South Atlantic Review Summer/Fall 2019 Volume Numbers 2-3 84 Journal of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Editor R. Barton Palmer About South Atlantic Review [email protected] ince its founding in 1935 as the newsletter for the South Associate Editor Atlantic Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Marta Hess S Review has become a premier academic quarterly publish- ing research in the modern languages and literatures, as well as in associated fields such as film, cultural studies, Reviews Editor and rhetoric/composition. The journal welcomes submis- Daniel Marshall sions of essays, maximum length 8,000 words, that are accessible, and of broad interest, to its diverse readership across a number of disciplines. Submissions may be made electronically directly to the managing editor at the ad- Managing Editor dress above. SAR also welcomes proposals for special is- M. Allison Wise sues and special focus sections. Additional information regarding submission require- ments and book reviews can be found on our website at http://samla.memberclicks.net/sar. In Appreciation. South Atlantic Review wishes to ac- knowledge the generous contributions and support pro- vided by Ashley Cowden Fisk, Michael LeMahieu, Cam- eron Bushnell, and the Pearce Center for Professional Communication at Clemson University, by the Clemson University Department of English chaired by Lee Mor- rissey, and by the College of Arts, Architecture, and the Humanities. About SAMLA https://samla.memberclicks.net [email protected] embership. Annual membership dues for SAMLA: M$35 for a student membership; $40 for an adjunct, lecturer, emeritus, or independent scholar membership; and $50-70 for a full-time faculty membership. All mem- berships are annual with terms running from October 1 to September 30. Institutional subscriptions are $80 per year. The views contained herein represent the Membership forms are available on the SAMLA website opinions of the authors whose names appear above. All inquiries may be directed to [email protected]; on each submission and not the Board of SAMLA, PO Box 3968, Atlanta, GA, 30302-3968; or 404- Regents of the University System of Georgia, Georgia State University, Clemson University, 413-5816. the editors of South Atlantic Review, or the SAMLA Annual Convention. Information regarding Executive Committee Members of SAMLA. the annual convention is available on the SAMLA website. © 2019 by the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Editorial Board David Bottoms, Department of English, Georgia State University Tom Conner, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, St. Norbert College Thomas Leitch, Department of English, University of Delaware Christina R. McDonald, English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, Virginia Military Institute Rafael Ocasio, Department of Spanish, Agnes Scott College Tison Pugh, Department of English, University of Central Florida Lynn Ramey, Department of French, Vanderbilt University R. Allen Shoaf, Department of English, University of Florida Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Department of English, Clemson University Kathleen Blake Yancey, Department of English, Florida State University Contents Special Issue: Nella Larsen’s Passing at Ninety Guest Editor Donavan L. Ramon 2018 SAMLA Graduate Student Essay Award 1 “I ain’t got no use for none of that”: Contemporary Chris- tian Kitsch and Iconography in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” Cameron Lee Winter Essays Part I: Contemporary Analyses of Nella Larsen’s Passing 15 “The Times, Alas, The Times!” Nella Larsen’s Passing and the American Tradition Donavan L. Ramon 24 A History of Passing Clark Barwick 55 The Secret Life Within: Race, Imagination, and America in Nella Larsen’s Passing Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. 74 “Too Vague to Define, Too Remote to Seize”: Style, Con- sciousness, and Bourgeois Values in Passing Cynthia Cravens 89 “It’s a Funny Thing About ‘Passing’”: A Discourse Analy- sis of Nella Larsen’s Passing and New Negro Identity Politics Barbra Chin 106 Intimacy and Laughter in Nella Larsen’s Passing Diego A. Millan 126 Parent Trap: Circumventing Adulthood with Play in Nella Larsen’s Passing Jericho Williams Contents 144 Déjà Vu: Larsen’s Passing and the Problem of Paramnesia Tristan Striker 163 Fatal Categorizations: Disappearance and the Rigidity of American Racialization in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Emanuela Kucik 183 What is the End of Nella Larsen’s Passing? A Typography of Irene Redfield’s Nativism Stephen Andrews 205 “I’m Inclined to Believe”: Editing Uncertainty in the Ending(s) to Nella Larsen’s Passing Ross K. Tangedal Part 2: Teaching Larsen’s Passing to Twenty-First Century Students 224 Teaching Nella Larsen’s Passing: Interrogating Privilege in the Liberal Arts Classroom Kristy McMorris 244 New Horizons: A Literary Field Study of Nella Larsen’s Passing Jennifer L. Hayes 261 Digital Double Consciousness: Teaching Passing in the Twenty-first Century Adam Nemmers Book Reviews 281 How Did Lubitsch Do It? By Joseph McBride. Reviewed by Stephen B. Armstrong 283 The Disappearing Act. By Sara Pirkle Hughes. Reviewed by Joanmarie Bañez 285 Empiricism and the Early Theory of the Novel: Fielding to Austen. By Roger Maioli. Reviewed by Kathryn Pratt Russell 2018 SAMLA Graduate Student Essay Award “I ain’t got no use for none of that”: Contemporary Christian Kitsch and Iconography in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” Cameron Lee Winter lannery O’Connor, as a literary critic, was quick to decry the kitsch Fand triteness of contemporary Christian fiction. In “Catholic Novelists,” she finds that this “large body of pious trash” comes from artists “distorting their talents in the name of God for reasons that they think are good—to reform or to teach or to lead people to the Church” (180, 174). In “trying to reflect God” as ana priori approach to aesthetic production, they create “practical untruth” that “leave[s] out half or three fourths of the facts of human existence and [is] therefore not true either to the mysteries we know by faith or those we perceive simply by observation” (174, 175). The inhumanity and the un-reality of this approach results in works that are impotent “to reform or to teach” about the “mysteries . know[n] by faith.” O.E. Parker of O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” expresses a similarly dismissive attitude towards arti- facts of Christian kitsch. As he thumbs through the pages of the tat- tooist’s book of religious illustrations to find an image that perfectly embodies his (perhaps literal) enthusiasm for a tattoo of “just God,” he observes “The Good Shepherd, Forbid Them Not, The Smiling Jesus, [and] Jesus the Physician’s Friend” as he “flip[s] the pages quickly, feeling that when he reached the one ordained, a sign would come,” likely among the “less reassuring” content (522). The flippancy with which he approaches these named works is intriguing, for these images allude directly and indirectly to some of most popular Christian prints of the period created by artists like Warner Sallman, Louis Jambor, or Heinrich Hoffman, whose works still grace the walls of churches glob- ally. Despite their ubiquity and popularity, though, these works barely register to Parker’s zeal. Instead, O’Connor minimizes and tosses aside these contemporary icons, having Parker settle instead on “a flat stern Byzantine Christ with all-demanding eyes” that is “less reassuring” (522). 1 Cameron Lee Winter Ultimately, Parker’s phlegmatic treatment of these images reveals something of O’Connor’s larger discontent with the ways contempo- rary Christianity, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, trades the ana- gogical abilities of Christian art for the banality of kitsch. However, my primary concern is not specifically with the anagogical components of O’Connor’s works, but with the embedded distinctions between the anagogical and the banal, between high art and low art, in “Parker’s Back.” Helpful in that distinction is the work of John Fisher, whose “High Art Versus Low Art” provides different classification spectrums that critics use to categorize works of art as “high” or “low.” The first, the cognitive spectrum, categorizes art often within a similar genre of production by differentiating between “higher” artworks that demand a deeper level of audience participation and those “lower” forms that do not (413). The lower art forms are easily accessible and quickly con- sumed due to the lack of cognitive, emotional, or imaginative demands placed on the observer. Fisher finds that those who tend to hold this view “find popular art to be essentially flawed” due to the absence of the meditative, participatory component (413). It is “accessibility with limited effort” (413). The second category Fisher locates is a category of mediums. He defines the distinction as such: “Those [art forms] growing out of the modern system, are thought of as ‘high art,’ whereas the new forms tend to be thought of as ‘low’” (411). For the former, forms like paint- ing, literature, sculpture, poetry, even iconography are considered “high art” mostly because of their association with Classical cultures. In the latter case, tattoos (as a “newer” medium in a modern, Western sense), video games, rock or pop music, comics, television shows, or movies are “lower” art forms because they are not Classical and are also easily produced, reproduced, and marketed to a wide-ranging audi- ence. Fisher speculates that critics categorize these as “lower” art forms because of cynicism towards technological change and skepticism of anything mass produced. However, these distinctions between high and low art are often over- looked in the scholarship on “Parker’s Back,” in which scholars well-note the religious significance of Parker’s back tattoo. Peter Candler notes that O’Connor’s aesthetic revolves tightly around this concept of the anagogical, which understands that “the visible realities of this world only take on a fullness of meaning—indeed, they only become truly visible—when seen in the paradoxical light of the unseen” [emphasis in original] (12).