Symposium Program Sponsored by the “Suspended Orations” Roughing It, Chpt 7
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Quarry Farm in the 1870’s Quarry Farm Today American Humor and Matters of Empire A Quarry Farm Symposium Symposium Chair Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University Keynote Speaker John Wharton Lowe, University of Georgia Presenters Jalylah Burrell, San Jose State University James E. Caron, University of Hawaiʽi, Mānoa Darryl Dickson-Carr, Southern Methodist University Christopher Gilbert, Assumption University Bambi Haggins, University of California, Irvine Maggie Hennefeld, University of Minnesota Kate Morris, Santa Clara University Linda Morris, University of California, Davis Stanley Orr, University of Hawai‘i, West O‘ahu Matt Seybold, Elmira College Todd Nathan Thompson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Moderators David V. Gillota, University of Wisconsin-Platteville Lawrence Howe, Roosevelt University M. Montserrat Feu López, Sam Houston State University Tracy Wuster, University of Texas SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE (All times designated are Eastern Daylight Time) Friday, October 2 2:00-2:15 p.m. Gathering and Informal Introductions 2:15-3:15 pm Official Welcomes and Keynote Address CMTS Welcome Joseph Lemak, Director, Center for Mark Twain Studies Symposium Welcome Judith Yaross Lee, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Communication Studies, Ohio University Keynote Address John Wharton Lowe, Barbara Lester Methvin Distinguished Professor of Southern Literature, University of Georgia “Coyote’s Jokebook: Native American Humor and the Dismantlement of Empire” Judith Yaross Lee has given us much to consider in her pathbreaking essay, “American Humor and Matters of Empire”; her analysis sweeps across frontiers of history, literature, and most genres to redefine the parameters of the comic world first shaped by Constance Rourke so many years ago. My address today will apply Lee’s theories to what I call “internal imperialism,” which best describes the centuries-long assault on indigenous peoples of North America, a trajectory that sadly continues to this day. Fortunately, the rich resources of Native humor have combated these assaults repeatedly, and never so much as during the past thirty years. My talk will briefly show how humor has been used in Native cartoons, art, drama, film, and stand-up comedy, and then con- sider examples of literary Native humor in the works of Thomas King, Gerald Vizenor, James Welch, Sherman Alexie, and LeAnne Howe. John Wharton Lowe is the Barbara Lester Methvin Distinguished Professor of Southern Literature at the University of Georgia. Previously he was Robert Penn Warren Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Director of the Program in Louisiana and Caribbean Studies at Louisiana State University. Dr. Lowe has also taught at the University of Munich, Harvard University, Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame), and Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. He is author or editor of nine books, including Conversations with Ernest Gaines (1995), Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy (1997), and Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature (2016). He has published widely on the humor of African American, Native American, Italian American, Southern, Asian American, and circum-Caribbean literatures. He is the recipient of the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contributions to Ethnic Literary Studies, and has served as President of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, the Southern American Studies Association, MELUS, and the Louisiana Folklore Society. He is currently writing the authorized biography of Ernest J. Gaines. 3:15-3:30 p.m. Informal Q&A with John Wharton Lowe or Break and Socializing 3:30-4:45 p.m. Session One: Contemporary Humor of American Empire Moderator: David V. Gillota, University of Wisconsin-Platteville “Continental Drift: On Monuments, Memory and Kent Monkman” Kate Morris, Santa Clara University Linda Morris, University of California, Davis “The Issue with Empire and a Comic Stretch of the Imagination” Christopher Gilbert, Assumption University “Stand-Up Comedy & Survival” Bambi Haggins, University of California, Irvine 4:45-5:00 p.m. Reflections on the first day from Judith Yaross Lee 5:00-5:15 p.m. Informal Q&A with Session One Presenters or Break and Socializing 5:15-5:45 p.m. Virtual Happy Hours Hosted by Individual Organizations Partipants are encouraged to enjoy a beverage of their choice Saturday, October 3 1:00-1:50 p.m. Session Two: Antebellum Entanglements with Empire Moderator: Tracy Wuster, University of Texas “Gender Matters: Addison and Steele’s Amiable Satirist as a Regime of Truth in Antebellum America” James E. Caron, University of Hawaiʽi, Mānoa “‘[W]e could enter into the spirit of his wit and humour’: Lessons from Native Pacific Studies for American Humor Studies” Todd Nathan Thompson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania 1:50-2:15 p.m. Informal Q&A with Session Two Presenters or Break and Socializing 2:15-3:05 p.m. Session Three: Early 20th Century Comic Confrontations with European Imperialism Moderator: M. Montserrat Feu López, Sam Houston State University “The Funny Man vs. the Butcher: Anti-Imperialist Trolling & the International Reception of King Leopold’s Soliloquy” Matt Seybold, Elmira College “‘Tyranny at Home’: Feminist Slapstick Comedy on the Brink of Global Catastrophe” Maggie Hennefeld, University of Minnesota 3:05-3:30 p.m. Informal Q&A with Session Three Presenters or Break and Socializing 3:30-4:45 p.m. Session Four: Matters of Empire in Post-WWII Humor and Satire Moderator: Lawrence Howe, Roosevelt University “‘Strange and Beautiful Country’: Era Bell Thompson’s Boundary-Crossing Humor” Jalylah Burrell, San Jose State University “‘I wonder which of you is real’: John Kneubuhl’s Indigenous Confidence Man” Stanley Orr, University of Hawai‘i, West O‘ahu “Apocalypse Always: The End of Empire in African American Writing Since World War II” Darryl Dickson-Carr, Southern Methodist University 4:45-5:00 p.m. Informal Q&A with Session Four Presenters or Break and Socializing 5:00-6:00 p.m. Wrap-Up and Farewell Happy Hour: Matters of Empire and American Humor Studies Moderator: Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University Participants are encouraged to enjoy a beverage of their choice AMERICAN HUMOR AND MATTERS OF EMPIRE A Quarry Farm Symposium ABSTRACTS (arranged by order of delivery) Session One: Contemporary Humor of American Empire Moderator: David V. Gillota, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, author of Ethnic Humor in Multiethnic America Kate Morris, Santa Clara University [email protected] Linda Morris, University of California, Davis [email protected] “Continental Drift: On Monuments, Memory, and Kent Monkman” During the first several months of 2020, visitors entering the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum ofArt in New York City were greeted by two monumental canvases that depict a mass of humanity adrift in rising seas, or laboring to come ashore on an already-overcrowded island. The paintings, Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence of the People, are by contemporary Cree artist Kent Monkman, whose not-so-subtle interventions into colonialist narratives hinge on the artist’s clever reworking of European representational tropes. The figures that writhe and struggle and cavort across these two dystopic landscapes are all quotations from the Met’s vast collection of European paintings and sculptures, especially those that depict Indigenous North Americans. This presentation will explore the role that humor plays in Monkman’s relentless quest to upend empire, one painting at a time. The artist’s talent for parody and satire is on full display in his earlier painting cycle, Four Continents, completed in 2012. The four large (7x11’) canvases in the series represent Asia, Europe, Africa, and America – each continent allegorized as a statuesque female in the manner of Daniel Chester French’s Four Continents sculptures installed along the façade of the United States Customs House in lower Manhattan in 1907. French’s works, in turn, were also an artistic quotation of the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Apollo and the Four Continents fresco painted in Germany in 1752. Of particular interest is Tiepolo’s depiction of America as a bare-breasted woman wearing a feathered headdress riding a monstrous crocodile, and this is the motif that Monkman reproduces in his Miss America of 2012. If Tiepolo’s “original” was meant to depict America as wild, uncivilized, and ripe for the taking, Monkman’s painting insists on the opposite. His America is a land overrun with Europeans from past and present: politicians and businessmen, missionaries, conquistadors, and frontiersmen savage one other in a never-ending quest for dominion while Indigenous men and women do their best to stay above the fray. Characteristic of so many of Monkman’s camp parodies, Miss America features the artist’s transgender alter ego, Miss Chief. Here she reigns over the chaos at her feet. Through parody, Monkman exposes the absurdity of both the “original” image and the laudatory rhetoric of colonialism that inspired it. Miss Chief’s trickster antics frequently blur the line between camp and tragedy, and in the end of this presenta- tion we will turn our attention to Monkman’s recent highly controversial painting Hanky Panky (2020). In this work, Miss Chief stands over an apprehensive Justin Trudeau on his hands and knees, pants down and restrained by two Native women. Gathered around this group, a crowd of indigenous women bear witness to the unnamed ritual that Miss Chief is about to perform. To a woman, they are