UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title For the Record: Gendered Collective Memory in the Works of Pauline Hopkins, Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far and Abraham Cahan Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34c6z40z Author Branman, Hillary Rachel Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California ! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE! ! For the Record: Gendered Collective Memory in the Works of Pauline Hopkins, Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far and Abraham! Cahan ! DISSERTATION! ! submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree! of ! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY! in English! ! by! ! Hillary R.! Branman ! ! ! ! ! ! Dissertation Committee: Chancellor’s Professor Brook Thomas, Chair Associate Professor Arlene R. Keizer ! Associate Professor James Kyung-Jin Lee ! ! 2015 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © 2015 Hillary R. Branman ! DEDICATION ! ! To! ! the Storytellers! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ! ! Page !LIST OF FIGURES iv !ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v !CURRICULUM VITAE vi !ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ix !INTRODUCTION 1 ! Between “Inwardness” and Collective Memory 6 ! Memory, Imagination and the Possibilities of Fiction 8 ! Who is an “American”? 11 ! Hopkins, Eaton and Cahan 18 CHAPTER 1: Re-Membering a “Record of the Race”: 27 ! Violent Memories and “Public Talk” in Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces CHAPTER 2: Reinventing the National Family: 69 ! Eurasian Imagination in the Works of Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far CHAPTER 3: In Search of a Practical Tradition: 124 ! Gendered Performance in the Works of Abraham Cahan !CONCLUSION 176 !WORKS CITED 178 ! ! ! ! ! !iii LIST OF FIGURES ! ! Page !Figure 1 “He Cut the Ropes that Bound Her…” 48 !Figure 2 “Latest Edition to the Family” 75 !Figure 3 “How is it He Doesn’t Get Married?..” 88 !Figure 4 “But I am Married to a Gentile” 147 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ! I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Brook Thomas. Without his generous feedback and continuous support, this dissertation would not !have been possible. I would also like to thank my committee members, Professor Arlene R. Keizer and Professor !James Kyung-Jin Lee whose help and graceful professionalism have been invaluable. In addition, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Lynda Haas: my deepest thanks for your practical !advice throughout my graduate career. Finally, a thank you to my husband, my parents, my UCI colleagues, my entire family— Branmans and Bairds—and to the friends who helped me to maintain my sense of humor, my sanity and my forward-progress in a variety of ways throughout the years. And a special additional thank you to E. M. Forster for that bon mot about the violin—I’ve found the sentiment !invaluable throughout this enterprise. Financial support for research and writing was provided by the University of California, Irvine. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !v CURRICULUM VITAE HILLARY R. BRANMAN ! ! !Education Ph.D. English, University of California at Irvine, March 2015 Specializations: late 19th/ early 20th century American literature; memory studies; women’s studies; minority studies; rhetoric and composition Dissertation: For the Record: Gendered Collective Memory in the Works of Pauline Hopkins, Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far and Abraham Cahan Committee: Brook Thomas (Chair), Arlene R. Keizer, James Kyung-Jin Lee M.A. English, University of California at Irvine, 2008 B.F.A. Creative Writing, Chapman University 2006 B.A. French, Chapman University, 2006 Cours de Langue! et Civilisation Francaises de la Sorbonne, Paris, France, 2004 ! !Honors, Awards and Fellowships AGS Travel Grant, University of California, Irvine, 2013 Summer Dissertation Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, 2013 Regents’ Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, 2007-2008 Provost Academic Scholarship, Chapman University, 2002-2006 Anna Marie Jardini Award, Chapman University, 2006 Gray Key Award, Chapman University, 2006 !Sigma Tau Delta (National English Honor Society), Chapman U., 2004-2006 ! !Professional Activities Colloquium Organized Co-chaired the UCI English Graduate Colloquium (Spring, 2010). “Anonymous Johnson” presented by Prof. Robert Folkenflik Co-chaired the UCI English Graduate Colloquium (Winter, 2010). “Paul's TheoRhetoric: !Interpretive Politics in Law and Religion” presented by Prof. Steven Mailloux Colloquium Presenter Humanities Research Colloquium (Spring 2013): “A Time-Stained Chain of Evidence”: Pauline Hopkins and the Work of Public Talk” ! ! !vi Conferences and Panels “Re-membering a ‘Record of the Race’: Gendered Collective Memory and ‘Public Talk’ in Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces.” Modern Language Association Conference, January, 2014. !“Graduate Studies in the Humanities.” Cal State University, Fullerton, April, 2013. Departmental Service Mentor, Undergraduate Conference in Critical Theory, UCI, 2011 English Department, Graduate Student Mentor, UCI , 2009-2010 English Graduate Association, Graduate Committee, UCI, 2009-2010 English Department, Campus-wide Marathon Read Event Organizer, UCI, Spring 2009 English Graduate Association, Fundraising Chair, UCI, 2008-2009 Chapman U. Chapter, Sigma Tau Delta (National English Honor Society), President, !Chapman U., 2005-2006 University-wide Service Writing Center, UCI, Spring 2012 SCORE (Southern California Outcomes Research in English) Reading Assessment, UCI, 2011 Writing Placement Examination, UC-wide, 2010-present Volunteer Intern, Teaching Learning Technology Center, UCI, 2010-2011 Annual Undergraduate Writing Contest, Judge, UCI,! Spring 2010 ! Teaching ! Instructor, University of California, Irvine Department of Humanities: 2012-2015 Department of English: 2010-2013 Composition Program: 2008-2011 !Tutor, Writing Center, UCI, Spring 2012 !Courses Taught Humanities 1A — Discussion section of UCI’s nationally recognized program, HumCore, an interdisciplinary academic series fulfilling general education requirements in the areas of Lower Division Writing, Arts and Humanities, and Multicultural Studies. I worked as a liaison between students and faculty in literature, history, and philosophy, clarifying lecture material (ranging from Homer to African folk tales). I also provided a comprehensive introduction to college writing and research, culminating in an independent research paper on a topic crafted by each student ! ! ! !vii W139, Upper Division Writing — An advanced, combination writing and research class that fulfills the upper-division writing breadth requirement for students in any major. I developed and taught “Re-membering the Collective Past,” a course which asked students to engage with questions raised by collective memory theory in the context of literary and film analysis: how and why narratives about the past are created, and how these narratives shape our understanding !of the past, the present, the future, and ourselves. English 28 C: Realism and Romance — Introductory, survey course for English majors analyzing the conventions and historical contexts of prose fiction. I developed and taught “The Outside,” a course exploring the interconnections between the trope of the outsider and genre/ !narrative form and perspective. WR 39C: Argument and Research — Instructed undergraduate students in the conventions of conducting and evaluating academic research. Emphasis on the rhetorical context of academic !arguments, democratic debate, and researching current policy issues. WR 39C Online — Instructed undergraduate students in the conventions of conducting and evaluating academic research through new media, including interactive library tutorials, chat !sessions, and online writing tools. WR 39B: Critical Reading and Rhetoric — Instructed undergraduate students in textual analysis (including film and print media), writing, and revision with a view towards developing effective argumentation and critical reading/thinking skills. Course themes I developed and taught included “Bawdy Humor and Body Politics,” “Comedy and Satire as Social Critique” and !“Intersections of Race and Gender.” WR 39A: Fundamentals of Composition — Instructed undergraduate students in the fundamentals of textual analysis, writing, and revision. Course emphasis was upon sentence- !level mechanics, paragraph development and basic principles of rhetoric. ! !Publications !The Anteater’s Guide to Writing and Rhetoric, Contributor, 2010, 2011 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ! ! For the Record: Gendered Collective Memory in the Works of Pauline Hopkins, Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far and Abraham! Cahan By! Hillary R.! Branman Doctor of Philosophy! in Social Ecology University of California,! Irvine, 2015 Professor Brook! Thomas, Chair ! ! “For the Record” makes use of collective memory theory, paired with the tools of literary analysis, in order to examine the role of gendered collective memory in the literature of the Progressive Era—a time when the question of who could, and who could not belong to the American “nation-family” was tied, inextricably, to debates about racial and cultural “inheritances,” integration, assimilation and the codification of a coherent American identity and memory tradition. My various chapters exploring the works of Pauline Hopkins, Edith Eaton/ Sui Sin Far, and Abraham Cahan consider the ways gendered memory produces, and is, in turn, produced by works of