32.
Title: Student Research Papers
Length: Over 215 pages
Date Completed: April 21, 2016


33.
Title: [The Island of Doctor Moreau]
Author: H.G. Wells
Genre: Scientifc Romance
Medium: Penguin Paperback
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: April 25, 2016
Rating: *****


34.
Title: Selections from [A Question of Manhood]
Author: Various
Genre: History/Masculinities
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Final Reading
Date Completed: April 24, 2016
Rating: ****

My chapter choices from A Question of Manhood were directed by personal interest, potential use value for my present project, or the possibility of importance for my ever-looming dissertation. They cover several areas of interest relating to my work, including law and gender, courtship, cultural history, and bodily performance.  The first, “For Justice and a Fee: James Milton Turner and the Cherokee Freedmen,” considers an historical conflict of which I knew literally nothing – a dispute over land and tribal rights for the freed African American slaves held by the Cherokee Nation.  In this chapter, Gary Kremer tells of a nation within a nation, governed by four social contracts and two governing bodies, and negotiating a system of rights with no precedent.  The Cherokee Freedmen want tribal rights and a fair share of land and monies given by the government; the Cherokees who once held the slaves deny their rights to either, and James Turner, an outsider, takes up their mantle and fights with the federal government for their intervention.  The whole political and social conflict is nuanced and downright messy, and each decision as the potential to set dangerous precedent.

“Black Policemen in New Orleans During Reconstruction” by Dennis Rousey shares the history of just this – African American men serving in a professional police force at a time when arming their community causes alarm and authority between races is tenuous. Rousey asserts that “The Crescent City’s antebellum tradition in race relation was probably unique,” citing legal circumvention supported by white “employers, policemen, grogshop keepers and professional criminals” for their own purposes and a large Northern population influencing race relations (98). Rousey acknowledges that it is striking to have black officers at all, and further surprising to see them given authority over white citizens, and to see them armed, but that “it became important for the police force to become a microcosm of the whole … community” (99). \

“The African Derivation of the Black Fraternal Orders in the United States,” was not quite what I expected it to be, but rather an explication of the practices and organization of the Independent Order of St. Luke as compared to the social organizations of the Efik and the Igbo of West Africa, justifying the comparison by drawing connections between the American slave trade and these African communities.  The chapter itself is a methodical point-by-point analysis of rituals and cultural symbolism, with the goal of breaking the assumption of European heritage in fraternal orders, and illustrating how this American order can in fact be connected to the African communities from which members (or their forefathers) were taken.

Of greatest personal interest were the chapters on courtship and Jackson.  In “The Courtship Letters of an African American Couple,” Vicki Howard turns to primary correspondence to evaluate the negotiation of marriage between nineteenth-century African American couples, as they negotiate their roles according to both their own communities (what Howard calls “Black Victoria) and the nineteenth-century cult of Womanhood. The project itself is problematic for its one-sidedness, and the constant necessity of assumption that comes into play when looking at only half of a correspondence (Lucia’s letters have not been saved, while she kept the letters she received from Calvin).  A source of discord between the courting couple is Lucia’s desire to continue her education as a teacher, and then to exercise that education professionally; Calvin, also a teacher, initially rejects both desires in deference to the Victorian middle-class cult of womanhood, but eventually yields to Lucia’s desires in order to secure her hand in marriage.  Howard speaks of power in this relationship, showing how most belongs to Lucia before they are married, and how Calvin is quick to negotiate when he believes there is a contest for Lucia’s hand.  For Lucia’s part, Howard identifies her assertions and desires as exemplary of Black Victoria – a moral but industrious woman who finds fulfillment not just in the home, but in actual occupation that in turn helps to build and support the community.

The final chapter, “Peter Jackson and the Elusive Heavyweight Championship: A Black Athlete’s Struggle Against the Late Nineteenth Century Color-Line” follows the professional career of Peter Jackson from his youth as a sailor to his success as a boxer, and the difficulties he faces in his professional progress due to his race.  A superior athlete who first makes his name in Australia, Jackson travels to the United States in order to challenge the title-holder of Heavyweight Champion of the World; John L. Sullivan refuses to cross the color line and meet Jackson in the ring, as do all of the subsequent challengers, literally blocking Jackson from even the chance of gaining the title for himself.  David Wiggins details Jackson’s failures with his successes in the ring, narrating his constant and easy successes  - and illustrating just why white boxers were afraid to fight him. None wanted to be the champion to lose the belt to him.  That Jackson is powerful, skilled, and practiced is never drawn in to question; rather, each rejection is clearly articulated as an upholding of the color-line.  Jackson’s failure to achieve the title is not his own, but rather the last front against which these white athletes can uphold their artificial sense of superiority.

29.
Title: [Beowulf]
Author: Trans. Seamus Heaney
Genre: Anglo-Saxon Poetry
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Teaching Text
Date Completed: April 14, 2016
Rating: *****

This semester I had a few students who objected to my use of the term "cannibalism" to describe Grendel's transgressions, and my admittedly tongue-in-cheek description of Beowulf's fight with the infamous man-eater. After a day of interesting debate I used our disagreement as an opportunity to more explicitly discuss the problems of translation, as we had briefly addressed in our readings of Sappho and Dante.  In my writing on Grendel's mother for a conference in 2014 I came upon an article by Christine Alfono, who directly addresses the inherent bias in Anglo-Saxon translation, specifically as it relates to Grendel's mother and her characterization in the translated poem.  As an illustration, I shared with my student's Alfono's offering of five different translations - and their connotations - from the same Anglo-Saxon line, and I further complied a list of ten terms named by Alfono, what she asserts are "literal" translations of the words (a few I confirmed online, for my own curiosity), and Heaney's word choices.



Though I will agree to disagree with my students on our initial difference of understanding, the lecture served its purpose, and we had another lively discussion about why some translations may make sense, and how others belie the cultural prejudices named by Alfono in her own scholarship.


It's been an odd semester, engaged in two separate independent studies.  Left to my own devices for one, I found myself reading most of each week's novel before rushing off to the next at the rather frenzied pace I had set for myself.  Now I'm finding the time to get to the last few chapters of each as I prepare to write about them all. My reviews here are brief, because I am reserving more specific thoughts and readings for the essay I am preparing.

30.
Title: [Lady Audley's Secret]
Author: Elizabeth Braddon
Genre: Victorian Sensational FIction
Medium: Broadview Paperback
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 17, 2016
Rating: *****

Elizabeth Bradden's sensational 1862 novel was, according to the Broadview edition, "one of the most widely read novels in the Victorian period," and it's certainly clear why. Full of mystery, blackmail, bigamy, and other foul crimes, the text navigates social and gendered spheres with a rapidity that leaves the reader's head spinning with excitement as she follows the lay-about nephew of Sir Audley as he seeks out the truth of his friend's disappearance, and the secrets kept by his childish, doll-like aunt, Lady Audley.  The novel exchanges on the Victorian love of mystery and armchair detection, and offers a series of puzzles sure to delight original and contemporary readers.

The back of the Broadview edition further asserts that the novel "creates significant sympathy for the heroine, despite her criminal acts, as she suffers from the injustices of the 'marriage market' and rebels against them." My own reading contradicts this analysis, at least in the first. On the contrary, I found Lady Audley to be repugnant. Early in her life Lady Audley is treated very poorly, and her personal narrative seeks to emphasize the injustices of the gendered systems of nineteenth-century England. She is legitimately a victim a this point, and all sympathy belongs to her, blame falling squarely on the shoulders of he who mistreats her. However, her true character is revealed in how she seeks to improve her conditions, ultimately dissuading the reader from the sympathy Broadview suggests. There is a line of desperation and innocence Bradden could have maintained in order to shift blame and sympathy, but she crosses this.  The final explanations serve as a convenient and absurd excuse by a conniving criminal, and the triviality of her actions keep her from becoming even an engaging villain.  I am disappointed in Lady Audley, who I was very prepared to adore for her passionate grasping of autonomy and assertion of self, but I found her wanting.

As a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and found much to write about - so much, in fact, that my difficulty is now in limiting my options.


31.
Title: [North and South]
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Genre: Victorian FIction
Medium: Penguin Paperback
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 17, 2016
Rating: ***

For all my disappointment in Lady Audley, however, she remains far more engaging and interesting as a character than Margaret Hale, of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 North and South.  Upon the marriage of her cousin, Margaret Hale leaves the London house of her aunt, where she had been residing, to return to the utopia of her childhood home, of which she waxes eloquently to all who will hear for much of the early portions of the novel.  Unfortunately, this peace is broken by her father's crisis of conscience, and when he gives up his parish post he moves Margaret and her mother with him to a Northern industrial city, where they are forced to take dingy accommodations, breathe polluted air, and lament the lack of society in the city where Mr. Hale has elected to become a private tutor.  North and South ruminates on the deplorable living and working conditions of the lower-class employees of mills, as Margaret Hale tries to find her own place in Milton.  While the social commentary is thoughtful, and provides a useful perspective in understanding the use and function of the Victorian novel in the popular understanding of such divides and social reform, I could not maintain interest in the protagonist, who is ultimately too perfect to be compelling. I personally prefer characters with texture - or perhaps deviance -but even her transgressions are perfectly situated to emphasize her goodness and adherence to the expectations of proper nineteenth-century middle-class women.  Ultimately I was fairly horrified by the connotations of the conclusion of the romantic plot, which I assert promises only misery for Margaret.  

27.
Title: The Nigger's Opera; or, The Darkie That Walked in Her Sleep and accompanying historical context in Broadview edition
Author: William Brough, for Christy's Minstrels
Genre: Drama
Medium: [The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance], ed. Tracy C. Davis
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 9, 2016
Rating: ***

With such an inflammatory title, Brough's The Nigger's Opera requires historical context, though even Davis' thoughtful work cannot dissipate the discomfort of either title or theatrical rhetoric.  Thoroughly fascinated by "the primitive other," Victorians have a history of appropriation and exploitation both, which they pursue under the guise of their racial and cultural superiority, and with the assumption that they are benign benefactor's whose mission, as a people chosen by God, is to civilize the world in their own moral image.  Of course, the actual practice of these morals is questionable, but that's a different subject for discourse. Here, it is relevant to introduce the subject of the "minstrel," or native musical performances such the British found "pleasing yet 'primitive'" (265).  According to Davis, the minstrel performances at Christy's, which introduced actors and actresses in evening clothes and blackface, parodying more serious works of the day, were viewed as wholesome and appropriate entertainment for families; she quotes a February 1862 Morning Chronicle which asserts that the musical performances "are utterly devoid of coarseness or vulgarity, and would not be out of place even in the drawing-room of the most fastidious." Davis further describes the cultural response to this phenomenon when she asserts that "In England, blackface impersonators alluded to a distance culture, separated from English rule for several generations, preserving practices rejected by British law in 1833 and detested long before. ... in Britain Christy's specific brand of it was scrupulously decorous family fare" (266).  Questions of content, representation without passing, costuming and makeup, and a whole host of other artistic and cultural influences speak to a modern understanding of the phenomenon, which Davis well presents to readers.

The content of Brough's actual work is as shallow as one might expect. The footnotes relate that this is a "Burlesque of La sonnambula composed by Vincenzo Bellini," and further connect the plot to the original in subsequent annotations. At the heart of the story is a trivial misunderstanding worthy of a Shakespearean romance: Dinah, the principal, is about to be married, but her suitor rejects her after finding the young woman in the rooms of Dolphus, "a heavy swell of color according to his own account a count being empowered by Royal Italian Opera license to change his name to Rodopho." There are significant literary allusions made, such as Jim' statement "I could act Othello's part!" (297), songs sung, and an easy resolution found when Dolphus and Jim together see Dinah sleepwalking, explaining her previous actions (and the title of the play). Not unlike my recent reading of Moore, I did not enjoy Brough's plays. However, I am glad for their inclusion in this anthology to extend my awareness and understanding of theatre in the nineteenth-century, particularly of a genre that I assumed was wholly American.



28.
Title: The Gypsy Maid
Author: William Brough, for Christy's Minstrels
Genre: Drama
Medium: [The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance], ed. Tracy C. Davis
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 10, 2016
Rating: ***

The Gypsy Maid is Burough's burlesque of The Bohemian Girl by Michael William Balfe, and trades on word play to examine race, class, performance and identity. A Count's daughter disappears, for whom he weeps for twelve years before her miraculous reappearance as a gypsy maid (another subjugated class, as Davis says on page 313 that "Until 1856, Gypsies were enslaved in what is now Romania"), and marriage to a "swell" who disguises himself as a gypsy. The plot is even less satisfying than the previous, but offers more intriguing representations of social demarcations and boundaries that speak both to the specifics of the plot and the more general of nineteenth century British life.

26.
Title: [Batman #1]
Author: Bob Kane
Genre: Comics
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 9, 2016
Rating: ****

To support my research, and to serve as a primary source, I sought out the very first introduction of The Joker, which happens to be in the 1940s Batman #1, when Batman earns his own book outside of Detective Comics.  The mystery begins when a strange voice over the radio predicts the death of a wealthy citizen, and the theft of his property; this prophecy is fulfilled to the letter, despite police presence and protection.  The mystery continues when a second ominous message is relayed, and again fulfilled, though through slightly different methods.  The perpetrator gains the attention of police and criminals alike - the police for their bafflement, and the criminal underworld for this man's usurpation of heists unofficially claimed by other thieves. Of course, Batman is needed to apprehend this unusual figure - before one gang or another is able to take him out.  The premise of this book is as the later rewriting has promised, to an extent - ominous predictions of death and theft, and even the methods of execution.  The original text, though, takes more time in the explication of the crimes, and thus offers a portrait of the Joker not as a madman bent on wreaking havoc, but as a calculating and cunning thief with an unusual calling card.  The Joker's costume is as much a performance as Batman's himself, and the two appear to be on much more even footing.  This is what strikes me most about his first appearance - the Joker is not yet the madman of modern narrative, but a stealthy (and relatively traditional) criminal whose motives are capitalistically understood.

25.
Title: [From Hell]
Author: Alan Moore
Genre: Comics
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 8, 2016
Rating: ***

I am of two minds about this Ripper conspiracy theory from comics behemoth Alan Moore, and my rating reflects only half of that mind.  The divide comes from its purpose and use-value: as a popular text intended to entertain, titillate, and thrill, and as a cultural object of study that reflects and forwards theories and perspectives useful for a continuing discourse on social, political, and values.

From Hell is Moore's foray into what is (actually!) known as Ripperology - the study of Jack the Ripper and the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888, which remain officially unsolved to this day.  From the time of their act to now the spectacular case has drawn a great deal of interest, and serves as a modern whodunnit which holds the real-world promise of a spectacular resolution, if only someone finds, reads, and understands the right clues. The brutality of the crimes, the development of modern detection, and the sensationalism of nineteenth-century newspapers all add to the fervor, and from these real brutal slayings has come mountains of scholarship of varying levels of credibility, performance, art, and literature.

Moore's book forwards one particular conspiracy theory, based on his own reading of Ripperologists and historical research.  The solution offered defies nearly all logic and reason, but such is often the case with conspiracy theories, and this isn't something I hold against Moore.* Ultimately, however, I did not find the book to be entertaining.  Despite the sensational subject material, the plot is plodding, and long chapters seem extraneous to the movement of the narrative; though I understand why the author may have included such prolonged ravings and devoted espousals, they weigh down the text as opposed to building tension and anxious incredulity or curiosity.  In short, I found Ripper himself to be exceptionally dull, as are nearly all of the characters revolving around him, and the actions at hand.  An observation contrary to this criticism: one consistent trope in Moore's books, which seemed particularly successful in this text, is his explicit illustration of sex and sexuality. While I've found it unnecessarily gratuitous in other works (i.e. external to the plot), I thought the attention to human intimacy and sex to be compelling and forthright, and very well represented.

Despite my boredom with the graphic novel as a work of entertainment, I believe it is a useful, compelling, and thoughtful artifact which clearly articulates cultural values and systems worthy (and in need of ) deeper introspection.  For my present purpose, I found From Hell to represent a constant negotiation of gender, particularly masculinities, illustrating conventions, beliefs, and ramifications, both as these definitions are upheld and as they are challenged.  It promises to be a fascinating object of study, and so I am actually very excited to continue working with it.




* I don't really wish to spoil anything, but the fact that certain people would feel themselves completely powerless against the person who is Ripper is literally inconceivable; the ultimate end the murderer finds could have been implemented after the first death, with similar success.  That the instigator would not recall commands goes against all historical demonstration and documentation of character, decision, and action, and the final conclusion that it doesn't really work shows the frivolity of it all.

24.
Title: Batman/Houdini: [The Devil's Workshop]
Author: Howard Chaykin
Genre: Comics
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition:
Date Completed: April 7, 2016
Rating: **

The only thing redeeming this ridiculous comic is the visual representation of a Joker-like character, which happens to be beautiful and eerie.  The story is flat, the characters are useless, and the whole thing was really a dud.  It doesn't in any way live up to the legends of Houdini or Batman.

Great cover, though.

23.

Title: [Batman Detective Comics: Faces of Death]

Author: Tony S. Daniel

Genre: Comics

Medium: Paperback

Acquisition: Primary Source for IS

Date Completed: April 2, 2016

Rating: *****

This is the comic I was looking for - the pivotal moment when Joker has his face removed by the Dollmaker at which point they both proclaim they are "reborn."  Though the Joker himself plays a minimal active role in the book, this specific moment is a catalyst for the arc to come, and for my own reading of his masculinity.  The artwork is stunning.  

22.

Title: [The Hobbit]

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Genre: Fantasy

Medium: Paperback

Acquisition: Teaching Text

Date Completed: April 5, 2016

Rating: *****

21.
Title: [Manning the Race]: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era
Author: Marlon B. Ross
Genre: Masculinity, Sexual Cultures
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Book 7
Date Completed: April 1, 2016
Rating: ***1/2

I told my adviser that I'm afraid I'm missing the forest for the trees. I found Ross’ writing difficult to follow at times, especially in his introductions; he favors long “if not…., then …..” statements, and I often came to the conclusion of an assertion forgetting how it began. I mention this as a bit of a caveat, because I do not fully trust my understanding of the project. This is not to say that I didn’t gain anything from the reading – I found here a perspective I was looking for in an otherwise grand-narrative-dominated reading list – but that I don’t yet think I have the whole picture.

Manning the Race is an examination of the cultural and rhetorical ways African American men seek to assert a position of masculinity during Jim Crow bigotry as an infallible mark of cultural progress; a kind of racial re-branding used to humanize men of color, and reject the notion of their evolutionary inferiority.  Ross seeks cultural texts such as albums and anthologies, literary narratives, intellectual discourse, autobiography, and the men themselves to serve as representations of the myriad ways in which intelligent and creative individuals sought to become (or were named as) patrons of the race, cultivating their own achievements while bolstering the whole to stand against charges of racial adolescence.

Central to Ross’ reading is movement and migration. People move from rural to urban, South to North, and between expressive arts seeking something better, and confronting assumptions and cultural hurdles all the while. Leaders within the African American community seek to move out from under the “inferior place” to which Jim Crow assigns them (93), establishing and embracing normativity and masculinity as symbols of personhood.

In selecting this book I was hoping to find another voice to counter the white patriarchal narrative of anxiety and othering in the definition and maintenance of manliness, and Ross offers just that in what seems to be a consistent idea throughout the text: leadership, and patronage.  Many of the texts we’ve read this term forward examples of desirable masculinity in the form of isolated representations: Roosevelt, post-ranch; Tarzan; Atlas and/or Sandow; the cowboy.  These individuals glory in their representations of masculinity, holding themselves as superior to “lesser” men for their own possession of superior characteristics, and allowing others to attempt to replicate their manliness.  There is an inherentness that seems to follow most of these characters (Roosevelt had to find his manhood on a ranch, and Atlas had to develop a routine, but they both show gumption and drive to do so), and an antagonistic other against which they can be measured.

Ross’ narrative paints a far different picture – a desire to uplift/uphold/encourage a racial majority to their own improvement so that it may better reflect on the whole.  White men are obsessed with their own sense of superiority, but the singular examples held up perform a kind of anxious individual assertion of self – an anxiety that sets members within against one another, and then against the ultimate other. Ross’ leaders, however, are invest in modernity, progressive cultural shifts, and the man as part of a whole who can either continue to upward migration, or condemn communities to a fall. I’m not sure I’m articulating clearly the difference that I see, and this is something that I’d like to try to talk through – the relationship of the representative to the populace.

Similarly, I was very interested in the idea of the “cool post” – a deviant and dangerous phenomenon which must brought under control (92), but which also signifies (or is read as) a performance and a mask. It is a shadow threat onto which the fearful may project their anxieties, but one the text suggests is an appropriation of the figure so often identified in readings of American manliness – the cowboy.