UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Loss, Rumination, and Narrative: Chicana/O Melancholy As Generative State a Dissertation

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Loss, Rumination, and Narrative: Chicana/O Melancholy As Generative State a Dissertation UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Loss, Rumination, and Narrative: Chicana/o Melancholy as Generative State A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Chicana and Chicano Studies by Michelle Patricia Baca Committee in Charge: Professor Francisco Lomelí, Chair Professor María Herrera-Sobek Professor Carl Gutierrez-Jones December 2014 The dissertation of Michelle Patricia Baca is approved. María Herrera-Sobek Carl Gutierrez Jones Francisco Lomelí, Chair December 2014 Loss, Rumination, and Narrative: Chicana/o Melancholy as Generative State Copyright © 2014 by Michelle Patricia Baca iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is dedicated to the loving tribe that is comprised of my family, friends, teachers, and colleagues. Thanks to this bunch I’ve been blessed with love, support, and the complete confidence that I could do anything I set my mind to. Thank you to my parents, Mama and Dad I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I wouldn’t be where I am without you. Thank you to Joe, the best brother in the world. Thank you to my teachers, all of them ever. Thank you to my colleagues and friends. Thank you for inspiring me, challenging me, and supporting me. Thank you to Justin, my partner in life and love. Thank you for bearing with me, and being proud of me. Thank you to my committee, your hard work and dedication has made this work possible. Thank you for your guidance and mentorship. iv Michelle Patricia Baca 5673 Encina Rd. #204. Goleta, CA 93117 Department of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara 626-758-7016 EDUCATION Master of Arts University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (Fall 2007) Master of Arts in Chicana/o Studies, concentration in Chicana/o Literature and Critical Race and Gender Studies Master of Arts University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (May 2005) Master of Arts in English, concentration in Chicana/o and 19th Century U.S. American Literature Bachelor of Arts Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA (May 2001) Bachelor of Arts in English Literature HONORS, GRANTS AND AWARDS Fall 2011 Awarded the President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship Spring 2011 Awarded a quarter of fellowship support from the Chicana/o Studies Department. Fall 2009 Awarded a quarter of fellowship support from the Chicana/o Studies Department. Spring 2009 Awarded a quarter of fellowship support from the Chicana/o Studies Department. Fall 2007 Named Lead TA of the Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara Fall 2006 Named Lead TA of the Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara Winter 2006 Received a travel grant to Spain from the Center for Chicana/o Studies to present at a literature conference. Fall 2005 Received Department Fellowship, Department of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara Spring 2004 Received Katherine Mather Simms Best Essay Award, Department of English, University of New Mexico v Spring 2004 Received travel grant, Department of English, University of Mexico Fall 2003 Received Graduate Fellowship Award, University of New Mexico Summer 1998 Occidental College Research Grant to research Chicana/o Identity Fall 1997 Presidential Scholarship, Occidental College CONFERENCES Fall 2010 Presented as part of Chicana/o Studies Departmental Colloquium on Sandra Cisneros Fall 2008 Presented as part of the Luis Leal Award Colloquium on Pat Mora Fall 2008 “Melancholy Without Despair: The Archive of Fabiola Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus.” 2008 Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project Conference, Houston, TX Fall 2007 Presented as part of the Luis Leal Award Colloquium on Alejandro Morales Winter 2007 “Bodies that Work: Amputation and Materiality in Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues” MELUS Conference, Fresno, CA Spring 2006 “The Amputation of Mestiza Consciousness in Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues.” Chicana/o Literature Conference, Alcala de Henares, Spain Fall 2004 “(Re)Constructing Nativity Fray Angélico Chávez’s La Conquistadora” Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference, Albuquerque, NM Fall 2003 “Epic History, Novelistic Discourse: Fray Angélico Chávez’s La Conquistadora” Western American Literature Conference, Houston, TX PUBLICATIONS Fall 2010 Second author credit w/Professor Barvosa on “Women’s Leadership in the Development of Latina/o Studies,” Entry in Gender Women’s Leadership: A Reference Handbook. Sage Publications. (2010) Fall 2007 “The Leaky Bodies of Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues.” One Hundred Years of Loyalty in Honor of Luis Leal. Sara Poot Herrera, Francisco A. Lomelí & Maria Herrera-Sobek, eds. vi Fall 2006 Book review in Latino Studies Journal. Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical & Pedagogical Perspectives. Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes & Anne Elizabeth Goldman, eds. Winter 2004 Book review in Western American Literature Quarterly. Conflicts of Interest: The letters of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Rosaura Sanchez & Beatrice Pita, eds. TEACHING AND RESEARCH Fall 2010 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Head TA for CH ST 1A. TAs attend lectures, lead section, manage all administrative tasks for the course and grade student writing. Spring 2010 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. TA for CH ST 1C. TAs attend lectures, lead sections grade student writing. Winter 2010 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. TA for CH ST 184A. TAs attend lectures, lead sections and grade student writing. Winter 2009 Women’s Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant: Led three sections of WM ST 60. TAs attend lectures, lead class discussions, and grade student writing. Fall 2008 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. TA for CH ST 184A. TAs attend lectures, lead sections and grade student writing. Spring 2008 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. TA for CH ST 183. TAs attend lectures, lead sections and grade student writing. Winter 2008 Women’s Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant: Led three sections of WM ST 60. TAs attend lectures, lead class discussions, and grade student writing. Fall 2007 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Reader for CH ST 184A. TAs attend lectures, and grade student writing. vii Summer 2007 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant: Led three sections of CHST 1A. Spring 2007 Women’s Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant: Led four sections of WM ST 60. Winter 2007 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant.: Led three sections of Chicano Studies 1B. Fall 2006 Women’s Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Teaching Assistant: Led three sections of WM ST 20. Summer 2006 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara Teaching Assistant. Leading one section of Chicano Studies 1A Fall 2005 – Spring 2006 Chicana/o Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara Teaching Assistant. Leading three sections of Chicano Studies 1A. and 1B. Fall 2002 – May 2005 English Department, University of New Mexico Teaching Assistant: Developed and taught one to two sections of English 101 and 102; or an upper division course every semester, chose course readings, wrote syllabi and other course materials, lectured, led class discussions, and graded student writing. Fall 2003 – May 2005 English Department, University of New Mexico Graduate Assistant for professor Jesse Alemán. Included research, team-teaching, and organizing the Southwest Semester. Summer 2003 – English Department, University of New Mexico Spring 2004 Cataloging Assistant for professor David Dunaway. Organized primary source materials for a Writing the Southwest master file at the Center for Southwest Research. viii UNIVERSITY COURSES TAUGHT Summer 2011 Chicana/o Studies 180: Survey of Chicana/o Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara This course presents students with a broad base of Chicana/o literature and literary criticism. Students are asked to understand Chicana/o literature within larger frameworks of history, ethnicity and gender. Summer 2009 Feminist Studies 60: Women of Color Feminism, University of California, Santa Barbara This course presents students with the history, theory and practice of Women of Color Feminism in the U.S. Summer 2008 Chicana/o Studies 184: Chicana Writers, University of California, Santa Barbara This course presents students with a broad spectrum of Chicana writing and teach them critical literary analysis. Spring 2005 English 101: Expository Writing, University of New Mexico Spring 2004 & Fall 2004 English 220: The Art of Genre in Chicana/o Literature, University of New Mexico This advanced expository writing course examined writing across a variety of genres in Chicana/o literature: essays, poetry, drama, autobiography, vignette and film. Fall 2003 English 101: Expository Writing, University of New Mexico Spring 2003 English 102: Analysis and Argument, University of New Mexico Fall 2002 English 101: Expository Writing, University of New Mexico UNIVERSITY SERVICE Fall 2007 – Spring 2009 Lead TA, UCSB Chicana/o Studies Department Plan and implement departmental pedagogical orientations. Fall 2006 – Spring 2007 Lead TA, UCSB Chicana/o Studies
Recommended publications
  • Black Women, Educational Philosophies, and Community Service, 1865-1965/ Stephanie Y
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2003 Living legacies : Black women, educational philosophies, and community service, 1865-1965/ Stephanie Y. Evans University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Evans, Stephanie Y., "Living legacies : Black women, educational philosophies, and community service, 1865-1965/" (2003). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 915. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/915 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. M UMASS. DATE DUE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST LIVING LEGACIES: BLACK WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES, AND COMMUNITY SERVICE, 1865-1965 A Dissertation Presented by STEPHANIE YVETTE EVANS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2003 Afro-American Studies © Copyright by Stephanie Yvette Evans 2003 All Rights Reserved BLACK WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOHIES, AND COMMUNITY SERVICE, 1865-1964 A Dissertation Presented by STEPHANIE YVETTE EVANS Approved as to style and content by: Jo Bracey Jr., Chair William Strickland,
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom Would Be a Book of Essays Mostly Directed to Teachers
    Teaching to Transgress This page intentionally left blank Teaching to Transgress Education as the Practice of Freedom bell hooks Routledge New York London Published in 1994 by Published in Great Britain by Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10017 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN Copyright © 1994 Gloria Watkins All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data hooks, bell. Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom / bell hooks p. cm. Includes index ISBN 0-415-90807-8 — ISBN 0-415-90808-6 (pbk.) 1. Critical pedagogy. 2. Critical thinking—Study and teaching. 3. Feminism and education. 4. Teaching. I. Title. LC196.H66 1994 370.11 '5—dc20 94-26248 CIP to all my students, especially to LaRon who dances with angels in gratitude for all the times we start over—begin again— renew our joy in learning. “. to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and to not spoil, to refuse to bureaucratize the mind, to understand and to live life as a process—live to become ...” —Paulo Freire This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction I Teaching to Transgress 1 Engaged Pedagogy 13 2 A Revolution of Values 23 The Promise of Multicultural
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Resources for Understanding Racism
    Selected Resources for Understanding Racism The 21st century has witnessed an explosion of efforts – in literature, art, movies, television, and other forms of communication—to explore and understand racism in all of its many forms, as well as a new appreciation of similar works from the 20th century. For those interested in updating and deepening their understanding of racism in America today, the Anti-Racism Group of Western Presbyterian Church has collaborated with the NCP MCC Race and Reconciliation Team to put together an annotated sampling of these works as a guide for individual efforts at self-development. The list is not definitive or all-inclusive. Rather, it is intended to serve as a convenient reference for those who wish to begin or continue their journey towards a greater comprehension of American racism. February 2020 Contemporary Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Written by a civil rights litigator, this book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. The central premise is that "mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow". Anderson, Carol. 2017. White Rage. From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America. Asch, Chris Myers and Musgrove, George Derek. 2017. Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. A richly researched and clearly written analysis of the history of racism in Washington, DC, from the 18th century to the present, and the efforts of people of color to claim a voice in local government decisionmaking.
    [Show full text]
  • In Raisin in the Sun and Caroline, Or Change Theresa J
    Spring 2006 127 “Consequences unforeseen . .” in Raisin in the Sun and Caroline, or Change Theresa J. May Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We the people must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers The mountains and the endless plain— All the stretch of these great green states— And make America again! —Langston Hughes (1938)1 Ecological sanity now requires social justice. —Barry Commoner (1971)2 We all live in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The implications and implicated deposit now on everyone’s doorsteps like the alluvial sludge from a mighty river burdened with the legacies of history. Past exploitations of land and people give rise to present litanies and lamentations. But for those whose faces, cries, and signs for help have been paraded across the media stream, the loss is ongoing, unrelenting, and disproportionately personal. These consequences were not unforeseen. (Witness, among other warnings, “Gone with the Water,” National Geographic, October 2004.)3 As officials tallied the dead, my attention was arrested by the lock step between systemic social injustice and environmental lunacy. The so-called natural disaster has exposed the un-natural systems of domination buried under decades of business as usual, unearthing a white supremacist patriarchy through which racism, poverty, and environmental degradation are inseparably institutionalized. Once again ecologically ill-conceived strategies for controlling, taming, and mining nature Theresa J. May is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. She has published articles on ecocriticism, performance studies, and feminism in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, On-Stage Studies, and Journal of American Drama and Theater Insight.
    [Show full text]
  • Saint Mary's College Bulletin
    Saint Mary’s College Bulletin 2012–2013 Academic Year Volume 151 Notre Dame, Indiana Guide to Correspondence and Communication Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5001, (574) 284-4000 E-mail: [email protected] Internet: saintmarys.edu President, Carol Ann Mooney ’72 • Institutional Research and Assessment, Jessica Ickes Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Patricia Ann Fleming • Dean of Faculty (Interim), TBA • Associate Dean of Faculty, Joseph Incandela • Associate Dean for Advising, Susan Vanek ’70 • Career Crossings Office, Stacie Jeffirs • Center for Academic Innovation, Laura Haigwood • Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership, Elaine Meyer-Lee • Cushwa-Leighton Library, Janet Fore • Global Education, Alice Young • Information Technology, Michael Boehm • Records and Registration, Todd Norris • Student Success, Diane Fox Vice President for College Relations, Shari M. Rodriguez • Assistant Vice President of Development, Janice Druyvesteyn • Advancement Services, Laura Brandenburg • Alumnae Relations, Kara O’Leary ’89 • Annual Fund, Heather Frey • Development, Libby Gray • Donor Relations, Adaline Cashore ’70 • Marketing Services, Ken Lavery • Media Relations, Gwen O’Brien • Planned/Special Gifts, Jo Ann MacKenzie ’69 • Special Events, Richard Baxter Vice President for Enrollment Management, Mona C. Bowe • Admission to the College, Kristin McAndrew • Student Financial Assistance, Kathleen Brown Vice President for Finance and Administration, Richard A. Speller • Student Accounts, Shannon Buchmann Vice
    [Show full text]
  • Groundwork Humans & Nature Reader
    Environmental Readings Volume 1: Humans Relationships With Nature Published by: Groundwork Education www.layinggroundwork.org Compiled & Edited by Jeff Wagner with help from Micaela Petrini, Caitlin McKimmy, Jason Shah, Parker Pflaum, Itzá Martinez de Eulate Lanza, Jhasmany Saavedra, & Dev Carey First Edition, June 2018 This work is comprised of articles and excerpts from numerous sources. Groundwork and the editors do not own the material or claim copyright or rights to this material, unless written by one of the editors. This work is distributed as a compilation of educational materials for the sole use as non-commercial educational material for educators. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to edit and share this work in non-commercial ways. Any published derivative works must credit the original creator and maintain this same Creative Commons license. Please notify us of any derivative works or edits. Environmental Readings Volume 1: Human Relationships With Nature Published by Groundwork Education, compiled & edited by Jeff Wagner Skywoman Falling by Robin Wall Kimmerer .......................................................1 An alternative view: how to frame a relationship with the natural world that’s not just extractive and destructive. The Gospel of Consumption by Jeffrey Kaplan ....................................................4 What is the origin of our consumption-based society, and when did we make this choice as a people? Earthbound: On Solid Ground by bell hooks .......................................................9 “More than ever before in our nation’s history black folks must collectively renew our relationship to the earth…” Do we really love our land? by David James Duncan ..........................................11 What do people mean when they speak of “love of the land?” Most Americans claim to feel such a love.
    [Show full text]
  • History 600: Public Intellectuals in the US Prof. Ratner-Rosenhagen Office
    Hannah Arendt W.E.B. DuBois Noam Chomsky History 600: Public Intellectuals in the U.S. Prof. Ratner-Rosenhagen Lecturer: Ronit Stahl Class Meetings: Office: Mosse Hum. 4112 Office: Mosse Hum. 4112 M 11 a.m.-1 p.m. email: [email protected] email: [email protected] Room: Mosse Hum. 5257 Prof. RR’s Office Hours: R.S.’s Office Hours: T 3- M 9 a.m.-11a.m. 5 p.m. This course is designed for students interested in exploring the life of the mind in the twentieth-century United States. Specifically, we will examine the life of particular minds— intellectuals of different political, moral, and social persuasions and sensibilities, who have played prominent roles in American public life over the course of the last century. Despite the common conception of American culture as profoundly anti-intellectual, we will evaluate how professional thinkers and writers have indeed been forces in American society. Our aim is to investigate the contested meaning, role, and place of the intellectual in a democratic, capitalist culture. We will also examine the cultural conditions, academic and governmental institutions, and the media for the dissemination of ideas, which have both fostered and inhibited intellectual production and exchange. Roughly the first third of the semester will be devoted to reading studies in U.S. and comparative intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, and critical social theory. In addition, students will explore the varieties of public intellectual life by becoming familiarized with a wide array of prominent American philosophers, political and social theorists, scientists, novelists, artists, and activists.
    [Show full text]
  • Women and Work
    Women and Work Women and Work: The Labors of Self-Fashioning Edited by Christine Leiren Mower and Susanne Weil Women and Work: The Labors of Self-Fashioning, Edited by Christine Leiren Mower and Susanne Weil This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Christine Leiren Mower and Susanne Weil and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2422-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2422-4 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................... ix Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 “Let Us Own Ourselves, Our Earnings, Our Genius”: The Uneasy Marriage of Women and Work Christine Leiren Mower and Susanne Weil Part I: Redefining the Nature of Women’s Work Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 50 Feminine Duty and Desire: Revising the Cultural Narrative in Gissing’s The Odd Women Gretchen
    [Show full text]
  • Polish Journal for American Studies Vol. 7 (2013)
    TYTUŁ ARTYKUŁU 1 Polish Journal for American Studies Journal for 7 (2013) Polish Vol. | Polish Journal for American Studies Yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies and the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw Vol. 7 (2013) Irmina Wawrzyczek Rethinking the History of the American Revolution: An Interview with Michal Jan Rozbicki Julia Fiedorczuk Marianne Moore’s Ethical Artifice Shelley Armitage Black Looks and Imagining Oneself Richly: The Cartoons of Jackie Ormes Józef Jaskulski The Frontier as Hyperreality in Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians ISSN 1733-9154 Jennifer D. Ryan Re-imagining the Captivity Narrative in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves TYTUŁ ARTYKUŁU 1 Polish Journal for American Studies Yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies and the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw Vol. 7 (2013) Warsaw 2013 2 IMIĘ NAZWISKO MANAGING EDITOR Marek Paryż EDITORIAL BOARD Paulina Ambroży, Patrycja Antoszek, Zofia Kolbuszewska, Karolina Krasuska, Zuzanna Ładyga ADVISORY BOARD Andrzej Dakowski, Jerzy Durczak, Joanna Durczak, Andrew S. Gross, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Jerzy Kutnik, John R. Leo, Zbigniew Lewicki, Eliud Martínez, Elżbieta Oleksy, Agata Preis-Smith, Tadeusz Rachwał, Agnieszka Salska, Tadeusz Sławek, Marek Wilczyński REVIEWERS FOR VOL. 7 Andrzej Antoszek , Jerzy Durczak, Joanna Durczak, Julia Fiedorczuk, Jacek Gutorow, Grzegorz Kość, Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, Krystyna Mazur, Zbigniew Mazur, Anna Pochmara ISSN 1733-9154 Copyright by the authors 2013 Polish Association for American Studies, Al. Niepodległości 22, 02-653 Warsaw www.paas.org.pl Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw ul. Nowy Świat 4, 00-497 Warsaw www. angli.uw.edu.pl Typesetting, cover design by Bartosz Mierzyński Cover image courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-13707 Nakład: 130 egz.
    [Show full text]
  • Talking Back, Talkin' Up: Voicing Indigenous Feminism
    CHAPTER 1 TALKING BACK, TALKIN’ UP: VOICING INDIGENOUS FEMINISM Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized and the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defian- ce that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice. bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (9) In her early, ground-breaking writing on Black feminist thought in the United States, bell hooks explains the importance of the concept of “talking back” and the impact it had on her when she was growing up in a family where “woman talk” was rich, poetic and intense but relegated to the kitchens of Black women and directed inwards, to the community of female friends and family, rather than out- wards into the public sphere, as the voices of Black male preachers were (5). “Talk- ing back,” characterized by hooks as “speaking as an equal to an authority figure,” as “daring to disagree” and “having an opinion” (5), is a strategy that many women of ethnic minorities had to learn to use in order to be heard and recognized as subjects capable of expressing their difference in an environment where the em- phasis was more on assimilating difference in the name of the common struggle against patriarchy. A decade later, Indigenous scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson used a very similar term to describe the act of Australian Aboriginal women’s talking back.
    [Show full text]
  • Cavar Thesis Final 2020.Pdf
    Abstract: What, how, and who is transbutch? In this thesis, I examine memoirs and personal essays that define and defy boundaries between “butch" and “transmasculine" subjectivity –– and investigate my own queer experience in the process –– in order to counter the myth of an irreparable trans/ butch divide. Deemed by some to be “border wars,” conflicts between transness and butchness are emblematic of the contested (hi)stories on which the identities are founded: namely, white supremacy, colonialism, transmedicalism, and lesbian separatism/trans-exclusionary radical fem- inism. Ensuing identity-battles –– which have increased with increased access to biomedical transition –– rely on a teleological approach to identity, and, I argue, may only be ameliorated by prioritizing experiential multiplicity and political affinity over fixed, essential truth. Through en- gagement with a variety of personal narratives by authors such as S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Rae Spoon, and blogger MainelyButch, I counter the understanding of identity as intrinsic and immutable, showing instead the dynamism of transbutch life, its stretchiness as a personal and community signifier, and its constant re-definition by its occupants. 2 Enacting Transbutch: Queer Narratives Beyond Essentialism BY: SARAH LYNN CAVAR Bachelor of Arts Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, MA 2020 3 Acknowledgements: How to start but with a story. I am about to send this final document to my advisor, Jacquelyne Luce, in anticipation of a thesis defense that is as I write this only days away. Without her sup- port and guidance at every stage –– all the way from a disorganized 120-page Google Doc of notes to the PDF you now read –– this thesis would not be possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Killing in the Name of Struggle: Amiri Baraka's Revolutionary Theatre
    KILLING IN THE NAME OF STRUGGLE: AMIRI BARAKA’S REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE DOUGLAS KERN PhD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE, FILM AND TELEVISION JANUARY 2014 ABSTRACT This study explores representations of murder, killing, and death in the revolutionary drama of Amiri Baraka. After a brief Introduction, Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to Baraka’s birth as an activist and provides background regarding the U.S. racial climate in the 1960s as it relates to his activism. Moreover, it presents Baraka’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre School and how it helped establish the Black Arts Movement. Chapter 2 provides a detailed study of Dutchman, Baraka’s first success, to initiate an analysis of killing and murder within his plays. In addition, it examines The Slave and Slave Ship, which present revolutionary models whereby Black Power is sought, and in the case of Slave Ship achieved through the killing of whites. Chapter 3 offers a detailed look at Baraka’s move towards Third World Marxism. After categorically denouncing Nationalism, Baraka’s public embrace of Marxism in 1974 isolated him from the Black theatre he had helped establish. Case studies examine representations of Capitalist killers in What Was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production? and Song. Chapter 4 begins with a brief introduction to Baraka’s activism in the early 1990s, along with details of his son’s tragic shooting, and culminates with in-depth analyses of Jack Pot Melting: A Commercial, The Election Machine Warehouse, and General Hag’s Skeezag, all published in the ‘90s and performed together for the Nuyorican Poets Café Theater in 1996.
    [Show full text]