Browsing by Author "Zwarg, Christina, 1949-"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 41
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    Alouette
    (2020) Tien, Caroline; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    In the months since her mechanical-engineer husband confessed to cheating on her, twentysomething Lenore has moved back in with her parents, gotten a job as a barista, and reconnected with her best friend from college, Vicky. Profoundly depressed by the failure of her marriage, she has also visited a psychiatrist in an attempt to make sense of the mess her life has become. While slogging through a work shift one rainy Saturday, she reminisces about her relationship with her now-ex and their only child, seven-year-old Thomas, and reflects on how her life has been negatively affected by economic instability and her decision to marry and have a child at a young age. When her shift ends, Lenore walks to a bar where she and Vicky have agreed to meet for drinks. In a conversation interspersed with Lenore's recollections of her relationship with Vicky, they discuss Lenore's divorce at length. Fearing that she will cry if they continue, Lenore asks Vicky about her studies and is stunned to hear that Vicky, a lifelong overachiever with a boatload of degrees, has resorted to waitressing to survive. They hold hands in a small but meaningful attempt to comfort one another. Silence falling, Lenore's thoughts turn to the way in which people conceal their true thoughts and feelings behind a mask of normalcy.
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    Astounding Failures: Frames in Absalom, Absalom!
    (2009) Kittler, James; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    Atoning for the Past, Writing for the Future: An analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
    (2009) Garibotto, Becky; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    This project explores the ways in which Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter enacts a sort of generational trauma, as defined by Marianne Hirsch, as Hawthorne attempts to separate himself from his Puritan ancestors and atone for their cold-hearted actions, specifically in reference to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. His own experiences under the "rigidities of the Puritan faith," coupled with the shame he felt on behalf of his ancestors who were active in the persecution of the Quakers and in the testimonies and judgments against those accused of witchcraft, led Hawthorne to create a world in which a sympathetic, and ultimately benevolent, heroine, Hester Prynne, suffers at the hands of a closed-minded and judgmental Puritanical community that deems themselves worthy of assuming the power of God's judgment. Although Hawthorne was compelled to write as an act of repentance on his ancestors' behalf, the generational trauma he was experiencing was not the sole factor that urged him to write The Scarlet Letter. There were other forces at work in the middle of the 19th century that encouraged Hawthorne to take up this sense of responsibility nearly two centuries after the Salem witch trials of 1692: namely abolitionism. He viewed slavery as something in which earthly beings did not have a right to intervene. These themes are reverberated throughout The Scarlet Letter, as Hawthorne delivers a critique of the Puritan community that persecutes Hester that is strikingly similar to his view of the violently revolutionary abolitionists with whom he disagreed. Hawthorne does not believe that Hester has not sinned by committing adultery, but he does not deem the Puritan community capable of discerning the ways in which Hester should be punished for it. Hawthorne drew upon his experiences with crazed abolitionists and accounts of the cruel judgments and vicious actions of his Puritan ancestors as he created the ruthless, bloodthirsty community, strengthened by a mob-mentality, that would surround his protagonists in The Scarlet Letter Finally, Hawthorne enacts generational trauma through Pearl, displaying the hardships that one incurs when forced to deal with the lasting effects of an ancestor’s actions, while also providing an optimistic future for her, and for all women, that reflects his belief that separating oneself from one's turbulent familial past is attainable. She begins life as an outcast along with her mother, considered wild and untamable, almost other worldly, but is eventually able to overcome the early judgments that were thrust against her and develop into a successful, independent woman. In Pearl there lies the hope that succeeding generations can branch away from their ancestors and escape the sins they committed, eventually learning to develop a life of their own despite any early influences that may have existed, or family stigmas that may once have branded them. Hawthorne's writing allows him to transcend his own earthly identity and assume that of another, of many others, in hopes of gaining a new understanding of those with experiences much different than his own. He thus offers a new perspective, not only to himself, but to his readers, as they suffer alongside Hester and Dimmesdale, empathizing with their suffering under ruthless scrutiny and realizing the evils of hypocrisy and faulty judgment, inspired with a desire for the reformation of humanity.
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    Burning with Temporality: Postmodernism and the Modern Aesthetic in Cosmopolis
    (2013) Whitcomb, David; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    Hunt for Self: A Wild Woman's Journey to Wholeness
    (2009) Woldeyesus, Rahwa; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    Ishmael's Impossible History: Survivor's Narration of a Trauma in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851)
    (2022) Hendon, Jack; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) is more than a tale of the chase for a white whale: it is a story about how stories are told. Its speaker, Ishmael, curiously arranges his narrative in both incessant digressions from the events of the hunt and a seemingly inexplicable shift to third-person omniscience during them. Though his approach may vex the reader who anticipates a more directly focused history, it is also integral to achieving an understanding of the narrator as somebody who has experienced such events as a trauma. This essay draws from Cathy Caruth's theoretical framework of trauma as it fundamentally resides within an impossible history in order to consider the underlying meaning of Ishmael's own behavior. Just as Caruth poses that a traumatic experience – in its continued reappearance to the survivor – never necessarily concludes, we may begin to analyze the narrator's own struggle to recount his experience on similar terms. In Ishmael's whimsical expositions on cetology, he exhibits an interest in merely talking about something else because, as his disappearance from the scenes of destruction suggests, he cannot talk about the wreck of the Pequod. Exploring the traumatized voice in Ishmael's narration ultimately entails a critical inquiry into Melville's own motivation to necessarily engage the concept of a trauma – something most medical fields will not even attempt for another century. Drawing from several scholars with varying interests in both the narrator and author's respective relationships to traumatic histories, this essay strives to achieve an equally crucial reading of Melville's perspective.
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    Language and Consciousness: Gaining Access to an Impossible History
    (2003) Lee, Hanna; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    Laughing in the Face of Cultural "Authenticity": Multiplicity, Melancholia, and Humor in Gish Jen's Who's Irish
    (2017) Xiao, Rachel; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    This paper examines the cultural dislocation/relocation of the hyphenated space in the term “Chinese-American” by looking at humor in relation to themes of multiplicity, transition, and instability in Gish Jen’s collection of short stories, Who’s Irish? The paper situates the anthology within the larger cultural context of interpretations and representations of Chinese-American identity that compartmentalize these narratives into what critic Jeffrey Partridge terms a privatized “literary Chinatown.” I argue that Who’s Irish? de-privatizes the conventional Chinese-American narrative and instead functions within an alternate space of cultural production unique to the hybridized nature of the hyphenated identity, subverting what theorist Lisa Lowe describes as the “nativist/assimilationist” dialectic that characterizes Chinese-American literary tropes. I further argue that by using humor to draw attention to the ways in which characters perpetuate or transgress perceived cultural boundaries, Who’s Irish? challenges the idea of a cultural authenticity or essence and creates a more relational, expansive, and fluid notion of cultural identity. While the paper addresses the significance of the anthology’s ability to speak to both individual and collective experiences as a whole, it focuses specifically on the three short stories “Who’s Irish?,” “In the American Society,” and “Duncan in China” to demonstrate its argument that cultural identity should be understood relationally rather than as an absolute, and to highlight the role of humor in exposing and processing such moments of cultural essentialism.
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    Let Her Wear Suits: Normative Physical Appearance and Temporality in ​Fun Home
    (2020) Hanss, Julie; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    Fun Home is a complex, gripping, and thought-provoking graphic novel. This autobiography, follows the coming of age story of author Alison Bechdel as she navigates the complicated and confusing relationship that she and her father share. Throughout the novel Alison and her father, Bruce, deeply disagree about physical appearance. Bruce wants to uphold a "normal" family appearance, mainly because he is a closeted gay man, while Alison craves to be different, as she is exploring her sexuality. Through analyzing the graphic form, this thesis examines moments in which normative physical appearance is adhered to, challenged, and/or destroyed. Throughout this analysis it becomes clear that these moments are also ones in which a normative or linear sense of time is destroyed.
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    Literature as Performance: Founding Spaces for Voice
    (2005) Clark, Prentiss; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    In the recent history of literary studies, audience-oriented criticism emerges as a dominant trope for understanding the relationships between texts, authors, and readers. Barthes’s reclassification of the reader as a producer, and his elevation of an open, plural, “text” over a “work” that “closes on a signified,” emphasizes modern conceptions of reading as a form of writing. Yet, the specific processes that poststructuralism advances point back to older modes of criticism in an illustration of the dynamic relationship between history and literature. Thus, as Derrida resists logocentrism and dismantles traditional metaphysical hierarchies, viewing writing as both written and spoken language, he reaffirms the necessity of the text. I want to remain in the post-structuralist mode of thinking, allowing for the reader’s interpretive authority, but through that mode of thinking point out the inextricable link to the text itself, which provides the reader with voice. Granting the text performative power allows it to retain prescriptive agency and escape classification as a closed/fixed “work” for consumption. I propose reading the productive collapse of hierarchies such as speech/writing and speech/action in Henry James’s The Bostonians through the lens of performance in order to explicate and expand upon Derrida’s deconstructive practices. Ultimately, through the reverse process of using a text to read theory, rather than theory to read a text, I want to suggest that literature performs what culture has yet to articulate.
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    Mark Twain's Literary Unconscious(ness): Humor, Textuality, and Deadpan Performance
    (2008) Guilfoyle, Daniel; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
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    "Memory is a tough place. You were there": Reading Claudia Rankine's Citizen, a Living Archive
    (2021) Nicholas, Claire; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    A focus on Claudia Rankine's use of the second person in her self-described lyric Citizen, in which I argue she invites all readers toparticipate in what ends up being a form of "wake work," a term coined by Christina Sharpe in her book In the Wake: on Blacknessand Being.
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    "Mother of otherness": Exploring the Stakes of Semiotic ‘Madness' within the Poetry of Sylvia Plath
    (2021) Ford, Caroline; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    This thesis presents the ways in which confessional poet Sylvia Plath traversed literary boundaries through her anti-normative poetics and strove to rupture what psychoanalytic critic Julia Kristeva delineates as the conventional linguistic symbolic order. By analyzing Plath's "Poems, Potatoes,""Mirror," "Childless Woman," "Edge," and "Contusion," I reject a strictly biographical reading of her work and advocate for one rooted in Plath's specific, vivid, and often shocking language. By interpreting these five poems through the lens of the Kristevan semiotic, examining Plath's motions toward Kristeva's conception of the abject, and engaging with the work of feminist disability studies, I illustrate the ways in which Plath extended far beyond acritical pathologization of 'madness' in the face of the symbolic limitations of the patriarchal social order.
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    Parallel Narratives: The Railroad as Cinematic Camera Eye in John Dos Passos' "The 42nd Parallel"
    (2015) Johnsson, Alec; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    In confronting the influence of the railroad on literature and film, John Dos Passos’ 'U.S.A.' trilogy [...] is worth scrutiny. Written across the 1930s, 'U.S.A.' spans the first three decades of the new century and navigates between four modes of storytelling, one fictional, the other three nonfictional: prose poems that offer brief biographies of historical figures from the day; 'Newsreels' that collect news headlines, news excerpts and song lyrics from the day in filmic montages; and 'Camera Eyes,' in which Dos Passos recollects his life in stream-of-consciousness prose poems that are fraught with cinematic connotations. The author’s use of film qua industry to condemn the railroad is not hypocritical; rather, it is meant to expose and emphasize the inner workings of the railroad and its impact on the human psyche, so as to engender critique of it, and of the ideologies that support it. [...] Much critical precedent exists to support the perception of 'U.S.A.' as a railroad-like machine that aims to self-reflexively show its own inner mechanisms. [...] [What] follows is a study of the railroad in the trilogy’s first entry, 'The 42nd Parallel', as a filmic technology that incorporates itself into its passengers’ bodies with the effect, as [Lynne] Kirby theorizes, of turning their perceptions of space and time panoramic and filmic, a process that Dos Passos, who is more pessimistic than Kirby, views as a traumatic distortion. Thus, he turns his own industrial 'Camera Eye' against the railroad in an effort to establish a conception of space and time beyond the railroad’s control, and to expose the fallacy of the filmic view from the train. [...] The most critical hermeneutic technique of this essay will involve viewing crucial events from the characters’ lives as twists on stories that were traditional in the railroad-themed films of early cinema—which I hereafter term 'paradigms' of the railroad narrative[.] [...] Alone, each of these paradigms appears tired and unoriginal, yet together, they form a panoramic mythology of the railroad that facilitates Dos Passos’ critique of the filmic vision with which it infects its riders.
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    Photographic Memory in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
    (2017) Carter, Courtney; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
    Humbert’s passing phrase—“photographic memory”—may appear to be a playful, yet eager attempt to credit his self-centered narrative focus and persuasive control of language with photography’s apparent believability. But for a notoriously unreliable narrator obsessed with visual recollection, and for an author notorious for his clever tricks, the reader cannot make the same assumptions of photography—whether too seriously intertwined with believability, or too jokingly undervalued—and must examine more carefully what “photographic memory” can really mean. By relying on photographic history and theory, primarily Kaja Silverman, I seek to illuminate photography’s evasion of controlled operation and its essential “analogy” (Silverman 11) with the world, both of which I argue engender optimistic possibilities for Lolita’s photographable subjects in the reproduction of their own remembered image. When characters in Lolita slip in and out of the narration of Humbert’s visual memory, they challenge his singular control of his memory’s recollection and the memoir’s authorship. By these same analogic relationships in the novel, Nabokov opens an opportunity for the reader to reinterpret their place in it, including even that place of unreliable authority Humbert occupies. These opportunities for reciprocity in the development of Humbert’s visual memory invite an alternate and reversed relationship of spectatorship in a book historically critiqued for its unapologetic presentation of the solipsistic and often voyeuristic perspective of a pedophilic murderer. Additionally, reciprocity in recollection challenges popular critical views that Nabokov exclusively treated memory subject to the author’s will power, offering an alternate view of a famed author who instead welcomes textual instability and democratized control of memory and language as equally positive developments. By seeing the world differently, through Silverman’s account of photography, the reader can see Nabokov differently—as an author who welcomes instability and lack of single-minded authorial control, without sacrificing care, cleverness, or optimism.