Karly Berezowsky
Karly’s essay, “Fractured Identities, Moral Mediations, and Cancerous Aspirations of Madeline Lee and Silas Latham: The Allure of Power versus the New Woman and the Nouveau Riche Man” has been published in Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, Democracy, Resistance, and the Practice of Literature, Vol. 1 Issue 2. Karly attempts to advance an original view of why the American Realism literary movement should include tropes not only of the figure of the New Woman, but also those of the figure of the Nouveau Riche man. It will further illustrate how the protagonists’ morals drive them to rebel against their personal ambitions, their oppressive environments, and their behavioral conditioning — thus provoking them to act other than as society would dictate. The publication, Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry is an international online, peer-reviewed journal which “invites investigations into democracy, resistance and authoritarianism through the lens of literature and other cultural and aesthetic practices. Not only do we seek papers that attempt to locate such complex in ‘literary’ representations, but also those which tap into what can arguably be called the inherently dramatic nature of literary and cultural practice.” Karly is currently enrolled in the English MA program at The College of New Jersey. She is also receiving a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Courtney Polidori
Courtney’s article, “Like Persephone: A Case Study: Can a Feminist Approach to Mythology Lead to Transformations for Maximum-Security Women Prisoners?,” has been accepted for publication in Transformations: A Journal of Myth and Fairy Tale Studies, a newly-created international peer-reviewed journal, which will release its first issue winter 2015. Courtney’s article will appear in the spring 2015 issue. Courtney’s paper deals with her experiences teaching mythology to the wise-women of a maximum-security women’s prison. The essay explores the theoretical and pedagogical collisions of trauma, captivity, gender and mythology, and also includes stories from the classroom and the prisoners’ own writing, including a group essay about the transformations sparked by the study of feminist mythology. Courtney argues that approaching mythology from a feminist perspective guides incarcerated women in interrogating the patterns that trap women – in literature and in real life.
Cara MacNeil
Cara has been accepted as a contributing writer to The California Journal of Women Writers, “an online journal featuring original reviews and criticism of women’s literature from across North America, as well as interviews with authors, commentary on critiques published elsewhere, and the occasional post boasting literary theory.” The journal’s goal is to create an environment of women writing about women writers as a critical and promotional pursuit. Check out their website here
This summer, Cara will also be featured in a book titled Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman. Her essay, entitled “The Gray(son) Area: Performing Robin The Right Way” examined how the role of Robin is performative and how that performance can be used as a means of assessing how we view the different men who have portrayed the Boy Wonder. In this essay she uses Butler’s theory of performativity to demonstrate why Dick Grayson “outperforms” his replacement Jason Todd.
Michael J. Dalpe
Michael’s article, “When a House Is Not a Home: Gendered/Predatory Spaces in House of Leaves, ‘The Dionaea House,’ and ‘House of Asterion,'” has been accepted and published in the inaugural issue (1.1, “Horror in World Literature & Art”) of albeit, an upcoming publication that “strives to fill the academic space between scholarly journal articles and teaching documents.” This paper is an examination of how predatory spaces—such as those found in the texts that are used—could actually be read as essentially gendered spaces. This leads to a dissonance when people who wish to explore these spaces identify with a gender that the space is not—e.g., a man exploring a feminine space. This dissonance leads to the space itself being regarded as predatory. Read the full text here.
Kristin Bennett
Kristin Bennett has an article on Thornton Wilder entitled “The Tragic Heroine: An Intertextual Study of Thornton Wilder’s Women in The Skin of Our Teeth, The Long Christmas Dinner, and Our Town Using Judith Butler’s Gender as Performance.”
The text, Intertextuality in American Drama is a collection on American Drama edited by Drew Eisenhauer and Brenda Murphy
Melanie F. Kaminski
Kaminski, Melanie F. Doreen Valiente’s Scrapbooks: Folklore and Feminism. Bookemon, 28 Nov. 2011.
Kaminski, Melanie F., Kristine Mintel, and Cassady Rubins. The Magic of Fertility: A Compilation of Creation through the Ages. Bookemon, 24 Aug. 2011.