents of the University of California/Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 1 William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance, ed. George N. Bennett, David J. Nord- loh, and David Kleinman, vol. 10 of A Selected Edition of W. D.
    [Show full text]
  • Stae
    GEORGE C. CARRINGTON, JR. STAe <ffnwnetibe The World and Art of the Howells Novel Ohio State University Press $6.25 THE IMMENSE COMPLEX DRAMA The World and Art of the Howells Novel GEORGE C. CARRINGTON, JR. One of the most productive and complex of the major American writers, William Dean Howells presents many aspects to his biogra­ phers and critics — novelist, playwright, liter­ ary critic, editor, literary businessman, and Christian Socialist. Mr. Carrington chooses Howells the novelist as the subject of this penetrating examination of the complex relationships of theme, subject, technique, and form in the world of Howells fiction. He attempts to answer such questions as, What happens if we look at the novels of Howells with the irreducible minimum of exter­ nal reference and examine them for meaning? What do their structures tell us? What are their characteristic elements? Is there significance in the use of these elements? In the frequency of their use? In the patterns of their use? Avoiding the scholar-critic's preoccupation with programmatic realism, cultural concerns, historical phenomena, and parallels and influ­ ences, Mr. Carrington moves from the world of technical criticism into Howells' fiction and beyond, into the modern world of anxious, struggling, middle-class man. As a result, a new Howells emerges — a Howells who interests us not just because he was a novelist, but because of the novels he wrote: a Howells who lives as an artist or not at all. George C. Carrington, Jr., is assistant pro­ fessor of English at the Case Institute of Tech­ nology in Cleveland, Ohio.
    [Show full text]
  • William Dean Howells and the Antiurban Tradition 55
    william dean howells and the antiurban tradition a reconsideration gregory I. crider The debate about William Dean Howells' attitudes toward the late nineteenth-century American city involve the much broader question of the place of antiurbanism in American thought. Responding to the charges of H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis and other post-World War I critics who had condemned the author as a complacent symbol of the nineteenth-century literary establishment, scholars in the fifties and early sixties portrayed him as a Middle Western rural democrat who spent much of his adult life criticizing urban-industrial America.1 Unfortu­ nately, in attempting to revive Howells' reputation, these critics exag­ gerated his occasional nostalgia for the Ohio village of his youth, leaving the impression that he was an alienated critic of the city, if not genuinely antiurban. Although recent scholars have partly revised this view, critics have generally continued to accept the argument that the author's well- known affinity for socialism, together with his nostalgia for a vanishing countryside, left him an unswerving critic of the city.2 During the years in which scholars were discovering these antiurban sentiments, urban historians and sociologists began challenging the depth and cohesiveness of what had long been accepted as a monolithic, anti- urban tradition, dating back to Jefferson and Crevecoeur, and persisting through the transcendentalists, the pragmatists and literary naturalists, and the Chicago school of urban sociology, to the present. R.
    [Show full text]
  • La Voz September 2005
    WWW.LAVOZ.US.COM PERIÓDICO BILINGÜE ABRIL • APRILH 2011 PO BOX 3688, SANTA ROSA, CA 95402 VOLUME / VOLUMEN X, NUMBER / NÚMERO 5 ¡Nueva galería de fotos de La Voz ! www.lavoz.us.com 50% INGLÉS – 50% ESPAÑOL, un periódico comunitario producido y operado en la región. 50% IN ENGLISH! BILINGUAL New La Voz photo gallery! www.lavoz.us.com The Voice 50% ENGLISH – 50% SPANISH NEWSPAPER locally owned and operated © 2011 • La Voz • 50¢ community newspaper. BILINGUAL NEWSPAPER ¡50% EN ESPAÑOL! El Mejor Periódico Bilingüe del Norte de California NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S FOREMOST BILINGUAL NEWSPAPER DOS IDIOMAS, DOS CULTURAS, UN ENTENDIMIENTO BalenciagaBalenciagaandSpain, and Spain, de YoungoungMuseum, Museum, SananFr Francisco TWO LANGUAGES, TWO CULTURES, BalenciagaBalenciagayEspaña, y España, MuseoMuseoDe De Young, enenS SananFr Francisco ONE UNDERSTANDING ¡VENGA A CELEBRAR EL 10mo. ANIVERSARIO DEL CENTRO PARA LA JORNADA DIARIA DE GRATON! viernes, 8 de abril, 2011 de 7pm - 11pm Sebastopol Community Cultural Center, 390 Morris St, Sebastopol, CA Compre sus boletos por Internet: brownpapertickets.com Precio de $25 - $50. Gratis-niños menores de 14. No se rechaza a persona alguna por falta de fondos. Para boletos e informacion llame al 707.829.1864 www.gratondaylabor.org COME CELEBRATE THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GRATON DAY LABOR CENTER! Friday, April 8th, 2011 from 7pm - 11pm Spain, ca. 1922. Mantón de Manila (shawl) Silk, polychrome silk floral embroidery. The Hispanic Society of America, New York, gift of Mary Ellen Padin 2002. Foto de / Photo by Ani Weaver Sebastopol Community Cultural Center La colonización española en Filipinas inició en el siglo XVI, asimismo durante la infancia de Cristóbal Balenciaga mucha de la riqueza de la costa vasca aún se derivaba del intercambio 390 Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 con ese país.
    [Show full text]
  • Female Flamenco Artists: Brave, Transgressive, Creative Women, Masters
    Ángeles CRUZADO RODRÍGUEZ Universidad de Sevilla Female flamenco artists: brave, transgressive, creative women, masters... essential to understand flamenco history Summary From its birth, in the last third of nineteenth century, and during the first decades of the twentieth, flamenco has counted on great female leading figures -singers, dancers and guitar players-, who have made important contributions to that art and who, in many cases, have ended their lives completely forgotten and ruined. On the other hand, in Francoist times, when it was sought to impose the model of the woman as mother and housewife, it is worth emphasizing another range of female figures who have not developed a professional career but have assumed the important role of transmitting their rich artistic family legacy to their descendants. Besides rescuing many of these leading figures, this article highlights the main barriers and difficulties that those artists have had to face because they were women. Keywords: flamenco history, women, flamenco singers, flamenco dancers, guitar players 1. Introduction Flamenco is an art in which, from the beginning, there has been an important gender segregation. Traditionally women have been identified with dancing, which favours body exhibition, while men have been related to guitar playing and to those flamenco styles which are considered more solemn, such as seguiriya. Nevertheless, this type of attitudes are based in prejudices without a scientific base. Re-reading flamenco history from gender perspective will allow us to discover the presence of a significant number of women, many of whom have been forgotten, whose contribution has been essential to mold flamenco art as we know it now.
    [Show full text]
  • How Second-Wave Feminism Forgot the Single Woman Rachel F
    Hofstra Law Review Volume 33 | Issue 1 Article 5 2004 How Second-Wave Feminism Forgot the Single Woman Rachel F. Moran Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Moran, Rachel F. (2004) "How Second-Wave Feminism Forgot the Single Woman," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 33: Iss. 1, Article 5. Available at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol33/iss1/5 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hofstra Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Moran: How Second-Wave Feminism Forgot the Single Woman HOW SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM FORGOT THE SINGLE WOMAN Rachel F. Moran* I cannot imagine a feminist evolution leading to radicalchange in the private/politicalrealm of gender that is not rooted in the conviction that all women's lives are important, that the lives of men cannot be understoodby burying the lives of women; and that to make visible the full meaning of women's experience, to reinterpretknowledge in terms of that experience, is now the most important task of thinking.1 America has always been a very married country. From early colonial times until quite recently, rates of marriage in our nation have been high-higher in fact than in Britain and western Europe.2 Only in 1960 did this pattern begin to change as American men and women married later or perhaps not at all.3 Because of the dominance of marriage in this country, permanently single people-whether male or female-have been not just statistical oddities but social conundrums.
    [Show full text]
  • William Dean Howells (1837-1920) Was Born in Martinsville (Now Martins Ferry), Ohio
    William Dean Howells Topic Guide for Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) Introduction William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was born in Martinsville (now Martins Ferry), Ohio. Howells worked at the Ohio State Journal in Columbus before becoming an editor at the Atlantic Monthly. With the publication of his novel, A Modern Instance, in 1882, Howells became known for realism, a writing style he promoted through his work at the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine. His reputation continued to grow through the 1885 publication of The Rise of Silas Lapham. Howells also wrote much in support of American writers, encouraging writers such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett and Paul Laurence Dunbar. His varied Christian Socialist involvement led him to embrace social justice and to critique industrial capitalism, viewpoints which can be seen in his 1890 novel, A Hazard of New Fortunes, which was inspired by the Haymarket riots. Important Dates . March 1, 1837: William Dean Howells is born in Martinsville (now Martins Ferry), Ohio. 1852: Howells’ father secretly has one of Howells’ poems published in the Ohio State Journal. 1858: Howells begins work at the Ohio State Journal writing poems and short stories, and translating works from French, Spanish, and German into English. December 24, 1862: Howells marries Elinor Mead at the American Embassy in Paris. 1865: Howells returns to America and begins writing for the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine. January 1866: Howells becomes assistant editor at the Atlantic Monthly. 1871-1881: Howells serves as Atlantic Monthly’s full editor. 1872: Howells begins publishing novels.
    [Show full text]
  • Spain and the Philippines at Empire's End | University of Warwick
    09/25/21 HP310: Spain and the Philippines at Empire's End | University of Warwick HP310: Spain and the Philippines at View Online Empire's End (2016/17) Adam Lifshey. 2008. ‘The Literary Alterities of Philippine Nationalism in José Rizal’s “El Filibusterismo”.’ PMLA 123 (5): 1434–47. http://0-www.jstor.org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/stable/25501945?seq=1#page_scan_tab _contents. Alda Blanco. n.d. ‘Memory-Work and Empire: Madrid’s Philippines Exhibition (1887).’ Journal of Romance Studies 5 (1): 53–63. https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=f9466952-5520-e711-80c9-005056af4099. Anderson, Benedict. 16AD. ‘First Filipino.’ 16AD. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n20/benedict-anderson/first-filipino. ———. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. and ext. ed. London: Verso. http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2727725. Arbues-Fandos, Natalia. 2008. ‘The Manila Shawl Route.’ 2008. https://riunet.upv.es/bitstream/handle/10251/31505/2008_03_137_142.pdf?sequence=1. Camara, Eduardo Martin de la. 1922. ‘Parnaso Filipino. Antologia de Poetas Del Archipielago Magallanico.’ 1922. https://ia802609.us.archive.org/13/items/parnasofilipino16201gut/16201-h/16201-h.htm#p 103. Castro, Juan E. de. 2011. ‘En Qué Idioma Escribe Ud.?: Spanish, Tagalog, and Identity in José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.’ MLN 126 (2): 303–21. https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2011.0014. ‘Christian Doctrine, in Spanish and Tagalog (Manila, 1593; World Digital Library).’ n.d. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/82/view/1/5/. ‘Competing Colonialisms: The Portuguese, Spanish and French Presence in Asia.
    [Show full text]
  • García Márquez, Gabriel ''Cien Años De Soledad''-Sp-En.P65
    García’s Cien Gregory Rabassa Cien años de soledad ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE de by Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel García Márquez tr. by Gregory Rabassa bajado de Libros Tauro Avon Books, http://www.LibrosTauro.com.ar New York, USA [incontables errores de escaner sobre todo de concordancias] I. Chapter 1 Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel MANY YEARS LATER as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de veinte casas father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas care- prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, cían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarías con el dedo. and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Todos los años, por el mes de marzo, una familia de gitanos Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies desarrapados plantaba su carpa cerca de la aldea, y con un grande would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of alboroto de pitos y timbales daban a conocer los nuevos inventos.
    [Show full text]
  • Avila Gillian M 2020 Masters.Pdf (12.22Mb)
    REPOSITIONING THE OBJECT: EXPLORING PROP USE THROUGH THE FLAMENCO TRILOGY MARIA AVILA A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DANCE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO APRIL, 2020 © MARIA AVILA, 2020 ii Abstract Reflecting on the creation process of my flamenco trilogy, this thesis explores how one can reposition iconic flamenco objects when devising, creating, and producing three short films: The Fan, The Rose and The Bull. Each film examines personal, historical, and local relationships to iconic flamenco objects, enabled through the collaboration with filmmakers: Audrey Bow, Dayna Szyndrowski, and Clint Mazo. iii Dedication I wish to dedicate this thesis to my mother Pat Smith. An inspirational teacher, artist, arts enthusiast, and the most wonderful mother a daughter could ask for. Miss you. iv Acknowledgements The journey to complete my MFA would not have been possible without the support of many individuals. Thank you to my collaborators Audrey Bow, Dayna Szyndrowski, Clint Mazo, Michael Rush, Sydney Cochrane, Bonnie Takahashi, Josephine Casadei, Verna Lee, Adya Della Vella, and Gerardo Avila for contributing your time and your talents. Thank you to my friends and family, you indeed made this all possible. Thank you to Connie Doucette, Adya Della Vella and Gerardo Avila, for your unconditional support. To my love Clint for risking it all and taking this journey with me. Thank you to my welcoming and encouraging classmates Emilio Colalillo, Raine Madison, Natasha Powell, Lisa Brkich, Christine Brkich, Patricia Allison, and Kari Pederson. Thank you to my editor Nadine Ryan for your dedication, enthusiasm and critical eye.
    [Show full text]
  • A Hazard of New Professions: Mrs. Mandel and the Business of Class
    A Hazard of New Professions: Mrs. Mandel and the Business of Class LI Hsin-ying National Taiwan University1 When asked to explain Mrs. Mandel in A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), Fulkerson proudly claims to have invented her (143). Her placement in the Dryfoos family must have been a novelty at the time for William Dean Howells to endorse his boast. To the parvenu Dryfooses she serves the function of surrogate mistress of the household—hostess, guardian of the daughters, chaperone, housekeeper, governess, social secretary, travel companion, personal assistant. More than the sum of her duties, she, in Fulkerson’s words, “runs the whole concern socially and economically” (144). The idea perhaps never really caught on, because her profession lacks a proper name to this day. Yet the demand for her kind of talent was such that Edith Wharton found similar employment for two characters in The House of Mirth (1905)—Carry Fisher and Lily Bart—although she also shied from naming the profession.1 This paper studies the occupation of Mrs. Mandel, the first of her kind in American Literature, to examine the specific socio-cultural conditions that inspired her creation and her relevance to the discussion of these socio-cultural issues in Howells’ novel. The character satisfies an urgent need of the expanding upper class in late nineteenth-century America, where the nouveau riche, in their attempt to find social acceptance, created a prospective market for cultural guidance. Howells turns this potential commodification of class knowledge into a fictional career opportunity for destitute genteel women. The vocation offers the novelist a chance to dramatize the power relations between money and taste, adding another dimension to the novel’s major conflict between capital and labor.
    [Show full text]
  • Encounters with Nelida Tirado, José Moreno and Calvin Hazen
    Studio BFPL: Encounters with Nelida Tirado, José Moreno and Calvin Hazen Nelida Tirado, dance José Moreno, voice Calvin Hazen, guitar LAND "Solea" abbreviated from the word "Soledad' often referred to as the Mother of the flamenco forms, means loneliness. The feeling and content of the music/dance is generally serious in nature, often with a sententious tone conveying a feeling of intimate pain and despair. SEA "Alegria" meaning joy, is of the family of vibrant flamenco forms of the rich port and naval station of Cadiz, Spain. Situated on a slice of land surrounded by sea, it boasts some of Spain's most beautiful architecture, beaches and sunny climate. The feel of the piece reflects the lively life there often referencing sailors and many seas. Accompanied by a mantón de manila, the manila shawl is very popular in Andalucia for festive occasions and also used as an accessory in the dance. The women use shawls to enhance and add drama to the performance twirling it around her body and air. AIR "Cantiñas" originating in the area of Cadiz in Andalucia, is festive reflecting the feeling of Cadiz where cantiñear is synonym of playing and improvising. Elements inherent of the spirit of cantiñas. About Nelida Tirado Nelida Tirado began her formal training at Ballet Hispanico of New York at the age of six. Barely out of her teens, she was invited to tour the U.S. with Jose Molina Bailes Españoles, a soloist in Carlota Santana’s Flamenco Vivo, soloist and dance captain in Compañía Maria Pages and in Compania Antonio El Pipa.
    [Show full text]