Franchot Ballinger
Monday, May 3, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Love Medicine: Fiction not History
I need to give it a more careful reading to decide if this article is a legitimate defense, but McKenzie addresses the concern that this novel just reinforces stereotypes about native alcoholism and contrastingly, "sugary romanticism" (62).
"For the utter outsider (including a superficial reader), [June's last moment] is the death of a poor Indian prostitute, an occasion for no loftier an emotion than pity" but for June, her rejection of the man as her family's savior and of the bus ride on white highways birthed her homecoming" (58).
"I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness.'" (63, quoted from Levertov, 1975).
Use this link to access the article on the Nevada campus or use your personal ID to access from the a library home page.
McKENZIE, J. Lipsha’s Good Road Home: The Revival of Chippewa Culture in Love Medicine. AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL 10:3 (1986) 53-63 Retrieved April 20, 2010 from http://aisc.metapress.com/content/k0513608q774741k/
of “love medicine.”
I had thought my students’ fears greatly exaggerated until I consulted some of the more widely available reviews. The results were unsettling. Robert Towers, for example, though a novelist himself, discusses Love Medicine as if it were yet another anthropological study of what he calls “a nearly forgotten American Indian tribe.”’ “The subject has much documentary interest,” he writes.* Having shifted the terms of his discussion from fiction to documentary, Towers then collapses the rich diversity of characters this novel presents into the very stereotypes my students feared, making no attempt to cover his tracks: (54)
"For the utter outsider (including a superficial reader), [June's last moment] is the death of a poor Indian prostitute, an occasion for no loftier an emotion than pity" but for June, her rejection of the man as her family's savior and of the bus ride on white highways birthed her homecoming" (58).
"I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness.'" (63, quoted from Levertov, 1975).
Use this link to access the article on the Nevada campus or use your personal ID to access from the a library home page.
McKENZIE, J. Lipsha’s Good Road Home: The Revival of Chippewa Culture in Love Medicine. AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL 10:3 (1986) 53-63 Retrieved April 20, 2010 from http://aisc.metapress.com/content/k0513608q774741k/
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
A Midwife's Tale
Movie shown to help us understand the Country of the Pointed Firs called A Midwife's Tale.
Women left few documents for us to study to understand the world they inhabited. This Diary tells a story among the overwhelming quantity of details.
Feel free to peruse the origional diary and use tools to help make the pages more readable by clicking on this page from January 23 - February 7, 1785.
Women left few documents for us to study to understand the world they inhabited. This Diary tells a story among the overwhelming quantity of details.
Feel free to peruse the origional diary and use tools to help make the pages more readable by clicking on this page from January 23 - February 7, 1785.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Helena Viramontes. Under the Feet of Jesus
This book is in the daily reading after spring break but is not in the book reading list in the syllabus.
About $5 on Amazon
Not stocked in the Knowledge Center
About $5 on Amazon
Not stocked in the Knowledge Center
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter
Susan Stanford Friedman. (1998). Mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter. Princeton University Press. Retrieved February 11, 2010, from Google Books database
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Graduate Presentation by Micah Drew
Susan Stanford Friedman. (1998). Mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter. Princeton University Press. Retrieved February 11, 2010, from Google Books database
Theory connects
Jane Smiley. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
and
Caroline Kirkland's (pen name Mary Clavers). A New Home, Who'll Follow?
Friedman says identity constantly evolving and not tied to origin - we go to places; values add at each pause (153). Migration
Theme of Moving
They can never go back to who they were at the beginning.
Lidie cannot go back to Quincy.
Mary cannot go back to the East.
What happens to a women forced to change rapidly and quickly?
What future does she have - how to be a woman?
Does the novel narrate Lidie's escape or path to jaded acceptance?
Theory connects
Jane Smiley. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
and
Caroline Kirkland's (pen name Mary Clavers). A New Home, Who'll Follow?
Friedman says identity constantly evolving and not tied to origin - we go to places; values add at each pause (153). Migration
Theme of Moving
They can never go back to who they were at the beginning.
Lidie cannot go back to Quincy.
Mary cannot go back to the East.
What happens to a women forced to change rapidly and quickly?
What future does she have - how to be a woman?
Does the novel narrate Lidie's escape or path to jaded acceptance?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
How to Contribute
If you send me an email at jkolbet@gmail.com,
I can add you onto the blog so you can post your own ideas, questions, links, or all the other things to occur in your brain that would not reach the class otherwise to open more discussion.
If you have a gmail account, I can connect you easily; but with only a few additional steps, you can post without the account.
Anyone is free to post comments to blogs without sending me an email first. Just leave the "Comment as:" on "select profile..." do not change it to "Anonymous."
I will not change this feature unless an outside advertiser takes advantage and posts unrelated content.
I can add you onto the blog so you can post your own ideas, questions, links, or all the other things to occur in your brain that would not reach the class otherwise to open more discussion.
If you have a gmail account, I can connect you easily; but with only a few additional steps, you can post without the account.
Anyone is free to post comments to blogs without sending me an email first. Just leave the "Comment as:" on "select profile..." do not change it to "Anonymous."
I will not change this feature unless an outside advertiser takes advantage and posts unrelated content.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Contribute or Undermine
Professor Dupree told me that she was contemplating the support women exchange with other women and the strategies they use to undermine other women when she first chose books for this curriculum (Dupree, personal communication, November 24, 2009).
She seems to have settled, in the syllabus (January 19, 2010), to the more abstract and academic topic - women contributions to genre. The books continue to include her initial exploration and open discussion about woman's dependency on other women as we are all dependent on vast networks with alternative priorities.
But we may loose a bit of time digging for these relationships; the statement "we'll discuss the discourses about gender" generalizes and risks creating an archetypal discussion about men and women (Dupree, 2010, Course Description). As a class, we should overcome the barrier to explore person to person networks in the novels. As individuals, we rely on support and mitigate efforts to undermine our goals. These women authors provide narrative among give and take. We can analyze the structure of the novel's relationships to give more to one another than the syllabus alone demands.
She seems to have settled, in the syllabus (January 19, 2010), to the more abstract and academic topic - women contributions to genre. The books continue to include her initial exploration and open discussion about woman's dependency on other women as we are all dependent on vast networks with alternative priorities.
But we may loose a bit of time digging for these relationships; the statement "we'll discuss the discourses about gender" generalizes and risks creating an archetypal discussion about men and women (Dupree, 2010, Course Description). As a class, we should overcome the barrier to explore person to person networks in the novels. As individuals, we rely on support and mitigate efforts to undermine our goals. These women authors provide narrative among give and take. We can analyze the structure of the novel's relationships to give more to one another than the syllabus alone demands.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course in fiction by American women is based on genres that have for various reasons been important to women writers: the domestic novel, the women's Bildungsroman, the short story collection on a particular subject, and the story cycle. In presenting these genres, with the exception of the Bildungsroman, I've paired a nineteenth or early twentieth-century example with a more recent one, which will allow us to consider why women were first attracted to the genre and how this interest has evolved in our own time. After learning about the history of the Bildungsroman, we'll look at two innovative adaptations by contemporary ethnic women writers. As we read all the paired works, we'll discuss the discourses about gender we discover in them, and attempt to understand how women have made these genres their own.
Women and Literature Exchange
Women create and define the worlds they inhabit with characteristics less explored than male histories but no set of presumptions define the variance. The Literature by Women blog provides a sounding board to enable voices among University of Nevada class ENG 427A, sect. 2: Women and Literature. Spring 2010.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)