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American Literature after 1865 II: Post-1945

Session 4 - Saturday 3:00-4:30pm
Eiben Hall 201
Presiding Officer: 
Sarita Cannon
  1. Double Consciousness as Critical Reading: The Book Club Scene in Chester Himes' If He Hollers. Kimberly S. Drake, Scripps College

    I discuss critical reading practices in Chester Himes’ If He Hollers (1945) through the lens of Du Bois’s double consciousness. To ensure survival, Himes’ characters read both protest novels and white culture, and perform racial roles (or refuse to).

  2. If You Could See Her Through My Eyes: The Unreadable Character in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood and Thomas Pynchon's V. Jeff Hicks, University of California, Riverside

    My paper presents a comparison of Djuna Barnes' novel Nightwood and Thomas Pynchon's novel V. The paper discusses the connections between the female heroines of both novels, their construction and definition under the gaze of supporting characters, and Barnes' and Pynchon's views on Modernism, technology, and gender.

  3. The Marginalization of an Anishinabe Woman in Louise Erdrich's Tracks and Four Souls. Brenna Burghardt, University of Toledo

    This paper contrasts three narrators in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks and Four Souls, as they define the Ojibwe character Fleur Pillager, who is deprived of her own narrative voice. How and why is Fleur multiply-marginalized and controlled by the language of others?

  4. Contemporary American Multicultural Fiction and the Development of Empathy and Cross-Racial Understanding. Marilyn Edelstein, Santa Clara University

    Through analysis of recent short stories by Lahiri, Paley, and Alexie, I argue that reading such works of multicultural fiction can simultaneously enhance readers' cognitive and affective development, and help shape our ethical relations to others unlike ourselves (esp. in terms of race and gender).

Session Type: 
Standing Session
Session Status: 
Closed