By: LeiLani Dowell

I am working on a paper that explores the trajectory of the anatomization, racialization and mystification of female bodies during the early modern period to the sensational display and reception of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as the “Hottentot Venus” throughout 19^th-century Europe.

Allen, Regulus. “‘The Sable Venus’ and Desire for the Undesirable.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 51.3 (2011): 667-685. Print.

Allen, an assistant professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, analyses the poem “The Sable Venus: An Ode” and the illustration that accompanied it, arguing that both pieces reveal anxieties about white male desire for black women in the early modern period. The author discusses the creation of the “Black Venus,” meant to highlight the supposed superior beauty of white women while simultaneously eroticizing and commodifying the black female body.

Burton, Jonathan. “Western Encounters with Sex and Bodies in Non-European Cultures, 1550-1750.” Routledge History of Sex and the Body: 1500 to the Present. Ed. Sara Toulalan and Kate Fisher, 2013. 495-510. Print.

Burton examines the ways in which the formation of sexuality in early modern England was a cross-cultural affair, informed by colonial expeditions to non-European countries. In doing so, Burton challenges the standard notion of “backwards” sexuality in non-European countries and bodies.

Grogan, Claire. “Identifying Foreign Bodies: New Philosophers and Hottentots in Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 188.3 (2006): 305–327. Print.

Grogan, author of “Politics and Genre in the Works of Elizabeth Hamilton, 1756–1816,” discusses Hamilton’s alignment of “dangerous revolutionary ideas and personages” with the Hottentots of Africa in an attempt to promote nationalist and patriotic sentiment in England.

Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. 1 edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Print.

Hall, an assistant professor of English at Georgetown University, explores the connections between race and gender in early modern English literature and how the depictions of the two were used to form a prototypical white male identity. Hall particularly examines the nation-building impulses of imperialism, slavery and sexual politics as driving forces in identity formation in England.

Hendricks, Margo, and Patricia Parker, eds. Women, Race, and Writing in the Early Modern Period. 1st edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.

This anthology includes a number of essays specifically focusing on the reception and deployment of black female bodies in the early modern period, including “The Getting of a Lawful Race: Racial discourse in early modern England and the unrepresentable black woman” by Lynda E. Boose, and “I Rather Would Wish to be a Black Moor: Beauty, race, and rank in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania”.

Hudson, Nicholas. “The ‘Hottentot Venus,’ Sexuality, and the Changing Aesthetics of Race, 1650-1850.” Mosaic (Winnipeg) 41.1 (2008): 19. Print.

Hudson, the author of several works on early modern England, explores the use of the “Venus” trope in the emergence of “race” and “aesthetics” as sciences during the period. Hearkening back to the Roman goddess, the concept of Venus is used to paradoxically highlight the “perfect” beauty of white female bodies while simultaneously sounding a warning about the desirability of black female bodies.

Lloyd, Sheila. “Sara Baartman and the ‘Inclusive Exclusions’ of Neoliberalism.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 11.2 (2013): 212–237. Print.

By analyzing current feminist texts on the Hottentot Venus, Lloyd makes the argument that Baartman’s story resonates with current audiences because of the parallels modern-day globalization and the commodification of women’s racialized bodies and the imperialist impulses that created a space for Baartman to become a continental sensation in the 19^th century.

MacDonald, Joyce Green. Women and Race in Early Modern Texts. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

MacDonald, an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky, discusses the implementation of race, gender and identity in early modern texts, specifically focusing on how women’s bodies were used in discourses of race and colonialism. For MacDonald, this often occurs via the erasure and displacement of black women’s bodies in the texts.

Miranda, Carlos A., and Suzette A. Spencer. “Omnipresent Negation: Hottentot Venus and Africa Rising.” Callaloo 32.3 (2009): 910–933. Project MUSE. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

The authors examine the history and scholarly inquiries into the Hottentot Venus up to the current period. While the article focuses mainly on the omnipresent nature of the Hottentot Venus in today’s world – reproduced through hyper-attention to black women’s anatomy – the in-depth historical background of Baartman’s experience is helpful to an understanding of the deployment of anatomization and sensationalization in the early modern period.

Tuhkanen, Mikko. “Breeding (and) Reading: Lesbian Knowledge, Eugenic Discipline, and The Children’s Hour.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 48.4 (2002): 1001–1040. Project MUSE. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Tuhkanen examines Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour as a 20^th-century text that highlights the “interimplication of racial and sexual categories and suggests the uncontainability of both by movements of social hygiene.” In doing so, she discusses early modern anatomization texts that cite the genitalia of “lesbians” and black women as abnormal.

By: Christina Quintana

These sources pertain to my research for a project in my Modernist Singularities course. I am interested, generally, in the role of female artists in the Surrealist movement, but will pay special attention to German artist/writer Unica Zürn. Because Zürn suffered from schizophrenia and frequently discussed her mental illness in her work, I am also exploring some feminist psychoanalytic theory in order to better address the intersection of her creativity and her schizophrenia (and the ways in which this experience was uniquely gendered).

Alexander, Sally. “Feminist History and Psychoanalysis.” History Workshop 32.1 (1991): 128-133.

Alexander begins by noting the reluctance on the part of feminists to incorporate and utilize psychoanalytic techniques, due mainly to the overt misogyny of prominent psychoanalytic figures such as Freud and Lacan. However, Alexander argues that the goals of feminism and psychoanalysis are the same—to uncover a repressed, subjective history through language and symbolism—and that bringing the two theories together can only benefit feminists. Alexander then provides an outline of the overlap of feminism and psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20^th century: both movements gained recognition at the turn of the century, addressed the question of femininity, and urged others to consider the female as a political subject. She concludes that a “psychoanalytic notion of sexual difference” (132) is crucial for understanding historical works and events.

Caws, Mary Ann. “Singing in Another Key: Surrealism through a Feminist Eye.” Diacritics 14.2 (1984): 60-70.

Arguing that the “most haunting nightmare” (63) of Surrealism is that of irrelevance, Caws seeks to keep Surrealist criticism relevant by locating its intersection with feminist theory. She finds such an overlap in the character of Melusine, the mermaid of Andre Breton’s Arcane 17. Melusine, Caws argues, represents the liminality (and, therefore, the freedom) that Surrealists so adored: neither human nor fish, but also neither wholly female or male, Melusine is able to freely inhabit both categories. Yet Caws notes that Melusine, in addition to representing the achievement of Surrealist ideals, also characterizes the contradictory, liminal status of women in society. Turning to Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, Caws draws a parallel between Melusine’s androgynous/hybrid physicality and Woolf’s narrator’s positioning between private and public life (particularly as she stands on a bridge and contemplates the institutions denied to her). Both characters express their liminality in discursive ways: Melusine through song, and Woolf through her quasi-fictional prose.

Diez, Noemi Martinez. “Fragmentos de la vida y obra de Unica Zürn.” Arteterapia 2.1 (2007): 203-213.

Diez takes a fairly straightforward autobiographical look at Unica Zurn’s life and work, seeking out the connections between her mental illness and her art. Beginning with her childhood in Berlin, Diez chronicles Zurn’s troubled home life, artistic experiments with painting and anagrams, relationships with Hans Bellmer and Henri Michaux, and her lifelong struggle with mental illness. Ocassionally using Jungian theory to support her claims, Diez argues that the fragmentation of Zurn’s drawings, along with her love of anagrams, reflect her fragmented sense of self.

Export, Valie. “The Real and Its Double: The Body.” Discourse 11.1 (Fall-Winter 1988-89): 3-27.

In this article, Export addresses the issue of the female body through a Freudian lens. She argues that, within a patriarchal society, women are made to acknowledge, feel, and be their body more acutely than their male counterparts, and this emphasis on embodiment often results in a sense of anxiety or disgust over the body. Referencing passages from Unica Zürn’s autobiographical novel Dark Spring, Export stresses the “crisis of female adolescence” (6) in which the unsexed young girl undergoes puberty and becomes painfully aware of her body. Paradoxically, Export argues, while the female body is more present than the male body, it is also defined by lack: her physical characteristics are the negation of man’s, the “emptiness and absence of the penis” (10). From here, Export explains that the problem of the female body is that of a double bind: woman both is and is not her body; it defines her being and yet it is nonexistent. Such a configuring of embodiment naturally results in a conflicted sense of self, Export claims, and impedes women’s development of their subjectivity, which results in what she calls the “enigma woman” (14). Export concludes by highlighting the work of several female multi-genre artists, including Laurie Anderson, Miriam Cahn, Eva Kmentova, and Helen Almeida, whose work addresses the limitations and paradoxical nature of the female body.

Markus, Ruth. “Surrealism’s Praying Mantis and Castrating Woman.” Woman’s Art Journal 21.1 (2000): 33-39.

In this article, Markus analyzes the symbolism of the praying mantis in Surrealist art. Noting that the insect was an obsession of Salvador Dali, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and Andre Masson (among many other Surrealists), Markus argues that the praying mantis—because of the female’s distinguishing habit of devouring the male post-coitus—represented a commingling of eroticism and death and thus corresponded to some Surrealist sentiments. More injuriously, however, the praying mantis also represented the castrating woman, the devouring mother, and even the vagina dentata. Looking at work by Dali, Giacometti, and Ernst, Markus claims that the imagery of the praying mantis and/or vagina dentata represents a deep ambivalence or fear towards the female body and the female archetype.

Marshall, Jennifer Cizik. “The Semiotics of Schizophrenia: Unica Zürn’s Artistry and Illness.” Modern Language Studies 30.2 (2000): 21-31.

Marshall begins her article by pointing out that the majority of art and literary scholars who write on Unica Zurn are reluctant to include discussions of her mental illness; Marshall argues that this is due to an erroneous belief that incorporating Zurn’s schizophrenia into a reading of her work would undermine her talent and substitute her “mental creativity” for a “biological anomaly” (22). Marshall insists, however, that imposing a psychobiographical structure onto Zurn’s work would not undercut it but instead provide a unique perspective into the mind of an artist shaped by mental illness. Using the DSM as her guide, Marshall analyzes Zurn’s autobiographical work “The Man in Jasmine: Impressions from a Mental Illness” for the determining signs of schizophrenia. Although she notes many parallels between Zurn’s writing and typical symptoms of schizophrenia (such as fragmented sense of self, bizarre delusions, and occasional hallucinations), Marshall ultimately argues that Zurn appears to suffer from bipolar disorder. She concludes by stating that, regardless of her diagnosis, Zurn turned to her writing and art as a way to alleviate her profound mental distress.

Nicki, Andrea. “The Abused Mind: Feminist Theory, Psychiatric Disability, and Trauma.” Hypatia 16.4 (2001): 80-104.

Andrea Nicki refutes the popular notion that mental illness is wholly an issue of biochemistry and genetics; although she does not deny that such physical factors play a role in the development of mental illness, she argues that difficulties in social adaptation also contribute significantly. For this reason, she insists upon analyzing mental illness within the bounds of culture and society, since cultural and social factors heavily influence the development and experience of psychiatric disability, particularly within certain disadvantaged groups such as women and minorities. Nicki outlines how external, non-biological factors or events such as trauma, sexist and racist norms, marginalization, traditional notions of “normalcy” and “insanity,” social injustice, the Cartesian mind-body dualism, and mainstream moral values all contribute to mental illness. She proposes a feminist theory of psychiatric disability that addresses the oppression of the (mental ill) mind by society, and works to undo the stigmatization and emotional distress of those who suffer from mental illness.

Orenstein, Gloria Feman. “Art History and the Case for the Women of Surrealism.” The Journal of General Education 27.1 (1975): 31-54

In her article, Orenstein seeks to recover the lost or elided history of women artists in the Surrealist movement. Orenstein notes that the norm in the art world has usually been that of the white, upper-class male, and that female artists are traditionally portrayed as mere “human-interest” stories, rather than as serious artists worthy of rigorous criticism and analysis. She explains that within the Surrealist movement, the ideal woman was represented by the figure of the Femme-Enfant, the Woman-Child. This figure emphasizes women’s fragility, innocence, purity, and position as Object, while simultaneously deemphasizing or excluding the subjectivity and art works of mature women. Seeking to defy the myth of the Woman-Child, Orenstein then briefly covers the lives and works of several Surrealist women artists, including Leonora Carrington, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Marie Wilson, Unica Zurn, and Jane Graverol. Orenstein concludes by urging female artists, art critics, and scholars to document the forgotten or ignored lives of women artists.

Rey, Carlos. “Causalidad Psíquica en un Caso de Locura: A propósito de Unica Zürn.” Revista de la Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría 30.107 (2010): 437-445.

Rey charts Unica Zurn’s personal and artistic development from childhood to her death in 1970, providing overviews of some of the more important moments in Zurn’s life (such as her initial meeting with Hans Bellmer and her admittance into a mental institution). Rey focuses on Zurn’s literary work, notably Dark Spring and The Man of Jasmine, in an attempt to account for the causation of her mental illness. He concludes that it was her difficult and traumatic upbringing, more than any other factor, that contributed to both her insanity and her creative work.

Suleiman, Susan Rubin. “A Double Margin: Reflections on Women Writers and the Avant Garde in France.” Yale French Studies 75.1 (1988): 148-172.

Suleiman analyzes the popular trope of the “margin” as it relates to both women and the avant-garde movement: in conceiving of culture as a “place” that can be mapped or printed on a page, both women and the avant-garde movement exist away from the center, on the edge or in the margins of mainstream society. Suleiman notes that an important distinction between the two is that the avant-garde willingly chooses to exist in the margins (in order to better critique or attack societal norms), whereas women have been forced into a marginal position and can suffer negative consequences if she attempts to move towards the center. In this way, female avant-garde artists are “doubly intolerable” or “doubly marginalized” (152), defying not one but two categorizations. Looking in particular at the lives and works of Simone Breton and Mick Soupault (wives of Surrealist artists Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault), Suleiman argues that this “double margin” can provide the female subject with a kind of centrality in her own eyes; by identifying herself and her work with the subversive power associated with the margin, Suleiman claims, the female avant-garde artist can self-affirm and –legitimize her work and life.

By: Seth Graves

The following annotated bibliography represents my research to-date on gender performance and discrimination in video games and online spaces. I am working on a paper that discuss the teaching of “#gamergate” in the composition classroom.

Alexander, Jonathan. “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation.” College Composition and Communication 61.1 (2009): 35–63. Print.

Alexander provides case study interviews with two students to discuss how gaming can result in the development of “high level literacy skills,” including “literacy reflectivity, trans-literacy connections, collaborative writing, multicultural literacy awareness, and critical literacy development” (37). He extends the work by authors on gaming literacy, such as the influential James Paul Gee, as well as compositionist scholars on the role of gaming in education, to discuss the role of the student in their own perceptions of the value of gaming and development. Students in the interviews discuss the textual and intertextual interactions of their gaming habits. Alexander suggests compositionists “should seriously consider using complex computer games as primary ‘texts’ in composition courses as a way to engage with students a more provocative and productive examination of contemporary literacy practices” (37). This text directly speaks to my goals to view important roles of game studies in the composition classroom.

Bogost, Ian. “The Rhetoric of Video Games.” In The Ecology of Games: Connecting Yough, Games and Learning, ed. Katie Salen, 117–140. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Here Bogost, a heavily cited scholar on video games and gaming literacies, discuss the rhetorical power of games and their ability to “make claims about the world.” When games do make rhetorical arguments about the world, society, or other strata, they do so “not with oral speech, nor in writing, nor even with images. Rather…with processes” (125). Therein, video games present a potentially powerful, procedural rhetoric that allows players to now only use the powers of imagination and fantasy, but also to consider real-world conflicts and the commentaries that ludic video game realities can make on these conflicts. This, like some other works in my bibliography here, speaks to the rhetorical power of video game and justifies their investigation in academic scholarship.

En, Boka, Michael En, and David Griffiths. “Gay Stuff and Guy Stuff: The Construction of Sexual Identities in Sidebars on Reddit.” Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network 6.1 (2013): n. pag. ojs.meccsa.org.uk. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

En, En, and Griffiths discuss here how sexual identities are constructed, “seen—and thereby made” on the online community reddit. The article discusses normative and non-normative behaviors represented in the reddit sidebar. Ultimately, the authors suggest that though the sidebar creates an open, normative-busting space, the space is then re-normativized by the social pressures of reddit users, whose isolating behaviors exercise pressured power over “redditors.” This article speaks directly to #gamergate issues and gender constructions, and constitutes one of the closest pieces of scholarship to direct discussion of #gamergate available in academic publication (I have yet to find an peer-reviewed piece on #gamergate).

Gee, James Paul. “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.” Comput. Entertain. 1.1 (2003): 20–20. ACM Digital Library. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Gee argues that “good games” promote strong learning principles, a claim supported by laboratory science. Thinking about games invites making active connections to other “games, media, text, and the world” (1). Good games present worlds in which players seek, reason with, and apply information. Whereas the education system often operates “at the lowest common denominator,” video games can present opportunities to work out of the preexisting competencies of the player. Games can also provide tiered motivation to perpetuate the learning process. Gee highlights the distinct educational role of gaming.

Greenfield, Patricia Marks. El Niño y los medios de comunicación: Los efectos de la televisión, video-juegos y ordenadores. Ediciones Morata (1985).

This book exists as part of a mid-80s “Bruner Series.” Here Greenfield argues for constructive uses of new media in the classroom and home settings. The text is particularly critical of those who overly warn against new media instead of seeing value in the integration of visual and digital technology in educational development and cultural literacy.

Kirkland, Ewan. “Masculinity in Video Games: The Gendered Gameplay of Silent Hill.” Camera Obscura 24.2 71 (2009): 161–183. cameraobscura.dukejournals.org. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Kirkland discusses the 2001 video game Silent Hill 2, developed by Konami, to discuss gender representations in the “survival horror” video game genre. Kirkland argues that the game presents particularly “complex questions concerning player agency, the structuring of gameplay, and the gendering of the role that video-game players are invited to perform,” including a seminal moment of the game where the playable protagonist/avatar, James, must kill his wife without player or protagonist choice (162). Kirkland writes, “attentive players will have come increasingly to suspect that the protagonist, who appears so devoted to his dead wife, constitutes the video-game equivalent of an unreliable narrator” (162). The player can choose between turning the game off, and making meaningless the many hours played to reach the end, or executing the game’s intended finality. Kirkland suggests that gamer perception contributes to whether this violence is seen as a nihilistic, self-conscious commentary or as a more objectifying, misogynist final act. Ultimately the game is representative of the complex questions of how gender is performed in video game genres.

Leonard, David J. “Not a Hater, Just Keepin’ It Real The Importance of Race- and Gender-Based Game Studies.” Games and Culture 1.1 (2006): 83–88. gac.sagepub.com. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Leonard discusses race and gender erasure in video games and video game studies, and the values of discussing race and gender tropes in video games (and limited presentations of race and gender) in scholarship and in the classroom. He suggests that oversimplified notions of the roles of videogames can leave individuals to write off analysis of underlying tropes or “serious inquiry into their racial [and gender-based] content and context” (84). As of the time of publication of this article, 2005, according to the work of Children Now, only 17% of player-controlled video game characters are female, even less than the number of nonhuman playable characters (19%). Games, he argues, can reinforce White male privilege and fantasy through play.

Sanford, Kathy, and Leanna Madill. “Resistance through Video Game Play: It’s a Boy Thing.” Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l’éducation 29.1 (2006): 287–306. JSTOR. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Sanford and Madill discuss how video games present a space where boys can perform sexism without parental or institutional oversight. Left unchecked, this can lead male gamers to see other forms of literacy, such as understanding of the importance or role of literature, as overly feminine; video games can therein validate sexist masculinities and performances of resistance and silence opportunities for thoughtful “worldview” critique.

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games.” Leonardo 34.3 (2001): 221–226. MIT Press Journals. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Schleiner comments on the role of videogame culture among youth in “reorganizing their worldviews” (221). She discusses the absence of videogame discussion in scholarship through the mid-1990s, as scholars either wrote off the meda form, the pedagogical use of it, or the value of it in society and academic scholarship in particular. Schleiner briefly outlines “Before Tomb Raider” as a period, before she then enters into discussion of the popular video game series Tomb Raider and its protagonist, Lara Croft, whom the author refers to as a “female frankenstein” that presents a mechanized, objectified, unrealistic female body. Tomb Raider becomes a game “where boys and men are permitted to develop unrealistic ideals of female body type, or to dispense with relating to human women whatsoever, replacing them with easily controlled virtual female bots” (223). However, alternatively, male players also “perform” the avatar role of Croft, constructing her multiplicitously as (in addition to objectified female) drag queen, femme fatale, role model, and “vehicle for the queer female gaze” in her inhabitants of the “monstrous” (Here she cites individual works by Butler and Halberstam on “the dangerous woman” and binary-busting “monster-genders”.).

Taylor, T. L. “Multiple Pleasures Women and Online Gaming.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 9.1 (2003): 21–46. con.sagepub.com. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

Using a combination of data, Taylor assesses motives for female participation in online gaming spaces, particularly massively multiplayer online role-playing environments (or MMPORGs); research cited in the article suggests that women now make up about 50% of the online gamer community.  Taylor believes demographic statistics helps to denote why women have gravitated toward this type of gaming (Here she makes her goals distinct from scholarship like Schleiner’s on Lara Croft, which she mentions by name.). MMPORGs serve as spaces that, more so than other video game genres, rely on community development, participation in community discourse, dialogue and interpersonal interaction as means to success, and avatar development as a means of performing individuality. Taylor presents games that take on “gender-neutral design goals,” such as Everquest, as well as games that do present misogynies that women are inclined to play as a way to participate “despite the game” (40).

Zafra, Remedios. “Las mujeres en Internet ¿immigrantes, exiliadas, turistas…?” ¿Todas Las Mujeres Podemos Género, Desarrollo, y Multiculturalidad. Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume (2007): 48–60. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.

In this conference paper republished in book chapter form, Remedios Zafra, of the University of Seville, discusses the cyberfeminist movement, women working on the fridge worlds of the internet, the internet as a queer and enabling space to battle sexism—yet the outsider or “entering tourist” role of the woman in the space. The “utopia” view of the internet proved to be a myth as the space asserted itself as a place dominated, read, and written by men.

By: Austin Bailey

Annotated Bibliography

My current project is for my seminar on American pragmatism and aesthetics with Joan Richardson. Though it’s “just” a seminar paper, I’d like to expand it into an article if I end up liking it.

My essay (which has yet to find a title) looks at Emerson’s essays on social reform within the context of the emerging industrial-capitalist nexus of the 19th century. As industrializiation occurred, the country and international markets went from agrarian based economies to more internationally trade-based, “itinerant” economies. This included an increase in paper currency and speculation as well as a ramping-up of slavery. These changes in the economic structures of society resonated in America, often in the form of deep anxieties about the current state of things and the future. The image and metaphor of the “paper men,” “ghosts,” and other specters of commerce became prevalent. These metaphors signaled a newly emergent form of personhood and economy based on rootlessness and invisibility. My essay argues that Emerson responded to these anxieties by advocating, through his transcendentalism, a more direct series of relations between individuals. While Emerson was obsessed with the idea of empowering the individual, he did not advocate intellectual hermeticism or aesthetic retreats from encroaching capitalist oppression. He instead believed that individuals should face each other. Facing one another has many resonances. I will focus on Stanley Cavell’s idea of condition as “condiction,” that is, our condition of speaking together. If our words are always already delimiting–putting us, as Cavell has suggested, into pre-arrangements and pre-agreements of our person, what Emerson calls “conformity”–they are also all we have. While Emerson advocates a materialist critique on the level of forming more direct relations and, in the Marxist sense, dereification, through an awareness of use value over and against exchange value and market fetish, he also advocates for an endless revisionism within democratic circles of conversation. This requires facing one another and speaking directly to one another–in other words, a kind of “reformist perfectionism.”

David Greenham. “The Skeptical Deduction: Reading Kant and Cavell in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 1.3 (2007): 253-281. Project MUSE. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Greenham has recently published a book on Emerson, Emerson’s Transatlantic Romanticism. It is an exploration of Emerson’s relationship and indebtedness to the British romantics but it brings in interesting cross sections of influence such as Mary Moody Emerson. It also places Emerson’s romanticism in dialogue with Stanley Cavell (currently a philosopher at Harvard and one of Emerson’s most influential contemporary readers) and Immanuel Kant. This article eventuated in one of the book’s chapters. While I didn’t take much interest in the book, I find this article to be extremely useful for my purposes. Greenham does the work no one else wants to do: he actually walks us through Kantian Transcendental Deduction and categories, showing how they relate to Stanley Cavell’s claim that Emerson ups Kant by suggesting that every word in our diction be placed under skeptical deduction. This is a very confusing concept and Greenham illuminates it very well. It will be central for my argument because I will talk about how Emerson goes beyond proto-Marxist structural critique, suggesting that our language be put under intense scrutiny as we face each other in conversation.

Naoko Saito. “Perfectionism and the Love of Humanity: Democracy as a Way of Life after Dewey, Thoreau, and Cavell.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 20.2 (2006) 93-105.

Not entirely sure if I’ll use this article but I loved it. It gave me the idea for thinking about conversation as endemic to Cavell and the transcendentalist aesthetic. This article talks a lot about Dewey. I don’t know if I’m going to bring Dewey into my paper, more than just a quick mention or two, but I may bring Saito’s article in for a guest appearance. I often look at articles for what they can teach me about approach on a structural level. When I was torturing myself over how I was going to talk about Emerson’s material-structural critique as well as his emphasis on individual and communal perfectionism–the two seemed so opposite to one another–I took a cue from this article’s combinatory approach. To sum up, it argues that through Cavell’s reading of Thoreau we can uncover an understanding of democracy as a way of life, which relates to Dewey, who posited democracy a way of life, as an ethics in our everyday conduct.

David Anthony. “Gone Distracted”: “Sleepy Hollow,” Gothic Masculinity, and the Panic of 1819. Early American Literature, vol. 40, number 1, 2005, p.111-144.

This article looks at the emergence of paper currencies, speculation, and the market panic of 1819. It draws connections to a crisis of masculinity represented in Washington Irving’s famous tale, “Sleepy Hollow.” This article is useful in terms of historical background, but it also shows how anxieties about industrial capitalist economy made their way into aesthetic practices. Emerson, a few decades later, dealt with a similar crisis in the panic of 1837, an event that informed his Phi Beta Kappa address, “The American Scholar.”

Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America. Ed. Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith. University of Chicago Press. 2012.

A collection of essays, this anthology looks at new perspectives on the emergence of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century and how it affected slavery, the family, and American culture and sensibility. It comes on the heels of what historians in the late 90s/early 00s deemed “the second slavery”–slavery’s adaption to industrial market practices. While slavery has traditionally been understood by historians to be a hold-over from agrarian forms of 17th and 18th century capitalism, second slavery as a general historical recovery shows how slavery and industrial capitalism were mutually constitutive. These essays take this conversation further by exploring microhistories ,like that of a businessman and his son during the panic of 1837, showing how the economy went through a kind of bubble burst akin to the 08 bubble burst and tying this bubble bursting to slavery. It will be useful primarily as background and set up.

Emerson, philosophe transcendantaliste ou pragmatiste?” Gérard Deledalle.
Revue française d’études américaines, No. 91, Ralph Waldo Emerson: l’autorité du scepticisme (FÉVRIER 2002), pp. 80-86

I’m not sure if I’ll use this article for anything but it questions whether or not Emerson should
be understood as a transcendentalist or a pragmatist. The article argues that two traditions in
Emerson studies have emerged: the transcendentalist (the author curiously links this to
Wittgenstein) and the pragmatist (through James and Dewey).

“Pragmatismus, Dekonstruktion, ironischer Eklektizismus Richard Rortys Heidegger-Lektüre.” Philipp Burkard Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 51, H. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1997), pp.268-284

This article is really interesting and makes me wish I read German. It examines pragmatism as it
relates to deconstruction through a lecture on Heidegger given by Richard Rorty. I’ve been
somewhat interested in the ways pragmatism can be put into dialogue with post structuralism.

Stanley Cavell. Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes. Stanford University Press. 2003.

This book is a collection of Cavell’s essays and lectures on Emerson. It’s generally a go-to book.
The essay I’ll be looking at is called “Emerson’s Constitutional Amending.” It argues that
Emerson’s essay “Fate” suggests that our “fate” is our diction. We are trapped in the
pre-formed agreements of language. In conversing with one another, then, we must apply
skepticism to our words in order to reaffirm their vitality as our only way of knowing one
another, darkly. I will use this essay to think through Emersonian reformist perfectionism.
Emerson asserts the need to face one another and speak in a way that puts our words under
tremendous scrutiny. As such, we come to know one another despite the socio-economic
forces that alienate ourselves from ourselves and from each other. What I will argue is that
Emerson suggests that this interpolated conversing and facing must happen in addition to
or despite any broader structural critiques. Ultimately, Emerson is not a systematizer but a
suggester. He does not tell us what we must do, only what we must start to do.

Stanley Cavell. The Senses of Walden. The University of Chicago Press. 1992.

This book I am only beginning to read but it’s where Cavell began his work on the
transcendentalists. (The book was originally published in 1972 by Viking Press). I think this book
may be relevant for my argument in the way that it talks about conversation and our use of
language. Also, Thoreau talks a lot about facing one another and staring into another’s eyes.
I may bring Thoreau’s Walden into the conversation, particularly the passage where Thoreau
talks about mutual gazing. How prominent these texts will be in my discussion remains open.
I’m excited to dip into this book. With Stanley Cavell it’s never a bad time. (Many would
disagree!)

The Other Emerson. Ed. Branka Arsic and Carey Wolfe. University of Minnesota Press. 2010.

There is simply no more important collection of essays on Emerson in the last ten years.  The
aim of this collection is to reevaluate Emerson as a philosopher, marking a major
philosophic turn in Emerson studies that is just now, in my view, coming into maturation. I will
probably use or reference an essay in here by Eric Keenaghen called “Reading Emerson, in
Other Times: On a Politics of Solitude and an Ethics of Risk.” Keenaghen talks about “The
American Scholar” as a text that begins by addressing man’s ontological alienation within
market forces. Keenaghen, however, skips over talking about Emerson’s structural critiques
and talks more about citizenship through reading practices. While Keenaghen begins an
important “intervention”—that being a reevaluation of Emerson’s materialist thinking—I believe
he stops short of a necessary exploration of Emerson’s philosophical resistance to market
forces. I’m not sure to what extent this article will play a role in my project.

The Emerson Dilemma: Essays on Emerson and Social Reform. Ed. T. Gregory Garvey. University of Georgia Press. 2001.

These essays on Emerson and social reform are invaluable. T. Gregory Garvey’s introduction
sets the stage nicely, providing a comprehensive look at the salient themes of Emerson cum
social reformer. My argument assumes that Emerson was a social reformer, albeit in his own
way, that is, through lecturing and through political alliances as a public intellectual. This has
been the trend of recent scholarship and the view of Emerson as detached from social reform
has generally fallen by the wayside. This book will be useful more so for set-up and background
material. It will probably make its way into a few footnotes.

By: Lindsey Albracht

I’m using this annotated bibliography assignment as a way to prepare for a seminar paper that I’m writing about the spaces in which writing instruction takes place in the CUNY senior college system (focusing especially on first-year composition classrooms). So far, the following questions are guiding my research:

• If we acknowledge David Batchelor’s theory that color, in the West is often “relegated to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic,” or that it is “made out to be the property of some ‘foreign’ body — usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological,” what might the use of color in certain spaces and the absence of color in others communicate? (Batchelor 22). Specifically, in what ways and to what effect do classrooms evacuate or utilize color in their design? In what kinds of spaces can we see color, and in what kinds of spaces is it absent? How is color institutionally encouraged or denied? If considerations surrounding the history and racialized origins of Western color theory are brought to bear on previous research about the effect of space color on student academic performance or the measurement of the affective response to color, how might these conversations impact or more broadly contextualize this research?
• Furthermore, in what ways and to what effect do classrooms evacuate or acknowledge the (dis/abled) body in their design? Beyond meeting ADA compliance, are there ways that a classroom can or should be structured or re-structured to meet the physiological and pedagogical needs and demands of embodied writing students? In what ways does Industrial Revolution-era design continue to impact classrooms spaces? Again, what is the institution’s or market’s role in perpetuating or maintaining pedagogically outdated design? In what ways do environmental scales (such as the ECERS, the Danielson Rubric, or the EDUCAUSE Learning Space Rating System) reflect anxieties about the appearance of sexuality in post-early childhood classrooms? Might the writing process and theories of writing studies / queer theory inform, impact, or queer classroom design?

Bemer, Amanda Metz, Ryan M. Moeller, and Cheryl E. Ball. “Designing Collaborative   Learning Spaces.” Programmatic Perspectives, 1(2), September 2009: 139–166.

This article tracks the changes made in the physical and material environment of a computer lab on the Utah State University campus over a span of 15 years. The authors begin with a brief literature review of discussions concerning classroom furniture configurations and briefly outline the affordances and constraints of typical models of computer classroom design (rows, rows + “peninsulas,” pods, and and a circle around the exterior of the room). By analyzing the various changes, the authors concluded that there were three factors that increased success in collaboration: formality, presence, and confidentiality. They used these concepts to design a new, laptop-based computer lab on campus that attempted to maximize student control over their formality and confidentiality while increasing the sense of presence and, therefore, they successfully increase student collaboration and autonomy in the space.

Brown, Michael, Joseph Cevetello, Shirley Dugdale, Richard Holeton, and Carole Meyers.   “Learning Space Rating System.” EDUCAUSE. 1 Sept. 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.

This is a document that EDUCAUSE released this fall which was co-authored by a researcher   for EDUCAUSE, professors from three universities, and the CEOs of industrial designers from   two firms that specialize in educational space design. It’s a rating system for educational space in higher education, and it is designed to assess the space’s potential for pedagogical alignment, environmental quality, integration of technology, durability and other relevant factors. I’d like to put this primary source into conversation with another scale that is commonly used in New York State to assess early childhood education space (which is called the ECERS scale) to investigate what kinds of rhetorical arguments that both documents are making about the learners who will inhabit the spaces that the scales are designed to assess. I’m especially interested in the points of intersection and divergence in these scales, and how the potential learning goals are framed in each case.

Carton, Francis. “Ethnographie Comparée De La Salle De Classe en France et en Grande-Bretagne.” Mélanges Pédagogiques 23 (1997): 11-26. Print.

Francis Carton, a professor at centre de recherches et d’applications pédagogiques en langues at Université de Nancy 2, wrote an ethnography describing the experiences of British and French assistants working in foreign schools. For my project, the most compelling portion of the ethnography focused on the teachers’ perceptions of their respective foreign schools’ use of classroom space. British classrooms tended to be located in old, outmoded basements more often than French classrooms; they were more often used as multi-purpose spaces; and they had, on average, fewer cafeterias and nurses offices than French schools. However, British classrooms tended to be more “open” — teachers kept the doors open, students passed outside between classes, students were freer to move around the classroom, etc., while French schools tended to be more “closed” — individual instructors closed their classroom doors, and the students spent a majority of their day inside the building rather than passing from class to class from an outside thoroughfare. Carton concluded that this contributed to an environment (or was, perhaps, reflective of an environment) in which French teachers had more personal autonomy and authority and the goal of an education was for students to become socialized into a system rather than to become (more) curious and autonomous.

Derouet-Besson, Marie-Claude. “Architecture et éducation: convergences et divergences des conjonctures politique et scientifique.” Revue Français de Pèdagogie 115 (1996): 99-119.

In this article, Marie-Claude Derouet-Besson, a French author and researcher at the INRP (Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique) wrote this brief history of the (dis)connection between the planning of architectural and interior space and contemporary pedagogical practice in France. She argues that a confluence of factors caused the split between architectural thinking and educational praxis. First, because the effect of space on student performance cannot be easily separated from the effect of pedagogy itself and a variety of other factors, it therefore cannot be neatly and scientifically quantified, which leaves it a difficult area to study. Derouet-Besson also blames economic factors, such as the sudden and pronounced need in the 1960s to build schools quickly (and cheaply) in order to accommodate students who arrived in France as the result of a new wave of immigration. During the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of the work of thinkers such as Foucault and Piaget, and because of developments within the field of developmental psychology, there was a renewed interest in the way that physical environment shaped pedagogy.

Leander, Kevin and Gail Boldt. “Rereading ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’: Bodies, Texts, and Emergence.” Journal of Literacy Research 45.1 (2013): 22-46.

Kevin Leander, a professor at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, and Gail Boldt, a professor in the school of education at Pennsylvania State University, explore a canonical literacy education text from the 1990s (‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’) and use observations of a 10-year-old boy’s manga reading practices to critique the text’s lack of focus on the way that the body mediates and facilitates literacy practices. Using Deluze and Guattrai’s theory of rhizomic analysis (which is a framework that attempts to dissolve constructed boundaries between seemingly unrelated things — like reading and use of the body), Leander and Boldt argue that pedagogies of literacy must be expanded to consider the way that affect and the body help to constitute meaning-making since, currently, using the body to read (for example, by acting out a scene) is often seen as a “distraction” from the task at hand rather than another way of knowing and comprehending it. Although this text primarily focuses on reading and not production of text, I think that Leander and Boldt’s use of Deluze and Guattrai’s framework to promote embodied pedagogy and learning is a compelling move that could inform my project.

Lipsitz, George. How Racism Takes Place. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. Print.

As a professor of American Studies in the Black Studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, George Lipsitz studies social movements and identities, race and culture, and inequality (particularly in urban environments). In the first chapter of his book, Lipsitz argues that a phenomenon he identifies as “the white spatial imaginary” organizes much of the logic of North American public and private space and contributes to the phenomenon of misdirecting attention away from the link between “urban place and race” to make post-Civil Rights urban racial segregation seem like a natural consequence of choice (13). Lipsitz’s discussion about the way that place and space reflects and reifies white privilege could inform my rhetorical analysis of the way that classroom space is (potentially) impacted by the white spatial imaginary.

Muñoz, José Esteban. “Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performance.” Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York and Longmon: New York UP, 2009. Print.

In this chapter, Muñoz offers an interpretation of the work of Kevin McCarty, who photographs queer punk performance spaces before the performance takes place. He argues that these photos depict a punk/queer utopia, or, in other words, a space and time that are not bound by heteronormative social constructs of time, space, identity, and notions of futurity. Like the process and post-process movements within the field of Writing Studies, the punk/queer scene that Muñoz describes celebrates that which is in process rather than that which has already come into being. Muñoz describes these stages as a symbol for “a self that does not conform to the mandates of cultural logics such as late capitalism, heteronormativity, and in some cases, white supremacy” (111). I think that this essay could not only provide an interesting model for how to “closely read” a material space, but it could also assist with thinking about the “so what” of my own project. If we reorganize classrooms so that they are more reflective of anti-racist, anti-homophobic pedagogical classrooms, this would be a continual, ongoing process rather than a static, definitive performance.

Nagelhout, Ed, and Carol Rutz. Classroom Spaces and Writing Instruction. Hampton Press, 2004. Print.

In this collection of essays, Ed Nagelhout (a professor of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Las Vegas), and Carol Rutz (a professor of Writing at Carleton College) include a variety of pieces that examine the relationship between writing instruction and material classroom space to encourage teachers and students to become more conscious and critical about the way that space impacts writing and frames pedagogy. Many of these essays engage with the way that classroom furniture and embodiment / movement (or lack of embodiment / movement) impact writing; however, discussions that engage with queer theory and / or sexuality in the classroom are completely absent, so there’s a good opportunity to build on previous research while, potentially, expanding the conversation.

Rands, Kat, Jess McDonald, and Lauren Clapp. “Landscaping Classrooms toward Queer Utopias.” A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias. Ed. Angela Jones. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.

Invoking the work of Jill H. Casid, an art historian, who talks about the concept of a “landscape” as both a noun (a fixed tableau) and a verb (a process by which the tableau undergoes continual change) Kat Rands (a professor of education at Elon University) and student collaborators Jess McDonald and Lauren Clapp position queer landscaping as a process by which teachers and students may arrive at a more progressive, anti-oppressive classroom design. After a brief discussion of the ways in which a classroom is normatively landscaped, the authors figure queer landscaping as a process which involves a subversion of the normative (Western) conception of time, a subversion of structures of authority and the teacher/student binary, and a refiguring of where on a campus (or outside of one) a “class” can take place. The chapter also includes a practical “guide” of suggestions.

Sheridan, David. “Digital Composition as Distributed, Emergent Process: Technology-Rich  Spaces and Learning Ecologies.” Making Spaces: Architexture, Infrastructure and the  Rhetoric of Design. Ed. Rusty Carpenter, Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Andy Frazee, James P. Purdy, David Sheridan, and Douglas Walls. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, (anticipated) 2015.

David Sheridan, an English professor who specializes in rhetoric and writing, teaches at Michigan State University. In this essay — part of a forthcoming collection of essays which focus on analyzing composing spaces across several campuses — Sheridan analyzes the Language Media Center (LMC), which is a part of Michigan State’s residential college of the arts and humanities, and argues that living-learning centers (residential spaces where classes and other learning-related resources are available) are fertile grounds for research into the composing process which happens inside and outside of “actual” writing time. Sheridan’s description of what he calls a learning ecology, which involves a combination of formal instruction and dedicated writing time with informal and accidental conversations (which can actually be intentionally influenced by architectural design) may more accurately describe the composing process. This theory pairs well with Leander and Boltd’s call to apply rhizomic analysis to the restructuring of literacy practices.

By: Sophia Natasha Sunseri

My research explores the eighteenth-century epistolary novel, focusing on the slippage that occurs between writing and the body and the role that violence plays within this paradigm.

Dickie, Simon. Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Simon Dickie discusses a comprehensive—but neglected—body of eighteenth-century comic texts. In examining how these texts represent suffering, Dickie counters prevailing scholarly assumptions about the ways in which eighteenth-century culture literature and culture have been recently characterized: as a transition to modernity and as being inextricably linked to politeness, sentimentalism, and other “middle-class” values. Dickie’s writing on the portrayal of violence in eighteenth-century literature has defined the theoretical approach I take in much of research, which strives to offer an alternative version of cultural history by problematizing notions of enlightenment.

Eagleton, Terry. The Rape of Clarissa. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

Terry Eagleton assesses Richardson’s text through a variety of lenses: Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and post-structuralist. He demonstrates how issues of power, class, and sex—all of which are raised in Richardson’s novels—continue to have critical and political significance. Of particular interest to me and my research are the portions of his book that delve into the symbolic importance of the letter. Eagleton writes that, “The letter is part of the body which is detachable: torn from the very depths of the subject, it can equally be torn from her physical possession … the letter comes to signify nothing quite so much as sexuality itself, that folded secret place which is always open to violent intrusion.” My scholarship aims to build upon Eagleton’s claims by exploring the body as a site upon which values are inscribed and where control can be exerted, displayed, or resisted. I hope to further this stance by tracing shifts that have occurred in feminism since the publication of Eagleton’s work in the early ‘80s.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

The Introduction to Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain explores the inexpressibility of physical pain, the political consequences of pain’s inexpressibility, and the nature of material and verbal expressibility. Scarry’s work would be of use to my own scholarship because it articulates an embodied stance (a stance I am considering taking in my research). Considering Scarry’s work within the context of my own raises interesting questions about how representations of pain correspond to representations of subjecthood in the eighteenth-century novel.

Nelson, Maggie. The Art of Cruelty. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty offers a cultural critique of the aesthetics of cruelty and violence in twentieth-century art. Nelson’s various subjects—which range from Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings to the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art—are contextualized against the backdrop of the century’s many atrocities (“…unthinkable wars, premeditated and spontaneous genocides, rapacious exploitations of resources, environmental catastrophes, and systematic injustices of all kinds…”). I see a distinct correlation between Nelson’s aim to reframe the history of the avant-garde in terms of cruelty and my aim to reframe the eighteenth century in terms of violence.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Susan Sontag examines a wide array of images depicting suffering—from Goya’s The Disasters of War to photographic documentation of 9/11—and explores the ways in which they impact viewers. She questions whether viewers are incited to commit acts of violence after encountering images of cruelty, whether their perception of reality is eroded by daily barrages of such images, and she articulates what it means to care about the suffering of others who are at a geographic remove. Sontag’s work acts as a visual supplement to my own work, allowing me to situate my research within a historical continuum.

Castle, Terry. The Female Thermometer: 18^th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

“The Culture of Travesty: Sexuality and Masquerade in Eighteenth-Century England,” the sixth chapter of Castle’s book, explores numerous examples of characters manipulating their appearances in public and private arenas. Castle’s work is of interest to me because of its emphasis on the female body. Assessing the female body within the context of the masquerade (where bodies can violate class and gender boundaries through dress) presents compelling ways to think about the body as a vehicle of hierarchal transgression.

Moglen, Helen. The Trauma of Gender: A Feminist Theory of the English Novel. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2001.

In “Clarissa and the Pornographic Imagination” (Chapter 2) Moglen argues that gender are power dynamics are eroticized in Richardson’s text, which renders the male perspective dominant. The ideas outlined in Moglen’s essay would be useful to consider in any feminist reading of eighteenth-century literature.

Tobin, Beth Fowkes. (Ed). History, Gender & Eighteenth-Century Literature. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1994.

Susan Staves’ essay, “Fielding and the Comedy of Attempted Rape” discusses violence against women as it is represented in some of Fielding’s comedic works, including his parody Shamela. Staves’ essay is applicable to my own work, as I too am interested in the intersection of violence and comedy (and whether the prevalence of comedic violence compromises our characterization of the eighteenth century as enlightened).

 Malogne-Fer, Gwendolyn. “Le rôle des femmes dans l’évangélisation protestante de Tahiti et des îles adjacentes”. French Historical Studies 34.1 (2011): 57-86. JSTOR.

Malogne-Fer’s article traces the accounts of eighteenth-century explorers, who fabricated the Tahitian myth of the immense sexual freedom enjoyed by Polynesians. It contrasts the explorers’ praise of such freedoms with the staunch disapproval expressed by British Protestant missionaries from the London Missionary Society (1797-1863). In examining missionary literature of the period, the author elucidates the role played by both Western and Polynesian women in the evangelization of Tahiti and its “adjacent islands,” underscoring the anxiety this caused Western male missionaries, who sought to maintain traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Malogne-Fer’s essay is useful to consider in terms of broadening the scope of my project, both in terms of expanding its geographical parameters and in considering representations of suffering incited by colonialist incentives.

Brouard-Arends, Isabelle. “Espaces du féminin dans le roman français du dix-huitième siècle”.   Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 107.1 (2007): 247-248. JSTOR.

This article discusses feminine spaces in French literature of the eighteenth century. Appropriating the discussion of feminine spaces for the purpose of my own research on the eighteenth-century British novel could have fruitful implications. I am thinking specifically of the lady’s dressing room. Though initially satirized by writers like Swift, the lady’s dressing room is eventually utilized by writers like Richardson, Burney, and Edgeworth and comes to be regarded as a space associated with the production of feminine virtue. I would be interested in examining instances in eighteenth-century literature where feminine spaces like the dressing room are violated.